Affordability of your next classic is important, but suitability is the key to ensuring a wealth of meaningful moments
When I was younger, I imagined that having the best things was the key to happiness – a bicycle with more gears, a guitar amplifier with more power, a car with more cylinders, oh, and power. Then growing up intervened and with some reassessment I accepted that it was experiences that made life worth living. Now the wisdom of middle age brings my thinking almost full circle, because as a car fanatic of course, it takes the right classic – though not necessarily the best – to unlock those life-affirming moments.
But choosing the right one is so easy to get, well, wrong. I often hear confessions from enthusiasts who’ve fallen for a particular classic and dug deeply into their energies and financial resources to acquire one – and yet more bring it to their own standards – only to realise that it doesn’t bring with it the richness of experiences that they’d imagined. I don’t mean to sound glib about the sums of money involved in buying a classic car at whatever level you find yourself, but in many ways, affordability is the least of our worries. Suitability is key.
Getting that right is one of the good reasons why we turn to industry insiders once a year to help pick out the Hot 30 best classic buys of the moment. Beyond their intimate knowledge of what’s about to get hot, and what isn’t, their firsthand insight into the virtues and vices of a huge variety of classics and the expectations of an even greater range of buyers makes them perfectly placed to guide us past the fools’ gold of classics that promise more than they deliver, in the process often bleeding your enthusiasm and resources dry. And we don’t want that.
Enjoy considering your next choice.