‘Time to curb the worst excesses’

One welcome change to the classic car world has occurred in 2017. All those investors who had been responsible for the over-inflation of prices quietly slipped back into the shadows. As yet there has been no noticeable increase in cars coming up for sale to indicate that they are unloading their purchases, but there’s been a significant slow-down in numbers being bought in the mid to upper ranges, especially seemingly odd ‘money no object’ sales to phone or internet bidders.

People are still buying cars, but the vast proportion are the right ones – true enthusiasts, happy to see the gentle easing in many prices that the market sorely needed.

Hopefully this change will have another benefit and has come in time to curb the worst excesses of late Eighties-style ‘blow over and flog’ that was starting to make an unwelcome return. The sorts of cars that look good in photos but you’d see potential buyers wince and walk away from once they’d seen the up-close reality. And I’d like to issue an admonishment to the auction houses who let them through the doors in the first place, although I accept it is often beyond their control when something is over-praised by the vendor and delivered late for a sale.

Too much such incidences may have upset things, but it does look like we have escaped the kind of crash that followed the last boom. Some prices, especially for sub-£10k cars, are still slowly rising; some are slowly settling back. And we’ve been left with a legacy of a lot more cars having been restored as the rise in values made it more financially viable.

Dare I even say that the future looks bright?

‘Enthusiasts are happy to see prices gently easing’

Russ Smith has been following the classic car market for more than two decades and contributes to Practical Classics, Classic Car Weekly and Classic Cars.