The problem is that pre owned cars in good condition and without.all this nonsense are going to become classics due to demand outstripping supply.
That’s exactly the debate right now, here. It’s going to be manic. 10 year old petrol/diesel cars going for more than original new price.
And that.will happen quite quickly as many classic car owners will testify (they do have skin in the game of pushing prices up).
A used Aston Martin DB4 GT Zagato would have cost you between £3000 and £6000 back in 1970. To buy that same car now will cost you in the region of £2 million to £3million.
That’s a more specialist thing. AFAIK the reason one of those might cost 2M is because of extensive restoration, ground up. A 1970 Aston would otherwise be a pile of rust on the floor, unless it was kept in a bag filled with nitrogen 
People spend 6 figures just to restore an old Merc. @Stickandrudderman will be able to do all about that In fact a current new Aston will be a pile of rust long before my 2012 VW will be, but that’s another story 
Silvaire wrote:
or maybe a refurbishment industry will arise for ‘daily drivers’.
Which is why the authorities offer the scrappage schemes so they can eliminate the long term alternatives and further widen the great divide between rich and poor.
This is a fundamental flaw in the capitalist model: the more sucessful it is, the fewer people can be sucessful.
Sadly Aston lost its way in later years. But even the DB7 and DB9 might well become classics. They can be had reltively cheaply ( comparatively speaking) now but it hasn’t got loads of electronics and could well start to surge.
I think you’ll find that most classic car owners spend a lot of money and/or effort keeping their cars in good condition whether that is a Ferrari or a VW Beetle. Look at the demand now for old VW Camper Vans which are fetching much more than they cost new even in pretty poor condition. The same is to be said for old landrovers. In the USA and Austalia old pick ups are fetching a premium. The reason being that the owners don’t mind getting their hands oily.
Unlikely that an most Astons would be a pile of rust, many models have aluminium body shells.
Different things though.
Very few people want a 10mpg car (old Aston, etc).
Old camper vans are trendy the way that a holiday in Vietnam is trendy – it shows you are a gentle caring America-hating anti-capitalist
Landrovers are crap, with about the worst outright breakage reliability record out there. But a LR covered with Medicines sans Frontiers stickers, and a high level air intake, sends just the right message about you and your values. If I wanted a real offroad I would get a Jap one.
Astons might use ally but the paint still peels off after a year or two (actual case I know).
What will be in strong demand when/if new liquid fuel cars disappear, and lower-end used ones become scarcer due to a scrappage scheme, will be good quality used liquid fuel cars with long lives e.g. VW Honda Toyota.
There are two ways the EV business can go:
It is likely to be country-dependent. The more south you go in Europe, the less interest there is. People are generally poorer, too. Anyway, won’t they get all the old cars from the scrappage scheme??
One of my neighbours left his job a few years ago to fulfil his lifelong dream of restoring classic cars. A few interesting points:
I don’t understand the cult status of the Land Rover. A family friend, Welsh farmer, was a lifelong Land Rover man until he won a Japanese 4×4 in Farmers Weekly. The summary was something like, “it goes everywhere the Landy went, it’s got comfortable seats, aircon, does more than 55mph, and unbelievably hasn’t broken down even once”.
Once you get aircon you start adding complication plus less fuel economy,🙂
Now if you want simple, reliable, economic, good off road capability, and a roof that opens up for air con.with no extea fuel use or complication the Citroën 2CV has it all.🙂
gallois wrote:
My old Citroën DS is now fetching far more than I originally paid for it £1300 and sold for even less. Today for the Maserati version I would have to buy it back at nearer £50,000.
The DS is very desirable and it’s simply a great car. Jay Leno owns one…. I recently also saw a pretty neat CX prestige, which was for sale here for about 20k. It did not last 2 days on the net.
gallois wrote:
Even the Citroën Saxa is a classic to many, although they usually end up being pimped.
My first car was a Visa Club with the pimped CV2 engine (650CC electronic egnition). To this day, that car was the most efficient I’ve ever had. It did somewhere like 4 l/100 km (approximately 70 mpg) at 90 km/h, had loads of space and did a good 120 km/h on the motorway if you wanted it to. They are next to impossible to find today, primarily because they were also very rust prone. Mine drove on in Bulgaria after I could not pass it here until it literally became a Model “Fred Flintstone”.
gallois wrote:
Now if you want simple, reliable, economic, good off road capability, and a roof that opens up for air con.with no extea fuel use or complication the Citroën 2CV has it all.🙂
Exactly. Especcially with the Visa engine (I know some which were converted) the 2 CV still is a cult car. Recently I saw a lovely “Charleston” model exhibited at our Citroen dealer for some 15k CHF. He also had a Diane for sale. And if you really want to spend money on a 2CV then go look for a Mehari. Last one I saw for sale was well in the 50k range.
My wife drives a C3 now, which has a 3 cylinder engine. She goes fueling about once every 3 months, it uses around 4.5 l/100 km (63 Uk mpg).
It cost her about 15k new at the time and she got around 5k for the previous model when she exchanged it.
My own Camry is not anywhere that efficient (V6) but it is a 1997 model and has over 300k km by now. I guess it has done it’s share in saving the planet simply by not being scrapped and not having used much in terms of spare parts since it was born. I bought it about 2003 with 60k km. It has yet to see any serious maintenance action. It will consume about 7-8 l/100 km (35-40 mpg) overland and a bit more in the city. I fill up about once a month.
Of course the main problem for liquid fuel cars is going to be fuel price and availability. If it goes according to some green activists, fuel should be outlawed somewhen next year (or rather in the 2030ties) and will probably continue to rise in price up to then. Never mind the ideas some people appear to have regarding drivers license laws.. Europe may well again be the ones to strip the middle classes of their driving privileges by outpricing and outregulating. Hope those morons are stopped. Otherwise you might end up in the same problem you have with your class 2 medical once you reach 70, let alone 80. Ah yea, the 90 km/h limit for new drivers below 21 will also be highly welcome I reckon?
Diesel is needed for trucks and there is no solution for that, not even remotely. So diesel cars have an assured future.
May vary by country. In the UK there is a long tradition of not doing retrospective legislation, within reason. In other countries they can be much more dictatorial.
Not having aircon takes one back to the 1980s and driving with windows open, earplugs, and not talking to passengers. And windows steamed up in rain. No way.
He spent most of his time for two years working on a Jaguar E type
I know a Merc etc rebuilder who won’t do Jags because the quality is crap so you have to rebuild most of it.
I know a Jag renovator who wont do Mercs for a similar reason. Whether its cars or planes there are always sides and always people saying this or that is crap. Mercedes have never built a car as iconic worldwide as the E type whether you like it or not.
The E is iconic but it is a 1960s Vauxhall Viva build quality. The British car industry made mostly complete sh*t. One drove up any major road and the roadside would be lined with broken down cars, often with smoke coming out from under the bonnet. Same with French and Italian cars… Japs were crap too; I had a Datsun in 1978 and within a year both door mirrors rusted around and dropped off! That is how life was. But the Japs learnt…
So if you are going to economically restore a Jag, you have a lot of work to do starting from a low quality base. That is nothing to do with it being a 1960s icon, which it undeniably is.
