HAGI MERCEDES-BENZ CLASSIC INDEX

A 10% BOUNCE in one month is certainly unusual, but it happens from time to time across global markets. In the MBCI’s case, May’s 10.94% surge has more than offset four straight months of losses and taken it to a peak of 207.88, one point ahead of its previous high in September 2017.

This trajectory temporarily aligns Mercedes with Ferrari, which in May also surpassed its September 2017 peak, while all other published HAGI market measures remain shy of peaks achieved last September and October. However, no other HAGI index achieved May growth anything like the MBCI’s 10.94%. Their gains ranged from 1.84 to 3.34%.

Of course, down the line the picture may be reversed. Most marques have a handful of heavyweight models that exert a powerful influence on individual marque indices by virtue of their market weighting; in other words their capitalisation based on price-point multiplied by survivor numbers. Across the market it’s not uncommon for three or four models to account for more than 40% of a marque’s overall capitalisation of collector-grade cars.

In the case of the MBCI, May saw strong transactions for the W198 300SL (Gullwing and Roadster) and W113 280SL, which together account for 44% of the capitalisation. This performance was not matched elsewhere within the Mercedes-Benz ‘canon’.

And it’s the longer view that gives us context and levels out this inherent volatility. For 2018 so far the MBCI is up just 2.85%, while year-on-year gains are 4.64% – less than half the long-term annual average for this sector. See www.historicautogroup.com for more.