What drives car collectors and hobbyists?
You crave the models coveted by your 11-year-old self, insurer suggests
The start of a new year brings a renewal of interest in cars, both new and old. Things kicked off with the North American International Auto Show in Detroit, highlighting the fastest and the freshest, while those who yearn for wheels with a history have Scottsdale, Ariz., on their minds, and the last week of January highlighted.
That’s when the big auction houses — Barrett-Jackson, RM/ Sotheby’s, Gooding & Company, Bonhams, Russo and Steele, et al — literally put the history of the automobile up for sale. Muscle cars, hotrods, resto-mods, sports cars, pickups, prewar convertibles, postwar hardtops — the list goes on. Some are bought for little money; most go for significant amounts, even millions of dollars. But who are these collectors and hobbyists? What motivates them, and what are they looking for?
McKeel Hagerty has a unique perspective on the old-car market. Based in Traverse City, Michigan, Hagerty Insurance, a firm started by his parents more than 30 years ago, is a worldwide insurer of classic cars, motorcycles, trucks and boats. It also publishes a weekly newsletter and a classic-car magazine, as well as offering valuations on collector cars and reports on market trends, including the much-anticipated annual Hagerty Hot List.
“With all the things we do, we’re really the largest vintage car ‘community,’” Hagerty, the company’s chief executive, says. “We are the largest insurer of vintage cars, (but) the things that get the most interaction with the hundreds of thousands of clients we have tend to be our valuations and our market studies, as well as our magazine.”
So intimate is his knowledge of this community that Hagerty can reveal the precise age at which those who “dabble” in the collector car market decide to become serious collectors — 53 years old. From there, he says, comes a 20-year period of significant buys before the collector starts tapering off.
What motivates someone who is interested in cars to take that first step?
“If there isn’t some emotional attachment to it, they won’t buy it,” he says.
From there, Hagerty says, it becomes a matter of refinement, the ability to distinguish between two vehicles that might appear identical, “but one is significantly better than the other, for whatever reason.” It may be a better year, a better engine, or more desirable features or options.
“The cars they buy when they first start collecting versus what they buy when they get into it and figure out what they like will probably be pretty significantly different,” Hagerty says.
He offers the example of someone into British sports cars. The budding collector might start off with an MG or Austin and then graduate to a Healey.
“And then he moves up to a Jaguar or something even more expensive. He may have always wanted the Jaguar, but it was more than he could afford” when he first started collecting.
When asked if people tend to collect cars from their youth, Hagerty throws out an interesting statistic.
“If you look at all of the 1.2 million vehicles that we insure (and compare them) against the age of our clients … it was a car built when the collector was 11 years old. Which means for me, since I was born in 1967, I should go out and buy a (Smokey and the) Bandit Trans-Am.”
Hagerty admits to being a little bit of a throwback, not particularly caring for cars that existed from his youth. “I’ve always collected cars that were slightly older.”
At what point does a car cease to be merely old and start to show collectibility? Hagerty says the standard used to be 25 years, but
If there isn’t some emotional attachment to it, (a first collector car) they won’t buy it. MCKEEL HAGERTY
it started shifting with cars made during the 1970s. It was a decade that started off strong and went downhill, with safety standards, fuel economy and insurance concerns effectively killing off the muscle-car era by 1973.
However, Hagerty says people are now starting to take mercy on the era. “They’re not collecting them as broadly (as cars from the 1960s) but they’re looking at cars that were the more unique examples — convertibles or cars that had some sort of bizarre combination of colour and design,” he says.
“Think of a (Chevy) Vega, an AMC Pacer, something like that, in a wild colour or with an interesting interior. People will collect those because it’s more about the ’70s esthetic (than performance).”
Then there are people who buy newer cars — those who buy a Miata because they loved 1960s British roadsters, such as a bug-eye Sprite. That way, they get the thrill of topdown driving in a sporty car without the headache of owning what can be a money pit.
Hagerty says there are a number of newer cars that provide a lot of bang for the buck, especially “lesser looked-at” models, such as the Pontiac GTO or Solstice.
“Those are pretty good cars,” he says, and there are “some good deals” to be found in 1980s and 1990s Corvettes and Mustangs, which have great reliability and good value. “It’s important to know the Corvette is the most collected car in North America; the Mustang is number two.”
Another fun car Hagerty sees is the Mini Cooper, especially the convertibles. “Obviously the JCW (John Cooper Works) model’s the better one, but I know two car collectors in the U.S., $100-millionplus car collectors, who drive Minis as their daily cars.”
It will be interesting to see how some of today’s big-horsepower cars fare — models such as the Dodge Challenger and Charger — “because they’re going to go through a cycle of depreciation rather quickly,” he says. “You look at them and it’s obvious they’re designed to be a modern version of a car from a different era. And they clearly have their followers.”