Every year, classic car websites love to talk about the winners and losers of value, and what might be a winner in the future. Hagerty has released its latest list of 11 cars that will probably be worth more someday. The list is entirely unsurprising and has cars that have already been appreciating.
V10omous knows how we all feel when we read these lists:
What do you think is the most undervalued collector car right now?
I think everything I own is undervalued, and everything I don’t yet own is overvalued.
Banana Stand Money jokingly points out the ridiculousness of a Carrera GT being on the list:
Awesome, I was really on the fence about purchasing a Carrera GT, but now that Hagerty is bullish on the value, I’m definitely going to pick up one – or two..
Buzz:
I don’t think I’m breaking any new ground with this statement, but cars as speculative assets is a bummer. It feels increasingly like everything needs to be monetized, and if you aren’t 100x-ing your investment you are a sucker. Bet now on who will win this faceoff. Buy the memecoin and sell before it crashes. Hoard 30-year-old Volkswagens. It is exhausting.
That being said, I think 20-year-old, broken Scion xBs are seriously undervalued. Act now before the market catches on.
Frank Wrench:
This list is obviously bogus as it does not include the Nissan Murano CrossCabriolet.
I wrote about my insane idea to bring convertibles back by making a crossover-size Chrysler Sebring. KennyB:
I’m sure I’ll get all sorts of flak about it, but the Sebring convertible was one of the best cars at its job that I’ve ever owned. It sat four comfortably, had a giant trunk, and the top went down with ease. It had good road manners, and though the 2.7 v6 is known for problems, I found it to be plenty powerful and responsive. If I didn’t have a ’92 LeBaron for sentimental reasons, I would swap it for an ’01-’06 Sebring in a heartbeat.
Finally, Jason wrote a humorous Cold Start about the Toyota Sports 800. Peter Andruskiewicz:
… if you lifted the roof off, infinite headroom, at least when the sun or moon wasn’t directly overhead, which would limit the headroom to 93 million miles and 238,900 miles, respectively.
Makes me think someone reads XKCD:
https://xkcd.com/3174/
Have a great evening, everyone!
Top graphic image: VW
*clutches pearls* A Mk4 Golf V6 4Motion is not “crappy!”
The greatest indicator of a recession is the GMI, or the “Geo Metro Index”. When times get tough, Geo Metro prices double or triple.
you say “crappy cars” and i read that as “cars you can still work on.” I just picked up a 2025 Audi S3 and I love it. Great car. It does everything very well. But in 10 years with 150K on the clock I know it’s going to be so insanely expensive to repair (assuming those broken & worn out bits are even repairable/replaceable) that it’ll be bound for the scrap yard once something essential breaks – and the 2000 BMW that the S3 shares the garage with will probably still start and run just fine.
NO! NO! BAD! NO!
NO!
Do NOT overinflate the price of crapcans, you schmucks!!!
The fact that xkcd still exists after 20ish years and is still as relevant as ever is amazing. The two that stand out for me are the ones about how to use git and Bobby Tables.
This one, fairly recently, was a pretty moving rumination on still existing ;
https://xkcd.com/3172/
I was just going to mention that one. The way he’s openly talked about his wife’s cancer journey has made a difference for a lot of people.
That one hurts. My dad died of essentially melanoma spreading to his brain because he refused to take normal medicine and wanted everything to be natural until it was too late. I got to slowly see him degrade from a 60 year old brain to a toddler’s brain while his 60 year old body atrophied over the course of a year and a half.
If I ever find out I have brain cancer I’m buying the fastest motorcycle I can buy and attempt to enter moto-gp as an amateur just to have as much fun as I can while I can still remember.
A a friend of mine died of that on his 40th birthday, I published a book of photographs that he had taken for 18 years before that. He took one every day with a Polaroid camera. One day he’s performing in a circus, or making a Kieth Richards music video, or making bagpipes in the Italian alps, or doing CIA stuff, He kept doing it to the very end and the last photo is of him after he died that he had set up.
It started with a mole on his back.
So yeah, that got me too,
Oof. That hits me right in the feels.
As someone who abruptly found out they had cancer shortly after their 34th birthday, this comic hit me hard. It resurfaced a lot of emotions, but it also has me looking forward to feeling old.
I’m 37 now, with no signs of recurrence and only scars to remind me. Well, that and the hair that turned white from treatment never turned back.
My spouse and I joke after every CT scan that I’ve never been so happy to be called “unremarkable” so many times. I still get anxiety in the coming weeks before each scan.
I had an MRI of my brain a year ago, and “unremarkable” was quite the relief. I’ve sort of made a career (several actually) based on being remarkable so it made for one of those interesting anecdotes.
I’ve been having all these tumors that turn out to be “not quite cancer but not something you want” except for a typical grow up on a farm without wearing a hat or dark glasses (don’t do that) skin cancer on my face. My dad died of non-Hodgkins lymphoma when he was 56 that was treatable but he had a lot of shrapnel in him that kept causing blood clots, and they had to stop treatment prematurely. I’m 70 now, so I’m figuring that I’m in the free unexpected extras part of my life.
So yeah, unremarkable is kind of a treat for someone who normally hears “there’s a one in a million chance” as if I live in NYC it will happen 8 times to me.
Yea, that one definitely moved me too and hit very close to home but with an unfortunately different outcome for my late wife
Oh man. Had me choking up in a restaurant… we’ve been together 40 years and I cannot imagine facing losing her.
Yeah, that one was a gut punch. I’ve had Myeloma for 11 years; a bone marrow and blood cancer similar to leukemia and lymphoma. This is the one they’re talking about when they say “treatable but not curable.” I’ve had every treatment there is so this remission will be my last, barring…you know…science.
I’ve been pretty good, most of the time. But this year I have to admit that I think this cancer is trying to kill me. Four times in the hospital. Yeesh.
Anyway. I’m so very happy for Randall Munroe’s wife and for him and their family and loved ones—including all of us who are touched by her success. Ten+ years is generally considered a “cure,” but you never really breathe easy afterwards.
Cheers!
You know, for a site that’s ostensibly about automobiles, the depth of this community is remarkable.
To answer the headline question – we already had a bull market for crappy cars. It happened during the COVID pandemic when new car supplies were constrained. Car prices all went up, even for clapped out old beaters. Unfortunately, I had to be in the market at that time. First I bought a Mni that turned out to be a fright pig, then I overpaid for a used Kia Niro.
I would agree with this entirely, and even say that it’s still the case. Looking at cars for my college age daughter, and trying to find something reliable for my son as he’s finishing high school, it’s almost impossible to find anything in the 5ish thousand range that has less than 150k miles and isn’t total garbage. Sure, I can get a Jetta within those limitations, but then I have a Jetta that I will spend half its life working on.
In cars, reliability is highly overrated, especially for young people Many of my best and oldest friends are people I would never have met if one of our cars hadn’t failed in some spectacular way.
When my sister went away to college I was tasked with getting her a car, and got her an older Jensen-Healey, and she said it was perfect because no one ever tried to get her to drive them anywhere. It was actually dead reliable compared to my cars but she always had a plan in case it wasn’t.
But for broke ass people like me, who are putting everything into their child’s education, and that child is going to be educated a state or two away, reliablility is key.
My daughter wants a Beetle, and I’m fine with that because I know VWs and how to work on them, and her school is only an hour away. I can drive up, fix pretty much anything wrong in an afternoon, and she’ll be good to go.
But for my son, who is planning to be at least 4 hours away? No dice my friend
$5000 in 2005 (approximately when you had your children) is $8500 today. The covid market is undeniably a factor, but your budget for the type of car you are looking for is a few decades old.
Inflation hurts, especially for those who can’t invest and hopefully match or even beat it.
For real. Searching for My First Winter Beater was painful until I ultimately ended up buying a friend’s mom’s car at a friend-rate price.
As new cars become more add revenue and subscription platforms for the auto makers and less transportation for the end user the value of old stuff that just mostly works will increase.
I keep thinking how I might like to replace my old crappy van with something newer, until I actually look at newer stuff. Ick.