Hagerty Vehicle Rating: BMW E30 M3, Ferrari Testarossa chill out
If you were looking to flip a BMW E30 M3, you may have just missed the boat. According to the latest Hagerty Vehicle Rating (HVR), the E30 M3 has gone ice cold, much like many of the vehicles that were hot not so long ago but recently slipped into the bottom 25.
The HVR tracks a car’s performance relative to the entire collector car market. Based on a 0–100 scale, a car rated at 50 is keeping pace with the overall market. A car scoring higher than 50 is appreciating more quickly, while a score below 50 indicates the car is lagging.
The Hagerty Vehicle Rating is derived through the use of the following data:
- Hagerty Price Guide — Measures the change in value of #3-condition (good) cars.
- Insured Activity — Measures how many cars have been added to Hagerty’s insured book and their average value at the time they’re added.
- Quote Activity — Measures how many cars have been quoted.
- Auction Activity — Measures the number of cars, their average sale price and the sell-through rate for those cars.
- Private Sales Activity — Measures number of cars sold, average sale price and what percentage of them sell above their insured value.
Every vehicle listed in the HVR bottom 25 (11 of which are German) are lagging behind the rest of the market in both quote activity and insured activity.
It’s important to note that many of those in the bottom 25 previously experienced significant value growth and a surge in buyer interest, only to flatten out now as buyer interest moved elsewhere. The E30 M3 is a prime example. Prices shot up in 2015, along with those for many German and more modern collector cars. But after several big transactions, and as prices sailed past the realm of affordability for many buyers, interest in the E30 M3 moved elsewhere. Not surprisingly, quote activity plummeted in the last 12 months.
Mercedes-Benz SLs, 1980s Ferraris, and GMC Syclones have also experienced this trend. They were hot, and now they’re not. For the second time in a row, the 190SL has been at the very bottom of the HVR. And although the Ferrari 308 and 328 are not new to this neighborhood, their more expensive sibling, the 12-cylinder Testarossa, fell into the bottom 25 for the first time, largely due to a huge drop in quoting activity.
Not all of the cars in the bottom 25 have been so volatile. Since vehicles like the Studebaker Hawk, MG TD, and Ford Crestline appeal mainly to older buyers, they generally exit the market without much of a response from younger enthusiasts, who tend to favor modern vehicles. For that reason, overall buyer interest for these cars lags behind the rest of the market.
Here’s a full rundown of this month’s bottom 25:
