Thinking of Investing in a Classic Car? Think Again - Insurance Journal
When it was last bought in 2008, the car was worth $160,000. For the investment, the lucky owner may receive roughly triple his money and a few memorable – albeit nerve-wracking – road trips with 8- track theme music. So should you be trying to get into the vintage-car game. Lots of Idling The Pebble Beach sales, like most marquee car auctions, are an exception. Only about 3 percent of vintage cars sell at auction and they are the best of the best. In reality, values for scads of vintage cars have been relatively stable for years. Detroit classics from the 1950s, for example, have mostly idled in the past decade, according to Hagerty Insurance, which tracks the values of the various old rides it underwrites. The same goes for muscle cars and so- called affordable collectibles like the Triumph TR6 and the Volkswagen Beetle. Rolling assets are not in any way recession-proof, no matter what the exotic car dealer tells you. In the 2008 downturn, the only upside to owning a vintage Mercedes 300 with gull-wing doors was feeling slightly less frightened to actually drive it. From the third quarter of 2008 to the third quarter of 2009, the value of “blue-chip”... A sampling of vintage Ferraris in that window fared even worse, plummeting 25 percent. A lot of vintage-car gurus believe that the run-up in prices since the recession is officially in “frothy” territory. Source: www.insurancejournal.com
