Quentin Willson says our market is cosily wrapped up despite the economic chill
Fair-weather investors have fled the economic chill and returned the old-car market to the warm and welcoming hands of enthusiasts, says Quentin
The headwinds blowing against the old-car market are howling. Brexit, the end of Quantitative Easing, rising interest rates, weak Sterling, flatlining wages... the list goes on and on. So what’s the effect of all this gloom? The Clever Money – fair-weather investors who supercharged Ferrari and Porsche prices – has retreated. Old cars are no longer talked of as ‘better than gold’. The opportunity to flip classics for a quick profit is now much harder and the bull market free-for-all has quietly evaporated. But despite the geopolitical and economic gales there’s a hardcore band of enthusiasts who still buy up classics with grateful enthusiasm.
We saw some market wobbles in the last quarter of 2017 as it became clear in October that Jean-claude Juncker and the EU were going to play hardball with their £50 billion divorce bill. Buyers chewed their nails and waited. Both Silverstone and Historics saw 60 per cent sale rates in November but once Juncker’s invoice was returned to sender, demand reappeared with CCA selling 80 per cent of its 159 everyman classics to the tune of £1.8 million. What we’re seeing are signs that the old-car market is back to its old form of reflecting political shifts, consumer sentiment and general market movements. CCA’S buyers were enthusiasts, still prepared to pay top dollar for top cars – £9350 for a Cortina MKIII, £21k for a fourdoor Range Rover and £20k for a TR6 are anything but depressed prices.
H&H’S Duxford results reflected the same enthusiast demographic with £20k paid for a ’68 delivery mileage Hillman Imp Californian, £46k for a Capri RS3100, £35k for a Sapphire Cosworth and £20k for a mint Stag. These are old-car fancier favourites and they all sold for the right money, given their mileages and provenance. And when something exceptional does appear on the market those same canny enthusiasts still see the value in quality and don’t hang back.
I’ve just seen a 9000-mile ’88 Range Rover Vogue sell for £44k and a perfect ’66 ’Healey 3000 MKIII make £80k, both in private treaty sales. There’s still energy, discrimination and passion out there and if anything, the market has become even more sophisticated and quality driven.
The investor darlings – Eighties and Nineties Ferraris, Astons and Porsches – are mostly down and there’s a fading of the brief rally for modern hypercars. The big-ticket stuff over £250k is still performing well if rarity, condition, price and provenance are right. But the most positive indicator is that the heart of our market, £20k-£100k traditional classics and interesting moderns, still looks in shape.
If things were collapsing we wouldn’t be seeing 80 per cent sale rates and record prices for Imps, Cortinas and four-door Range Rovers. They’d be the first cars to be swept away in a general fall in values.
So for the moment, 2018 looks steady and our appetite for rare and perfect classics of all values seems largely unabated. Given the economic chill things could be an awful lot worse. As long as we don’t have a landslide of cars being dumped on the market by people in financial trouble, this year should chug along a lot like the last. Fingers crossed.