Market watch
Russ notes Jaguar XKS following E-type trends with earlier cars becoming the most desirable; and is last year’s transaxle anniversary starting to bump up prices for the lowest-rung Porsche 924s?
Around the market
Jaguar E-type project cars continue to be a regular feature at auctions, but there is a finite source of these, of course, and it’s starting to show. Most – especially the early cars – are still fetching quite eye-watering prices, like the bodily-challenged 1963 3.8 fhc that Barons recently got an over-estimate £45,650 for. But the sound of barrels being scraped is becoming more audible.
ACA recently offered a pair of coupés – a Series II and a V12 – that looked so frail you’d worry about them being outside in a breeze. Yet both sold, albeit in after-sale deals, for £5250 apiece.
Elsewhere the market continues to perform strongly. Silverstone Auctions’ Race Retro sale at the end of February saw 77% of the 93 non-competition cars find buyers. All but ten of the cars went for within or above their pre-sale estimates. The strugglers were American cars, which are becoming ever harder to shift in the UK, but Ferraris – which have also laboured in recent sales – showed a return to form with eight out of 11 selling.
Jaguar XK120
There appears to have been a subtle but definite shift in the world order as applied to Jaguar XK values. For some time the XK140 has been top dog, combining early styling with slightly less claustrophobic cabins than the 120. That made sense
with a lot of these cars being used for touring events, but it now looks like growing interest from the investing end of the market – which places originality and early models over practicality (’59 Minis, flat-floor E-types). Over the past six months both asking prices and those being achieved have been edging up for all models of XK120 and slipping back for XK140S. It may be a small adjustment, but it could become a gulf.
Porsche 924
Five or six years ago I struggled for some time to sell a really nice late-model 924 Lux for £2200, and until recently felt glad to have got that. Now the asking prices have suddenly jumped to £3500£4000 for cars of similar condition.
That would be easy enough to dismiss as kite-flying, but the sold stamps are going up on online classified ads too. Given how much the rest of the market has moved in the same time, it was almost inevitable that the 924 would be ‘discovered’ at some point. They’re still good value classics at the new level – great build quality, styling that has aged well, tidy handling and one of the market’s hottest badges. Time to buy?