NEW SURVEY REVEALS NORTH/SOUTH DIVIDE
Insurance company Carole Nash claims to have identified Britain’s classic car hotspots – and most of them are in the Home Counties
A recent survey has found that Britain’s infamous north/south divide now extends to more than house prices and job incomes, with more classic car owners living in the south than in the north.
The study, by insurance company Carole Nash among its customers, found that the home counties of Kent, Essex and Surrey topped the charts with the largest number of classics in residence.
Kent had almost double the percentage of classics compared to highest placed northern county Nottinghamshire, with 6.07% of owners living in Kent as opposed 3.25% in Nottinghamshire.
However, it’s not a homegrown classic that British enthusiasts have taken most to their hearts; the Volkswagen Type 2 camper is the most popular historic vehicle. MGBs, Minis and Minors run the people’s bus second, third and fourth. Other British classics from Land Rover, Austin-Healey and Ford are also in the top 10.
These findings follow a separate report that shows classic cars have performed better than any investment over the last decade when compared with other assets such as art, wine, stamps, and jewellery. They even out-performed coloured diamonds. The ‘theoretical basket of selected collectable asset classes’, tracked over 10 years by the Knight Frank Luxury Investment Index, showed classic vehicles giving a 487% return on money. Works of art and wine collections could only muster 252% and 234% respectively.
This Carole Nash information is based on analysis of the 13,650 vehicles currently covered by its classic car policies. The criteria for this is that a machine must be more than 15 years old, not the owner’s main car and have a low yearly mileage.
Between them, Kent, Essex and Surrey shared 15.95% of the classic tally. Affluent but crowded 11th-placed London had 2.92%. Perhaps unsurprisingly, bringing up the rear was the Shetland Islands with 0.02% of the country’s historic vehicles, although it does hold a very successful and well-attended classic car show every two years in the capital, Lerwick.
In Kent 142 of its 827 classics were Volkswagens, helping the German marque gobble up a 15.2% market share. MGs