You Might Not Be Perfect, But You Gotta Bring SOMETHING

So everyone knows that hotrods are inherently a losing proposition. If you are getting into a hotrod to make money you are in the wrong business. As my pop always used to say "Speed costs, how fast do you want to go?" In today's classic car market there is a growing problem that stems from a few different misconceptions.

If you are in the market to buy a decent starter hotrod there are numerous avenues to spend your hard earned cash... craigslist, auctions and of course just kinda keeping your eyes peeled. I have employed all these and many others and gotta say the divide between seller and buyer could not be larger. It has and will always be the seller wants the most he can get and the buyer wants it as cheap as he can get it but I contend not to the degree that is it now.

Numerous shows that feature classic car auctions and show people buying and selling them has given the sellers an incredibly false sense of what their classic hotrods are actually worth. There is no place on this planet or any other where a Chevy Malibu is worth $170k, I don't care if GOD pimped that ride... NO WAY! But week after week we see these shriveled up old rich guys throwing up their paddle to show they are rich enough to outlast other said old rich guys. Troubling trend is that now that the upper 1% have bought all the houses and lives they can they have moved onto such rouge-ish enterprises as classic cars.... but you know, as investments not to actually enjoy the car.

So scratch the auction scene, reserve cars will pass and pass and pass with no-sale after no-sale. On to the local market, that will give up some awesome cars right? eh, right?!?  When you go through the craigslist experience you will see that most are as delirious there as at an auction. A big problem with local craigslist cars is they bring nothing to the table, and i mean NOTHING! You can go buy a much newer SS camaro or GT mustang for the same or less than most of these classics and they are WAY more car and WAY WAY faster. Now, style and cool have nothing to do with that so i get it, buying an older classic hotrod is very different than buying a new Mustang but if you want speed they don't even compare. And here inlays the problem.

Say i want to buy an old 1969 Firebird (which i sure wouldn't mind), locally they are on craigslist for 13k - 25k. These cars have no new steering or suspension components, are not matching numbers, have rust throughout and the interior is mostly shot. For about 18k i can get a low mileage 2012 SS Camaro that is near perfect. What the hell man, give me SOMETHING. Like if the Firebird had the Disc Brake conversion and decent engine, or a solid body with some attention needed okay i could see $15k. But the cars i am seeing are bringing absolutely NOTHING to the table. Bored over garbage engines, gutted interiors... basically projects at best.

If you are selling a project price it like a GOD DAMN PROJECT! Everyone is looking for numbers matching show car money for parts car quality. I get that you want to make a few bucks but please, take a realistic look at what you are selling before you add another 10k to the price. Just because you let the car "age" like fine wine in the back yard on blocks since 1978 doesn't mean it is a rare classic. Not EVERY car is a super rare collectible, in fact the reality is none of them are.

Maybe I Need To Evaluate My Strategy

 

War Inside My Head

So, I went to an auto auction in Zepherhills Florida last weekend. I woke up early and drove over with a pocket full of cash and a mind full of dreams. As I walked the car corral I didn't see anything that really jumped out at me. There was a pretty wicked 67 Ford Gasser that looked like a beast until I opened the hood and saw it was all show and no go. Sorry bro, gassers are supposed to be smelly ugly beasts that have about as much engine hanging out of the hood as they do under it, not some lame ass 302 with a sad little 2 barrel carb. But whatever, it was early and I had the auction to go to.

As I sit down and look over the sheet to see which one of these little beauties would be taking my hard earned cash I noticed there was about 10 golf carts for sale, odd but whatever. Auctions are kinda like a rolling carnival of lawless oddities. In my little pea brain I am busy doing the internal math that will keep me in the good graces of the accounting department. Because the other interesting thing about Auctions is they pretty much charge everyone for everything, buyers premiums, sellers premiums... hell I think there is a "being alive fee" in there somewhere. After about 30 minutes of hearing the barker go over about a million things and plug everything under the sun he finally starts.

An elderly man sits next to me as the auction kicks off. He is writing everything down on his paper... what the bids go for and if they sell or not. Nothing is selling, i mean NOTHING. I look at him and say "what the hell is going on here?" He exclaims that for the most part only about 10% of the cars in an auction actually sell because everything carries a reserve price.

About 30 cars into this 60 car auction I have seen about all I need to see. Oddly enough the very thing that represents actual free market has perverted into complete and utter bullshit. Auctions should be the complete celebration of free market, wanna know what something is worth? Auction it off... what ever the crowd pays that is exactly what it is worth. Sadly, television and "reality TV" has once again reared its ugly head and created a fantasy world where 1967 Camaros are worth 120k and old British roadsters actually run. So, looks like my money and my effort will be better spent elsewhere. No more auctions for this wannabe hotrodder... time to hit the market and see what I can shake loose.

Auctions Continue To Create A World That Doesn't Exsist

So, in case you missed it cars that many of us grew up seeing every day are now made of pure gold. Either gold or unobtanium. Either way they are EXPENSIVE. Well, depending on where you look they are. See, there is a massive disconnect between reality and what television or "TV" might have us believe. Not sure what I am talking about, please let me expound.

When you think of the awesome Detroit steel of the 60s and 70s it raises the hair on the back of your neck. They are big and mean, fast and loud. They are in a word AWESOME. They had wicked names like firebird and mustang and cougar and chevelle... names that evoked passion and desire for bad mistakes and burning tires. Growing up with them they always hovered in the affordable range. I am pretty sure you got a 65 mustang free with a fill up and a large slirpee for a while in the mid-eighties. Detroit made about 78 billion of these bad ass cars so they were always plentiful. The ones that didn't wrap themselves around a telephone pole that is.

Fast forward to the twenty-teens, a time when the 1% walks with impunity and reality television shapes what we think is reality. Dark times man, dark dark times. Sure, it started simple enough. Watching dudes work on stuff and make cool restoration projects. Then we got introduced to "flippers" or low level scavengers that are buying junk and as the old saying goes... polishing a turd. Fair enough, that has been going on forever but what hasn't gone on forever is television creating unrealistic prices. I was watching a super hyped "superbowl of auto auctions" the other week where a richey rich who had been buying up all of hotrod history for a million years decided it was time to flaunt his status and sell everything so we could all bask in his "i am way better than you" cult status. SO, other richey rich types showed up in droves to prove THEY could be that cool and rich too. As a result us common jerks got to watch mustangs sell for hundreds of thousands.

By the time it was over said richey could actually build his own world and live in a different galaxy made entirely of gold. Now, I am not just writing to rail against rich folks... I mean I will but that is not why I am here TODAY. The effect of reality TV creating this superbowl of car pricing is the entire baseline for old muscle cars took a dramatic leap upward. Remember like 2 paragraphs ago when I talked of those "flippers"? Yeah, well now those polished turds cost 10 times more than they did a year ago because every slack jawed yokel watched those shows and were like "I got one of those... so it MUST be worth as much as barrett jackson got."

Bad news, it isn't worth that much. The ones that were sold on that sad day were the absolute top of the top cars created or restored by the best of the best and most were 1 off super rare touched by god editions. So for those of us out there looking, we now have a few years more to save our money. After the flippers lose their asses and get no actual bites on the cars they are trying to get gold for the market will re-adjust back to reality. So just like the housing bubble, the gold bubble and every other made up price increase the muscle car bubble will burst. And when it does I will be there to grab up the prize, until then I will watch and wait.