The Collector Car Market Continues Its Slow Retreat
After a brief bump last month, the Hagerty Market Rating slipped yet again. The Market Rating has dropped 19 of the 22 months since its 78.22 peak in the summer of 2022, to its lowest value in three years. That said, its current value of 65.41 is still higher than any point in the four years leading up to the Market Rating’s most recent surge.
The Hagerty Market Index, an open-ended stock market-style index of the Market Rating, has dropped 16 consecutive months. This is the longest unbroken losing streak in the Index’s history.
Inflation continues to impact the Market Rating. While the real value of the Auction Median Sale Price has remained unchanged the last three months, holding steady at $29,700, inflation has caused its Market Rating component metric to drop a full point during that time. Its current value of 38.03 is by far the lowest value of the Market Rating’s 14 component metrics and is the lowest this metric has ever been since it was added to the Market Rating calculation in 2011.
The market’s continued slide is evident in auction results as measured against estimates (which is not an input for the Hagerty Market Rating). In March’s Florida auctions, 68 percent of lots were bid below their low estimates, which was significantly higher than the 60 percent for the same set of events in 2023. As one industry expert noted, this growing gap indicates values are falling, as sellers’ aspirations are not adjusting quick enough to buyers’ dwindling willingness to pay. That said, our industry experts aren’t running for the hills, giving the current classic car market an average grade of 50—neither great nor devastating.
This uncertainty in values seems to be causing a disconnect in people’s perception of the real value of their classic cars. While the Hagerty Hundred—a Hagerty Price Guide index comprised of the 100 most insured vehicles—dropped to a 3-year low, the ratio of insured value increases-to-decreases for cars valued under $250,000 saw its biggest gain in nearly two years. This jump in the insured value ratio happened shortly after 14 consecutive months of decreases.
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Great—!! And its darn near time ! Now an average person might be able to invest in a collectable vehicle without being subjected to the capitalist GREED of auction houses and private sellers—!!
Monsignor Fewchuk, we hear you. A thousand tomes have been written about economics, capitalism, tens of thousands more about human nature. Many of us remember the 1970s when a middle-class fiscal mortal could both afford to own and fly a single-engine private plane whether nose (“training wheel”) or tail dragger, and afford to restore an automobile.
In recent years, even if someone gives you the car, it’s still cost prohibitive to rebuild just the mechanics, or redo bodywork, or the interior, but not all three. Perhaps this is one of….the reasons for the current practice of clear coating rusty jalopies–well beyond any interest in preserving a well-tended survivor.
And a dearth of affordable mechanics versed in “the old ways” why so many cars of the ’30s and ’40s wind up with Chevy V-8s, TurboHydramatic, tilt wheel, big chrome wheels; “retro rods,” Frankencars bereft of charm, rendered by those with no appreciation for, let alone knowledge of, the genuine article.
Classic cars are to be owned , driven and appreciated for what they are. Buy what you want and take care of it so it starts and drives down the road every time you get in .