Interesting... SFG wins the prize for the most common sense in terms of priorities when buying old sports cars when he typed " You need one that someone has spent a fortune on" For it seems that us baby boomers have spent an inordinate amount of cash or borrowed money on buying vehicles of one kind or another and restoring them or paying a mix of bodgers or craftsmen alike to restore them to some degree or other, the hard part would seem to be to determine that which has been bodged enough to get it through an MOT and that which has been reasonably restored.
As an example, I suspect I may have coined the term "Patchwork Porsche" and given the current "market" evaluation of air cooled Porsches there will be many an old dog out there who`s owner thinks it is a fine representation of the marque, whereas it may have more patches than a patchwork quilt and some of the welding not much better than blue tack... I suspect even the skilfully welded patches are unlikely to improve the crash worthiness of the monocoque in a shunt to match anything like the original crash protection parameters...? Of course none of that that is important until it REALLY IS important...?
As I have typed before, a pal bought a 964 in 2009 for £16k and today in the same dealer has a very similar spec 964 is available for circa £52k.... I am no economist but I suspect that general income trends across the populace have not risen similarly, thus it seems the "market" for air cooled 911 Porsches seems somewhat overheated..? By way of a "classic" market comparator, perhaps an 80`s /early 90`s +8 seems very unlikely to match similar value today..?
Thus some classics are valued more than others by the market, and the higher the value in any marque up to a point, it seems the more risk of bodge being present..? If you care to consider that rusty MGB`s in their thousands will have been scrapped, while 911s with even more corrosion than their counterpart MGB will have been cobbled back together... At least with a Morgan there would seem to be far less risk of being caught out with bodge repair processes, given the lack of box sections and monocoque cavities that abound in modern vehicle design, the sort of places where water finds a way in, or condensation builds up to the extent that these machines can and do rust from the inside out, preserving shiny paintwork till it begins to bubble hinting that all is not well below...
I suspect ALL the problem areas of all Trad Morgans are well documented to the extent that any buyer with a reasonable measure of understanding will know where to look and none of those areas are likely have the ability to hide the reality of their condition too easily..?
Triumph Stag... really..? What a rot box, but those guys at Triumph were ahead of the game inventing the Targa with the TR4 and the T Bar design in the Stag, pity that the build quality was so poor in the Stag, another pal of mine had one which must have been first registered in Atlantis given the degree of rot we had to deal with many years ago... I still have pictures..!!!!
Who mentioned CV8, I cut my V8 teeth, singed my eyebrows and banged my head on the underside of the fibreglass bonnet messing with one of those in my youth, but that is another story...(-: I moved on to Interceptor in later years where I owned two, one for spares and the other a runner.... 6276cc of sheer terror on cross ply tyres that were almost as old as me at the time... Jensen Healy... badge engineered with and engine derived from a Bedford CF van, like the Lotus Elite of the time and not one of my favourites for sure...
Now when you talk of a fun good value sports car it does indeed seem that the Japanese have cornered the market for reliability and fun, with the MR2 equivalents and MX5 seem popular amongst Morgan owners, though surprised that they have steel fuel tanks..? I had thought with the newer fuels that plastic tanks were more in use these days...? On the value for money stakes with zero "investment" thinking attached, one of those little cars seems to have reasonable potential indeed for fun open top motoring.
The whole classic and investment thing seems to have been fuelled since the seventies by us baby boomers and likely to slow down and eventually collapse with our own slow down..? Thus the investment thing seems a tad risky and more so in certain areas of the classic market....?
Buy for the ENJOYMENT of ownership of a classic and be prepared for it to loose value in the market in time hoping that in your ownership can/does justify that which you have spent on it, regardless if you want to have a garage queen, something to tour the world, or throw up the hills or splash through the mud in, whatever..... ENJOYMENT would seem to be a reasonable if not ideal RETURN on the INVESTMENT...? If on the other hand you buy an expensive "classic" in the hope it might off-set the first year or so of nursing home fees, if/when that may come to pass, or in time be of value to provide for others when we drop off the perch.... I wish you good luck with that strategy....
Perhaps also worthy of consideration is the climate change effect which if indeed legislative action is taken, will undoubtedly affect the market in classics as well as much else...? Had my old +8 more importance to me as a financial investment, as opposed to a wonderful bit of machinery to appreciate even if it just sits in the garage, perhaps appreciated as a Penny Black to a philatelist or an old master to one who can appreciate it hanging on his wall, but then I wonder what level of appreciation is for the market value of each relative to the value of ownership.... Hmm?
Me..? As I have typed before my old Morgan has earned it`s place in the garage as it has provided memories that both for my good lady and I at the time felt a tad adventurous over a period of years, to the extent I feel it owes me nothing and that seems a comfortable place to be at this time, for it was not always that way.
These days it takes more bit effort to enjoy my Morgan on the road than it once did, and there was a time when I thought to replace it with something a tad less RAW, yet still sporting... however there it still sits providing pleasure by just being there...In the past I have enjoyed it in rain hale and snow over rough roads and quite a few thousand miles on warm dry Southern European tarmac, though less inclined to do so these days as it would involve a degree of discomfort that it never did in the past..... and I suspect there may be others who think similarly....Thus my Morgan was not purchased to be a garage queen, however as both I an the Morgan have aged together it has evolved into somewhat of a garage queen whereas I have not aged quite as well as my old Mog has.... (-:
Am I a just perineal profit of doom.... I wonder..? (-:
