Tag: decade

Report: Investing in blue-chip classic cars has been lucrative this decade

Filed under: Classics, Auctions, Earnings/Financials

Classic car values have been increasing quickly in the past decade.

There’s always a financial risk with investing in collectibles – and that includes cars. They must be maintained and stored, which costs more money, and ultimately sold (they’re investments, right?). On top of that, if they’re driven, they can be damaged or just lose value with more miles. But lately, the rate of return from investing in some collectibles – particularly classic cars – has been much higher than that of traditional investments, The Economist reports.

According to an index of the 50 most valuable automobiles compiled by the Historic Automobile Group and cited by The Economist, the past decade has been a great time to invest in blue-chip classic cars. Since 2002, their value has risen by almost 450 percent, which is a much larger increase than that of the MSCI World index, an index of stocks in developed markets, which increased by a relatively paltry 147 percent during the same period.

A case in point, The Economist points out, is one of the most expensive, ultra-rare classic cars to be sold at auction this year at Pebble Beach: a 1957 Ferrari 250 GT 14-Louver Berlinetta that sold for $9.46 million. The gavel price was within the car’s estimated price range of $9 million to $11 million. An even better case in point at Monterey Week this year was the 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 NART Spider that sold for $27.5 million, a record sum for a car sold in the US – the second-highest price paid for a car at auction ever. On top of that, it beat the high end of its presale estimate by over $10 million! The most expensive auction car ever remains Juan Manuel Fangio’s Mercedes W196R F1 racer, which sold earlier this year for $29.65 million. Last year, a 1936 Mercedes-Benz 540K von Krieger Special Roadster was auctioned off for almost $12 million. In 2011, a 1957 Ferrari Testa Rossa prototype sold for over $16 million. You get the picture.

But if you’re not into making money on classic cars, then maybe you should start a collection of stamps, coins or violins, all of which have been increasing in value for the past decade. Or just go to work.

Investing in blue-chip classic cars has been lucrative this decade originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 03 Sep 2013 16:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Report: Investing in blue-chip classic cars has been lucrative this decade

Filed under: Classics, Auctions, Earnings/Financials

Classic car values have been increasing quickly in the past decade.

There’s always a financial risk with investing in collectibles – and that includes cars. They must be maintained and stored, which costs more money, and ultimately sold (they’re investments, right?). On top of that, if they’re driven, they can be damaged or just lose value with more miles. But lately, the rate of return from investing in some collectibles – particularly classic cars – has been much higher than that of traditional investments, The Economist reports.

According to an index of the 50 most valuable automobiles compiled by the Historic Automobile Group and cited by The Economist, the past decade has been a great time to invest in blue-chip classic cars. Since 2002, their value has risen by almost 450 percent, which is a much larger increase than that of the MSCI World index, an index of stocks in developed markets, which increased by a relatively paltry 147 percent during the same period.

A case in point, The Economist points out, is one of the most expensive, ultra-rare classic cars to be sold at auction this year at Pebble Beach: a 1957 Ferrari 250 GT 14-Louver Berlinetta that sold for $9.46 million. The gavel price was within the car’s estimated price range of $9 million to $11 million. An even better case in point at Monterey Week this year was the 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 NART Spider that sold for $27.5 million, a record sum for a car sold in the US – the second-highest price paid for a car at auction ever. On top of that, it beat the high end of its presale estimate by over $10 million! The most expensive auction car ever remains Juan Manuel Fangio’s Mercedes W196R F1 racer, which sold earlier this year for $29.65 million. Last year, a 1936 Mercedes-Benz 540K von Krieger Special Roadster was auctioned off for almost $12 million. In 2011, a 1957 Ferrari Testa Rossa prototype sold for over $16 million. You get the picture.

But if you’re not into making money on classic cars, then maybe you should start a collection of stamps, coins or violins, all of which have been increasing in value for the past decade. Or just go to work.

Investing in blue-chip classic cars has been lucrative this decade originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 03 Sep 2013 16:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Report: Euro car sales plummet to two-decade low

Filed under: Car Buying, Europe, UK

Volkswagen's car elevator and storage - overhead view

Just three months ago, as of April, the story was that the European car market registered its first gain in 19 months, consumer confidence was up “higher than average” and observers were hoping the month could be the first footstep in the trek to “legitimate recovery,” even though Europe’s four-month sales were down seven percent. The stats for June are a return to dark portents, with Bloomberg now reporting that sales for the month haven’t been this bad since 1993. As a result, investor confidence in Germany has taken a dive and Eurozone exports have fallen for a second straight month.

There were 1.18 million cars registered in June, which represents a 6.3-percent decline from a year before. The overall seven-percent decline in car sales remained on track, the half-year number of 6.44 million vehicles sold so far this year being a 6.7-percent drop from 2012 (that number also being the smallest number of cars sold since 1993). The UK market was the only bright spot, jumping by 13 percent but being more than offset by Germany’s 4.7-percent decline and France’s 8.4-percent drop.

No one expects it to get better, either, one analyst saying “I don’t think that it will get better in the very near future,” Renault, Peugeot and BMW saying they expect a five-percent decline year-on-year, and another analyst opining that perhaps the best that can be said is that perhaps things are bottoming out, but that’s “not the same thing as saying they have started to recover.”

Euro car sales plummet to two-decade low originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 17 Jul 2013 14:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ETC: Buick celebrates 110 years by naming most significant model of each decade

Filed under: Classics, Etc., Buick, Design/Style

1963 Buick Riviera

In May of 1903, Buick began work on its first vehicle, the 1904 Model B, the first example of which was sold to a doctor in Flint, Michigan. That first sale was appropriate since later on, Buick became known as a “doctor’s car.” The Model B is the first of 11 cars chosen by Buick to highlight each decade of the company’s 110-year history.

The 1916 D-45 Touring with a six-cylinder engine was Buick’s highest seller that year, and helped push overall sales past six figures for the first time, making Buick the top-selling automotive brand. In 1931, Series 50 got an eight-cylinder engine, which helped the company survive the Great Depression. The 1936 Century was the first Buick that could hit 100 miles per hour, the 1949 Roadmaster had a supporting role in Rain Man, the 1953 Skylark had Italian wire wheels and the owner’s name engraved on its steering wheel.

Then we have the iconic 1963 Riviera, the V6-powered 1975 Regal, and in 1987, the legendary GNX. With a turbocharged, intercooled V6 pumping out 276-horsepower it could hit 60 mph in just 4.6 seconds. In 1999 Buick built the first car in China, the Century, and that country remains the brand’s largest market.

To represent the current decade, Buick chose the 2008 Enclave because it introduced the company’s current design language and brand focus to the market. You can see photos of all these memorable Buicks in the gallery and read more of the brand’s history in the press release below.

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Buick celebrates 110 years by naming most significant model of each decade originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 23 Jun 2013 17:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Toyota celebrates a decade of Prius

Filed under: Hybrid, Hatchback, Toyota

The first decade of the Toyota Prius – Click above for high-res image gallery

As of 2010, the Toyota Prius has been available in North America for a decade, and it remains by far the best selling hybrid both here and around the world. Since its Japanese market introduction 1997, drivers have bought more than 1.8 million of the gas-electric dynamos, with about half of those ending up in the United States (and apparently half of those landing on driveways in the San Francisco Bay area!).

The original Prius was a gawky-looking four-door sedan that was slow and often didn’t meet up with customer’s fuel economy expectations. It wasn’t until the second-generation model arrived in 2004 with a new teardop hatchback body style that the Prius really took off. By 2007, cumulative sales topped half a million, with the third generation model arriving two years later offering improved efficiency and better dynamic performance than ever. This year, Toyota has begun to deploy a test fleet of plug-in Priuses with lithium ion batteries with full series production of those versions coming in 2012.

While we wait for our future corded Prius models to give us even more pull with our eco-minded friends, we’ll join Toyota in celebrating the now-iconic green machine by checking out the historic gallery below.

Gallery: Toyota Prius – Decade 1

[Source: Toyota]

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Toyota celebrates a decade of Prius originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 28 Jul 2010 19:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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