The Economy and The Classic Car Hobby

The Economy and The Classic Car Hobby, How has the bad economy been affecting the classic car hobby? On the upside, certain classic cars - especially muscle cars from the '60s and '70s - have suddenly become more affordable.

Though we've seen some of these - such as Hemi-equipped '60s and early '70s-era Chryslers - top $200,000 at auctions, these cars have always fundamentally been working and and middle class cars. While the value of especially rare ones - the Hemi 'Cudas and Chargers; 427 Super Yenko Camaros; Boss Mustangs, etc. - will always be high, the overall "price of entry" has been coming back to a more accessible level for many of these cars.

Even now - with the full extent of the economy's troubles likely only beginning to dawn on most of us - one can buy a regional show winning example of something like an early '70s Camaro or Chevelle for around $30,000. Even GTOs are becoming more reasonably priced - most of them, anyhow. (Convertible Judges and RA-IV models are still commanding Monopoly money prices.)

Overall, things are looking up. A quick survey of Hemmings classifieds, online classic car stores and the local Old Car Trader turned up several late '60s/early '70s Goats for $25,000-$30,000 or so. The number of ads in the $50,000 range and up seems to be declining.

This is bad news for the speculator class responsible for turning what used to be a hobby into an "investment opportunity" - but it's very good news indeed for the rest of us, especially those of us who were too young to get in on muscle car ownership the last time these things were semi-affordable, back in the late '80s/early '90s.

Yes, $30,000 or so is still a lot of money - but it's not out of sight. With financing (readily offered by many classic car stores) it's a very doable thing. And that's for for the more desirable late '60s/early '70s stuff - and for better condition stuff, too.

Look around and you'll see that solid "drivers" (cars with visual flaws that might not win a show but which are nonetheless presentable and can be easily fixed up to much better condition) are going for much less. $15,000 or so can buy you something very nice to play with, such as a mi-late-'70s Z28 with a 350 V-8 and 4-speed in solid "Number 2" condition.

The downside is that just as muscle cars are becoming more affordable for average people, average people are less and less in a position to buy one - or feed it. Unless you're very comfortably middle class - at the least - buying a classic car is hard to do. Especially if the wife gets wind of it. You want to spend $20,000 on .... what?

There's a mortgage to pay, bills coming in ... the kids' college fund. Not many of us have twenty or thirty grand in discretionary cash laying around - or can afford to fill up the 21 gallon (and premium unleaded only) tank of the typical V-8 muscle car. Still, the financial pendulum is swinging back toward affordability; you might not be able to drive it much - but you might be able to buy the thing.

So, if you've long wanted to own something cool from the classic era, you ought to be looking around now - and scraping together whatever available cash you can. Be ready - and jump on the opportunity when it presents itself. Because a gimpy economy notwithstanding, the dip in muscle car prices is probably temporary. They're not building any more of them, for one - and when the "investor class" recovers its nerves (and figures out a new way to fleece the rest of us) they'll be back.

And when they are, it'll be harder for average hobbyists to get closer to one of these greats than a glossy calendar posted in the garage...

Dedy's Autos: Bye-Bye New Beetle

Dedy's Autos: Bye-Bye New Beetle

Turns out the second time's not the charm. VW's New Beetle only lasted 12 years in production (2010 will be the final year; 1998 was the first year).

Though it arguably can be credited with almost single- handedly launching what became the "retro" trend in new car design - spawning similarly historically-minded new/old cars like the Chrysler PT Cruiser, Chevy SSR, Mini Cooper and (most recently) the revived Camaro - it never got its hooks into the public psyche the way its predecessor, the original Beetle did.

There were several reasons for this. First, despite the generally familiar shape, the New Beetle was functionally nothing like the old one. It was built around a front-engined/front-wheel-drive layout while the old Beetle was, of course, rear-engined and rear-wheel-drive. The latter arrangement gave the old Beetle much of its charm - as well as desirable attributes that included impressive tenacity in snow because the weight of the engine was right on top of the drive wheels, which aided traction.

The New Beetle's engine was also water-cooled (like almost all modern engines) and like all modern engines, it was a highly complex piece of machinery beyond the skill set (and tool set) of the average Do-it-Yourselfer. This meant that when the car needed work, a trip to the dealer was all but inevitable. With the old car - powered by a 1930s-era air-cooled and flat four with a single one-barrel carburetor, single fan belt, no radiator or water pump and a screen for an oil filter that you removed by turning out a single easy-to-reach bolt on the bottom of the engine case - virtually all normal maintenance could be done in the driveway by any reasonably handy person with a few basic tools. This kept ownership costs low, which was always a key reason why people loved the old car so much.

Sure, it was slow and it leaked carbon monoxide into the passenger compartment (and water, when it rained). It was rust-prone and it often needed a turn of the screwdriver here or a trip to the NAPA store there. But it almost never cost you real money and while little troubles did pop up, they could usually be fixed - by you - in the space of 10 or 15 minutes. This was empowering, even if it was a minor hassle at the time.

Few things are more defeating in this life than being stuck by the side of the road with a dead car and no clue what to do as you wait helplessly for someone who does.

A final problem for the New Beetle was that in a market that craves change, the car was very hard if not impossible to change without it becoming something else entirely. The old Beetle was more or less the same for decades and no one minded because in those days, people were content with a slower pace and satisfied with the familiar and what did the job well enough.

That won't sell today. The life-cycle of a modern car is maybe four years before the market demands a major update, which amounts to a complete re-styling and re-engineering. Not even Jaguars are safe from the march of time (and trendiness).

So when after three or four years on the market the New Beetle was still the same car it was at the beginning, people began to lose interest. After seven or eight years, it had become yesterday's news, old hat - and no longer anything special or even especially interesting. And since it lacked the old car's virtues to sell it, sales began to collapse.

VW did make an attempt to inject some of the old car's parsimony into the New by offering an advanced turbo-diesel engine. The problem was it cost a lot (close to $20k, new) which sort of defeated the whole purpose.

There was also a turbocharged sport version, but that was a bad fit. A fast Beetle is a lot like a 4WD Corvette.

The New Beetle never quite found its niche, or developed one. It was never inexpensive, or easier to own than any other modern FWD car. Often, it was harder - due to reliability and quality control problems. Cuteness and retro styling only take you so far.

Over the years, I've owned several of the original Beetles, including a '73 Super Beetle. I never paid more than $1,500 for any of them and this was as recently as the early 1990s. They were ideal college cars/first-time-job cars - as old Beetles have always been, since before I was even born. The rugged little machine, conceived in the 1930s, survived the war, flowered along with Flower Power in the '60s, grooved into the '70s and even though the federal government legislated it out of existence (in the US, at least) after 1979 (due to emissions and safety regulations) it continued to be built right up to 2002 in Mexico - a production run that has never been equaled and probably never will be.

Only one car has sold more total units (the Toyota Corolla) and the comparison's not really fair because the Corolla has had the benefit of an industrialized/westernized world market to play in while the VW had to slog through a cratered Germany/Western Europe after WWII and try to compete in a market (the US, 1950s and '60s) that laughed at small cars with four-cylinder engines.

In comparison, the New Beetle's record is pitiful. Twelve years. The Thousand Year Reich lasted about as long as that. It is a blip on the screen relative to the lifetime-long run (almost 70 years, from say 1936 through 2002) of the old car - which would probably still be in production today if the government would allow it. Buyer demand never slackened; it was just that the fragile (1,600 pound) shell could not comply with modern crash-test demands and the ancient air-cooled engine wouldn't pass smog check.

Ultimately, what sealed the doom of the New Beetle was that it was fundamentally fraudulent, It may have looked like the old car, but in every key category that made the old model so appealing, the new car was anything but. It was in fact just another expensive, complex, can't-work-on-it-yourself front-wheel-drive not-so-economical "economy" car draped in the sort-of sheetmetal of the real deal.

It won't be missed much, I suspect. But the old Beetle will never be forgotten.

Is Your Old Car a Classic - or Just a Used Car?

Is Your Old Car a Classic - or Just a Used Car?

Is that nicely preserved '88 Buick in your garage a "classic " - or just another old car? The answer depends on who you ask.

Most states won't issue a "classic" (or "antique") vehicle license plate and registration until a vehicle is at least 21 years old. Some old car clubs (such as the Antique Automobile Club of America) consider the passage of 25-30 years the absolute minimum before a car transitions from being an old car to an antique.

The slightly snootier Classic Car Club of America goes even further. This group, which claims to have been the first to use the term "classic car," refuses to acknowledge or accept any car built after the year 1948 - when mass-produced welded and stamped panels began to replace the more time-intensive, bolt-on/partial (or fully) hand-built processes that had been the norm previously.

CCCA regards only the coach-built cars of the 1920s and '30s - V-16 Cadillacs, Bugattis, Auburns, Duesenbergs, Cords, etc. - as worthy, although an occasional exception is made for low-production, historically significant machines built later.

Here's chapter and verse:

"A CCCA Classic is a 'fine' or 'distinctive' automobile, either American or foreign built, produced between 1925 and 1948. Generally, a Classic was high-priced when new and was built in limited quantities. Other factors, including engine displacement, custom coachwork and luxury accessories, such as power brakes, power clutch, and 'one-shot' or automatic lubrication systems, help determine whether a car is considered to be a Classic."

Of course, this rather restrictive definition is far from accepted by all old car hobbyists - most of whom will never have the wherewithal to afford a Duesenburg SJ or Auburn boat-tail speedster.

Arguably, it's not just a matter of the lowing masses (and lowing, mass-produced vehicles) vs. the elite (and elite, low-production, hand-built vehicles) that defines a "classic" car.

It's about a car having survived its era; and more precisely - by dint of having survived, of its providing us with a three dimensional piece of history via which we can see, touch, hear and experience the past.

Oodles more '55 Chevys were built than '36 Cord 810s. But both are time capsules, each in their own way. The Cord tells us one story, the Chevy another. But both are certainly "classic" - in the sense that we shall not see their like ever again in a new car showroom.

When you do a walk-around of either at a vintage car show, you see things that remind you (or if you were too young, reveal to you) bits and pieces of a long-gone era - of technology and styling and forgotten "firsts" that in many instances were revolutionary when these cars were new.

For example, the Cord's highly unusual (for 1936) front-wheel-drive layout - or the '55 Chevy's compact, high-powered "small block" OHV V-8, versions of which are still in production 60 years later. We see shapes and details etched into the dim recollections of our childhood brought back to life again; faded photographs from a time before our own resurrected in living steel, glass and rubber. The raspberry rip of a Flathead Ford; the burbling staccato of a 16-cylinder Caddy... .

It's a thrilling experience to see (and hear) these machines. And to marvel and remember.

Old cars also bring context and focus, helping us to understand the ongoing evolution of automobiles: Bias-plys to high-speed radials; gravity-feed and carburetors to direct injection. This process does require the passage of time, however.

Each decade that flows by can be likened to a gold prospector's pan being shifted; the gravel washes away, the murky waters finally clear - leaving a few precious nuggets ... if the prospector is fortunate enough.

As an example of this, consider the now hugely desirable and much-sought-after muscle cars of the mid-late 1960s and early '70s. In their day, they were mostly mass-produced, cheap - and as expendable as an empty beer can. It was not so long ago that one could buy used Shelby GT350 Mustangs, SS Chevelles and big-block Mopars for the cost of a worn-out Corolla today.

It took a quarter-century for an awareness of the significance of these brash and fearsome cars to percolate; for the realization that they represented a unique era in automotive history, never to be repeated, to dawn.

By this time, the few that survived had become something very special indeed.

In the same way, 10 or 20 years from now, a well-preserved '86 Tune Port Injected IROC-Z Camaro may well be morph from redneck lawn sculpture to high-dollar icon of the Reagan Years. Its design and technology will seem quaint - relics of a bygone time. We'll look, we'll reminisce ... and we'll be glad to see one again after all these years.

This process is ongoing - despite the snorts of the CCCA that nothing worth mentioning has happened since 1948.

Brands have come and gone (AMC, Studebaker; Oldsmobile and Pontiac - even Yugo). Makes and models that were once as common as pull-top soda cans have disappeared as completely as the passenger pigeon.

When was the last time you saw a road-worthy Honda CRX? Or Subaru Brat?

Such cars, it is true, may never attain the rarified status of the pre-war coach-builts - or even the muscle cars of the 1960s. But that does not mean the few roadworthy or restorable examples still around aren't interesting to see - or that they have nothing to tell us about their times.

Or worth hanging onto. And that, ultimately, is what a "classic" car is all about.