Dan’s Papers November 26, 2010 danspapers.com Page 33
CLASSIC CARS
By Bob Gelber
Do collector cars make good investments? Well, let me give you some personal examples and you be the judge. About 25 years ago I was really into Porsche sports cars of all types. Here’s the history of several of them. I liked race cars. While I was in Germany I came across a 1967 Porsche 910 race car stored in a barn. After some negotiation, I purchased the car rather cheaply, raced it in America at local Bridgehampton events and eventually sold it for around $40,000, which was considered a good price at the time. I just read on the Internet that my old Porsche 910, serial number 91026 was sold at auction in London for $850,000. Another Porsche race car I owned was a 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder. I paid $3,000 for the little silver thing and eventually sold it for not much more. Today a Porsche 550 Spyder is easily worth $400,000-$600,000. I had several more common box-stock street Porsches, a 1955 Speedster, a 1965 model 356 coupe and a 1965 Cabriolet. All of these cars were sold for about $2-3,000. To put things in perspective, a NEW Porsche 356 Cabriolet in 1965 could be bought for $4,200. Today virtually any of these models in mint condition are worth between
$60,000 and $150,000, with the once cheapest model, the 1955 Speedster, worth the most. Lessons learned; rare, limited edition factory race cars are really worth a lot of money, but even desirable, “normal,” every day sports cars go up in value, especially if they are highly coveted when new. You may have noticed that the above-mentioned race cars were relatively inexpensive when sold 30 years ago. This is because used race cars had the sad reputation of being driven in anger, thrashed to within inches of mechanical failure. To most car buyers they were just old, used-up, punch-drunk prizefighters, outdated machines that were not competitive with newer, more state-of-the-art competition. That is certainly not the case today. Every car collector is savvy about the investment potential of race cars on the market. Also, there is the fact that in the last decade vintage car racing has become popular, especially among wealthy vintage car owners. Good luck in finding a bargain in this venue. There are sad tales I can tell about turning down the purchase of two of the most valuable race cars in the world. In the early ‘70s I was at a Ferrari club meeting at the Lime Rock racecourse with a group of serious Ferrari owners. One fellow was there with a rather shop-worn Ferrari 250GTO. It looked like it had been raced to death, with dented bodywork and a cracked windshield. The owner asked around and was trying to sell it. Asking price, $7,500. No one, including me, in this crowd wanted the car. The buzz was, “Where the hell are you going to find a windshield for a GTO?.” Today a “good” Ferrari GTO is considered one of the most valuable
Ferraris ever built. Is there such a thing as a “bad” GTO? Another time in the ‘60s a neighbor of mine, just down the street from me in Remsenburg, phoned to tell me that he had a 427 Cobra in his barn that he used to race at Bridgehampton – would I be interested in buying it? Personally, I never liked AC Cobras because in my mind they were rather brutish overpowered MGs. My God, they even had MGTD door locks. Out of pure curiosity I did go look at the car and it was quite nice and it carried an “R” letter in its ID plate. Asking price, $5,000. Today a Ferrari GTO and true racing 427 Cobra are worth many millions of dollars. Who knew? I hope this article answers your question about collector cars as a an investment. However, like the stock market, it has to be the right car at the right price at the right time. In my next article, I’ll try my best to give you my picks for the cars to buy today that will go up in value. Bob Gelber is an automotive journalist who has lived in the Hamptons for 40 years. He can occasionally be seen on television talking about his favorite subject, automobiles. You can reach him at bobgelber@aol.com with any questions or comments.
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