‘The Only Way Is Up’: Doug DeMuro Explains Why You Shouldn’t Wait To Buy Your Modern Dream Car

In some ways, it’s a great time to love cars. Internet aggregators have made it easier than ever to search for cars, 3D printing means out-of-production parts can be reproduced at home, and communities exist for just about every make and model. In some ways, it’s also not a great time to be into cars because the ones you like are probably getting more expensive. This week, car YouTuber and Cars & Bids co-founder Doug DeMuro published a first-quarter market report, and it seems like that trend is going to continue. In addition to stating that “The only way is up,” DeMuro wrote: “if you’re a few years away from your childhood dream car, but it’s clearly the truth: We’re witnessing rapidly escalating interest in modern enthusiast cars from increasingly wealthy modern car enthusiasts – and the start of 2026 certainly shoved it in our face.” While he does have an incentive for people to buy now, other data corroborates that now seems like a good moment to really take that stretch-goal dream car seriously.

Of course, this isn’t about chrome-bumpered machines of the 1960s. If anything, the values of those cars are generally softening. It’s also not about late-model stuff, as depreciation still hasn’t really sunk its claws into vehicles like the current-generation Porsche 911, the Toyota GR Supra, or the Audi RS 3. Instead, this is about cars after the detuned malaise era but before just about every power steering system under the sun went electric.

In the 1990s, cars became really rather good. The mid-decade inclusion of a standardized onboard diagnostics connector made repair easier, pretty much everything finally had electronic fuel injection so you could just hop in and go, and chassis rigidity had generally advanced beyond the wet noodle stage. At the same time, manual gearboxes were still quicker than automatics, natural aspiration was still the norm, and curb weights hadn’t ballooned to silly levels. The result is that as the hive mind’s definition of what makes a great enthusiast car coalesces around cars from say, roughly 1990 to 2010, we’re seeing multiple generations of enthusiasts competing for the same pool of vehicles.

When you have a large buyer pool competing for a finite number of vehicles, law of supply and demand suggests that prices are going to go up. As that happens, there’s a good chance that regular people like you and I might be priced out of our stretch-goal cars, whatever they are. I probably won’t have a TVR Sagaris anytime soon, just like how someone in their early thirties making $200,000 a year in total compensation is probably seeing the 2005 to 2006 Ford GT slipping further from their grasp. So what does this mean for more affordable cars? As DeMuro wrote:

For years, Gen Xers and Millennials swapped E36 M3s and NSXs on web forums for cheap, while Boomers garnered huge attention paying seven figures for certain rare 1960s Chevy Camaro models at Barrett-Jackson. Those days are changing. The next generation is making good money, now; the Boomers are passing down funds to younger heirs, and desirable vehicles from the modern era are making the switch from “used car” to “exciting classic,” as they become harder to find in anything resembling the condition we remember from the showrooms of our youth. Soon, we’ll be the Boomers paying $775,000 for a Chevelle, except the Chevelle will be an R34 Nissan Skyline GT-R, and the dollar figure might be higher.

A great example of this is the Mark IV Toyota Supra, often referred to by its A80 chassis code. The median hammer price on Bring A Trailer in 2018 was about $51,009. In 2026 so far, that figure’s been $91,954. While that’s down about $6,500 compared to the first four months of 2025, the sorts of examples we’ve seen in the marketplace have been different. Early 2025 was notable because a bunch of low-mileage cars went under the hammer. Often lower than the mileage on examples that have shifted this year. At the same time, the first few months of 2026 saw several right-hand-drive JDM imports sell on Bring A Trailer, which have historically held lower values than left-hand-drive U.S.-market examples. If we filter by left-hand-drive, the media A80 Supra transaction price on Bring A Trailer is actually up nearly $12,000 compared to the same period last year.

As for some of the sky-high bonkers auction results you’ve probably sent to your friends, the interesting part about outstanding hammer prices like that $125,500 manual V6 Porsche Cayenne from a few months ago is how a rising tide lifts … maybe not all boats, but certainly many. When buyers with big money to spend aren’t afraid to flex the might of their checkbooks on top-tier examples of cars, it has historically tended to raise the trend line for nice-condition, weekend-toy-spec examples. That ridiculous $205,392 result for an ultra-low-mileage stick-shift E92 BMW M3 probably won’t raise the values of rebuilt title, DCT-equipped convertibles much, but a string of strong results could have a meaningful impact on reasonably low-mileage coupes with manual gearboxes.

So if you don’t want to miss the boat, what can you do? Well, most of us have three options, the first of which is giving up. I usually don’t advocate for this in any avenue of life unless all other options are exhausted. On the one hand, if you can technically buy your stretch-goal dream car right now, but it wouldn’t be the most comfortable thing in the world, knowing that the money you spend on buying the car doesn’t just disappear is a little bit of solace. If you need to, you can always sell it later, likely for at least what you bought it for if it’s still in good working order.

Another option is financing, and this is where things can get a bit risky. While solid values mean you’ll need a much smaller down payment to not be underwater on a collector car, it’s important to leave enough liquidity to afford repairs and to make sure you’re willing to eat the interest in the event that appreciation doesn’t surpass the finance charges. Obviously, I’m not a financial professional, and this is not financial advice, but financing a collector car often requires a certain level of risk tolerance, but can be more stable than financing a new car at the same value for the same terms. I probably wouldn’t want to finance anything that’s out of warranty, but that’s just me and the way I work. Know your individual limit, play within it and all that. [Ed Note: I’ve always heard that financing a used car is more challenging than getting a good interest rate on a loan for a new car. Someone more literate in this area may be able to chime in. -DT]. 

A few years ago, I found myself in a similar pre-purchase-nerves position with what would become my Boxster. It was offered at a deal I may not have been able to replicate in the future and was in my dream color combination, but at that point, it was still more than I’d ever spent on a car before. I did my diligence, braced my bank account for impact, and haven’t regretted it. I love looking at it, I love working on it, I love the people I’ve met because of it, but perhaps most of all, I love driving it. Is it worth more than when I bought it? Surprisingly, a little. Would I sell my attainable dream car? Not a chance.

When it comes to buying fun cars that have already hit the bottoms of their depreciation curves, the best time to buy from a financial perspective is often yesterday, and the second-best time is as soon as you can realistically afford it, even if that depends on your definition of “afford” because it’s different for everyone. While not every car or indeed, every example of every car will see a substantial rise in value over the next few years, it’s an exceedingly safe prediction that the fuel-injected cars we like will probably get more expensive. If the one you want is within grasp and you won’t have to touch a rainy day fund, there’s no harm in taking a closer look today.

At the same time, these cars are a luxury, and in challenging economic times, rushing to buy a collector car may not be the move, either. And that’s totally fine; as much as we joke that it’s not the case, there are more important things in life than a crisp six-speed and the sound of an NA V8.

Top graphic image: Acura