Doug Nye: When demand for superstar classics drops, so does their value

Way back around 1959-60 I recall it was my big brother who first pointed me towards this magazine. “It tells you more about the cars than the others”, he said, and I instantly found he was right. When I first started drawing racing cars, then writing about them in 1963, this was good grounding.

In 1970-71 happenstance brought contact with Tom Wheatcroft, the Leicester builder-cum-racing car collector then compiling his illustrious Donington Collection. For Tom I at last became literally hands on with some of the world’s most mouthwatering Formula 1 cars. Spool forward to the early ’80s and first involvement with the historic and classic car auction world, consulting on car histories and provenance – a kind of racing car Fake or Fortune?. I had always wanted to get closer to the action, so there I found myself just about as happy as a pig in the proverbial.

Via the auction connection – and mostly amusing, but quite often uncomfortable experience of the classic car trading world, Goodwood then happened along. Suddenly, all involved on that front found ourselves just grasping a real tiger by the tail, fighting desperately to hang on…

Today, this background provides a reasonable platform from which to review how the perceived scale of classic racing car values has progressed over intervening years – and it clearly adopts a wave-form – one generation’s greats becoming a following generation’s so-whats.

It’s predominantly the great and famous cars of our youth which generate those waves. Talking recently with one friend and long-time historic F1 owner, he vividly recalls the excitement – the absolutely unforgettable buzz – he experienced when given the chance to stand beside a great car of the time on the starting grid for his home Grand Prix. The life-shaping image in his mind of being right there, just beside the car’s left-front wheel as his hero – that year’s World Champion – had a mechanic dust off the sole of one racing boot, then stepped that foot into the cockpit, had the other boot cleaned, lifted that adroitly wide of the coaming, and slid down into the tailored seat to have his belts fastened around him lives on today, crystal clear. Maybe 20 years later that young enthusiast was able to add that great car to his own personal collection, and he has since preserved and frequently raced it… all triggered by the fact that it had been his absolute impossible-dream pin-up of the time.

It’s a perfectly natural generational thing. The great star cars which early collectors of the 1950s valued most were mainly those made famous during their youth in the 1920s; Bugatti Type 35s, Alfa Romeo 1750s and – ooh nurse – the straight-8 supercharged GP Delages. Phwoarrr! In relative terms they reigned as the latter-day motoring world’s most valuable.

Roll forward to the 1970s. Different generation: monetarily, ’20s classics were retreating into more a minority-cult corner. The big deal then amongst fans who had made enough money to indulge their interest was more for the superstar classics of the 1940s-50s – from Alfa 8C-2300/2900 through the unattainable Silver Arrows, the grand routier body styles, plus of course the postwar Jaguar Cs and Ds, Aston Martin DB3Ses, Maserati’s cheerfully friendly finest and – of course – La Ferrari in almost all its forms.

While some such classics have retained enduring allure – often because by that time their inherent performance in use would already stretch most owner-drivers’ skills to their uttermost limits – the mass level of cars from that period, those below the cream – have since seen their market attractiveness decline.

“In the 2000s interest began to dawn on Jaguar XJRs”

Into the ’90s, another new generational change was made. To this one, even the utterly gorgeous Swiss-watch intricacies of early ’60s F1 cars had faded. But hey – 3-litre F1 cars? Now you’re talking. Porsche 917s and 908s. Oh my life! Roll on; 2000s. Where enthusiast interest had once been wowed by D-type Jaguars, assorted front-engined Ferraris and the like, interest began to dawn in Jaguar XJRs, and later.

Now in the 2020s, we see zillion-dollar impossibly unusable, blingy ‘supercars’ and/or ‘hypercars’ – an emerging new enthusiast generation wowed not at all by achievement in competition, but by promotional programmes, global exposure, especially online. Increasingly the posters on a school kid’s bedroom wall seem to feature more that kind of car, than anything any star driver ever actually raced. Theory, not practice, is becoming key.

From experience it’s a tough call when one is breaking the news to a would-be vendor of a long-cherished classic once worth a fortune that its market-wowing days are now long-gone. Generational demand has moved on – that car’s once-peak value has halved.

Then there’s the totally unique – a car that’s so special it surely ticks every possible box for the historic enthusiast. It’s a landmark design, supreme driver, matchless race record… But market interest at a matching level? A concerted chorus of praise, “…what a FANTASTIC car… for someone else to own”. As generations change, here’s the reality… for many a tough pill to swallow.

Doug Nye is the UK’s leading motor racing historian and has been writing authoritatively about the sport since the 1960s