2021 MUSCLE CAR VALUE GUIDES OZ & USA

AS THIS issue heads to print we are just days away from the closing dates for a couple of major auction sa les.

We can’t include t hose results in t his Guide and in 12 months’ time t hey will have passed into irrelevance, but t he ver y ex istence of t hose sa les and t he inf luence t hey have on the nationa l psyche is immense.

Collector car auctions have become a bit like t he Melbourne Cup. People who care nothing for horse racing will for t hat one day spend big on f lash gear to attend f lash lunches and become instant experts on jockey attire and barrier draws.

Same with the automotive sa les events that have found their way onto mainstream TV news broadcasts and get livestreamed into home off ices and outdoor iPads across t he countr y.

People paying insane money for rat-infested wrecks have become a ta lk ing point and a lso sy mbolic of our nationa l spirit in t he face of ca la mit y. Aussies who for ages couldn’t travel overseas or even interstate were somehow comforted to k now that somebody somewhere was still able to spend a million on a car prev iously owned by another somebody who was famous.

Contrived excitement did a lot to stimulate soaring prices, and few cared t hat cars supposedly ‘sold’ for record-setting bids might be back on the market a few months later.

Those wit h long memories will reca ll t hat extreme va lues have been with us a couple of times before and that they diminish quick ly once the economic climate begins to change.

That still leaves a mainstream collector market where owners enjoy sensible returns on the money their cars have absorbed while keeping plent y of desirable models at af fordable levels.

Brisk sa les, including over-t he-phone interstate transactions reported by dealers, and strong auction house clearance rates confirm t hat demand is still t here, and t hat cars have only become more expensive in relative terms.

If you own a home a metropolitan area, then it and you are a worth a good deal more than you were t wo years ago. With housing interest rates now lower than at any time in recorded histor y and banks paying a lmost nothing on sav ings, our abilit y and desire to f und a recreationa l vehicle have improved.

The money you have available may not buy a 1970s Falcon GT, or even a triple-carb Torana, but many of us can access an XR8 Falcon or SS Commodore. Loads of interesting US-made cars a lso remain affordable, t hose cars part of a strengt hening globa l market for pre-Seventies Americana.

Whether these models and others like them will continue to appreciate as circumstances change, we cannot say.

What t hey do and will continue to prov ide is interesting, involv ing tra nsport t hat, wit h appropriate care, will sur v ive the decades a head and face whatever challenges that era may bring for engines of t he interna l combustion k ind.