Just what drives the vintage car collector?
Starts with vehicle that elicits an attachment
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 and a patina to them have Scottsdale, Ariz., on their minds, and the last week of the month highlighted on their calendars.
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, hot rods, 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 the people, these collectors and hobbyists, who covet vehicles with a past? What motivates them, and what are they looking for?
McKeel Hagerty has a unique perspective on the old-car market. Based in Traverse City, Mich., 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 offers 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,’ ” says Hagerty, the company’s chief executive. “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. It started as insurance, but it’s really evolved into this community.”
Such an intimate interaction within the collector community has allowed Hagerty to reveal the precise age at which those who “dabble” in the collector car market decide to make the transition to serious collector — 53 years old. From there, he says, there’s about a 20-year period of significant acquisitions before the collector starts tapering off.
“There’s a lot of longevity in the car world. People sometimes simplify their collec- tions in their 70s, just to have fewer vehicles to deal with, but they don’t get out of it entirely until they ‘check out.’ ”
What motivates someone who is interested in cars to take that first step? Hagerty says it has to be a vehicle that elicits an emotional reaction.
“It has to be something that moves them,” he says. “If there isn’t some emotional attachment to it, they won’t buy it.”
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. “And sometimes that’s a financial decision, a ‘ Hey, that car is more valuable than this car.’ ”
Hagerty offers the example of someone who is interested in 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 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.
“We entered into a malaise … where there were a great many cars produced but they weren’t being collected in great numbers.”
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.”
Then there are people who end up buying newer cars that remind them of something they coveted as kids, the type who buys a Miata because they loved 1960s British roadsters, such as a bug- eye Sprite. That way, they get the visceral thrill of top-down driving in a sporty car without the headache of owning something that needs constant maintenance.
Hagerty, who has a firstyear 1990 Miata in his collection, 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.
“They have great reliability, whether you like the look of the car or not,” he says. “You can look at early-’ 90s Corvettes and get them for something like US$10,000 to US$14,000. It’s important to know the Corvette is the most collected car in North America; the Mustang is No. 2.”
Hagerty says 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. 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.”
Imports also have their fans, he says.
“I don’t care what anybody else says, there are guys in their 30s who are collecting cars. Their interests are ( just) different. They like Subaru WRXs, Volkswagen Golfs, early model Audi Quattros — they have a different esthetic,” he says.
“You know, we don’ t judge, we just watch.”