Opinion: Why traditional automotive black sheep now command high prices

It’s an easy trap to fall into when looking at the values thrown around in today’s secondary and collectible car market: to get stuck in the knowledge of what these cars once commanded.

And I’m not above it. I too lament the loss of the once flourishing and affordable enthusiast car market, and struggle to make sense of many asking prices being thrown around. And it’s weird stuff, too, that people have traditionally never paid much attention to that’s going gangbusters. Things like Mitsubishi FTOs, Toyota MR2s and R33 Nissan Skylines – traditional black sheep – are now commanding unprecedented sums of money, often exceeding the values of big hero cars from just a few years ago.

But when I see a tired old GTS-T listed for what was genuine GT-R money, I find I’m increasingly having to quell the urge to rattle off old values. I’m aware that I may be beginning to sound a lot like the old codger on Facebook – yelling at the abyss about how a GT-HO Falcon once cost just $6000.

The harsh truth is a GT-HO Falcon will never be close to a five-digit car again, and I’ve long made peace with the fact that I’ll never see a $35k R34 GT-R again. And with such a heavy financial focus on today’s collector culture, the question then becomes ‘when will the bubble pop’?

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R33 Nissan Skyline GT-R

We’ve seen bubbles in the collector car market burst before. The turn of the 1990s comes to mind. The world was less globalised back then and the US represented one of the major epicentres for the high-end performance market. The run up was hard and the crash spectacular, with huge amounts of credit being leveraged. Within months, the values of genuine blue-chips like the Ferrari F40 and Carrera RS had halved.

It wasn’t just the top-end that got hit. Even amongst local collectors, US imports were at one point booming with all manner of Mustangs, Chargers and Camaros being brought in by the boatload – until, seemingly one day, they weren’t.

GT-HO Falcons enjoyed their first major blip in values during the late 1980s, with pristine cars fetching up to $100,000, when they looked safer than the bank and the V8 Falcon had gone on hiatus. Similarly, HO values soon halved from the days of their 1989 peak and remained there until the mid-’00s.

There are a lot of similarities between the 1990s collector car bubble and the state of the market we’re seeing today. There are many new players on both sides of the fence. Specialist media coverage and a hot sector means that in some cases, the same vehicles often appear on the market repeatedly.

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XW Ford Falcon GT-HO

There are also key differences some 30 years later. There’s still a huge level of speculation at play, perhaps more so than ever. However, the high-end collector segment has morphed into a truly legitimate asset class – more than it ever has been – and is fuelling derivation everywhere.

There will be some market correction, there always is, once macroeconomics shift and the world opens up, or perhaps another revenue bubble opportunity will come along. Today’s collectible mania simply isn’t sustainable. Yet, three decades on, there is one big difference. And it’s tied to the new car industry. We sit at the precipice of arguably the greatest paradigm shift since the advent of the internal-combustion engine. Classic/vintage, or even cars from just a few generations ago, offer a vanishing experience that we simply won’t be able to buy in the near future.

It’s the same appeal and emotion that the gorgeous restomods featured in this issue trade on, although they’re executed to a hyperbolic degree. Look at Mercedes-AMG’s C63e as a case study. The next-generation of go-fast cars will boast unprecedented performance metrics, but some will undoubtedly feel they’re losing something in return.

Therefore, questioning whether something like an R34 Nissan GT-R is truly justified in commanding $200,000 is a fallacy. A younger me would’ve rebelled and said no. However, value is relative. And as the recent surge in restomods show, if it’s done correctly, the internal combustion, analogue experience remains a powerful draw virtually regardless of price.

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