OLDIES BUT GOODIES

Buy with your head, not your heart: rule #1 for first-time classic car investing

THAT EXOTIC SPORTS CAR that you have lusted after since schooldays suddenly pops up on your radar and… before you can stop yourself, you hit become the proud owner of a four-wheeled canine. Before you hit “Buy It Now”, dial back the enthusiasm and follow a few basic guidelines – none of them to do with whether your dream/nightmare car is Italian, whether it was previously raced, or how many cylinders its engine has. Top tip from collector Jeff Osborne (above), who knows a thing or two about the breed: find a sturdy vehicle – if possible a rare model – that can be restored by giving it an aesthetic overhaul. In other words, a reliable runner that needs only a facelift. To add weight to his words, Osborne isn’t just a collector and restorer: as Gumtree SA’S Head of Automotive, he has just overseen the introduction of the wildly popular online classifieds’ classic and vintage car category.

Approach classic car buying like choosing a fixerupper property that you can use to turn at a profit through some clever work, Osborne says.

The new category on the site means that consumers will be able to find vintage cars more easily from both dealers and private sellers, drawing more attention to the rare finds and potential bargains. Osborne believes there is “definitely space in the market for more dealers to get into the vintage car space”.

Gumtree’s Automotive section receives around four million unique visits each month and showcases over 200 000 live automotive ads at any given time. The first for a classifieds site in the country, the special classic and vintage car category already boasts hundreds of listings.