If you bought a Corvair, and drove it, you’d be lucky to be alive today.
Good point. There’s a tradition in many lower income neighborhoods of the US of what I sometimes call the “Ghetto Cadillac”. These are typically older American luxury sedans from maybe 15-30 years ago. Old enough to not be in great demand, recent enough to be reasonably serviceable, but not old enough to be collectible. Cadillac DeVilles, Buick LeSabres, Lincoln Town Cars, Mercury Grand Marquises, etc. They were quite expensive when new, but now go for almost nothing. They’re cheaper to repair than older BMW’s or Mercedes because under the hood they were pretty much ordinary Chevys and Fords. But they are still a status symbol, because they are, duh, Luxury Cars!
The Ferrari was followed by the 458 though, a better car in every way. Much like how the 430 was better than the 360. The GT was a limited edition car from the start with no plans for a new model or bodystyle to replace it. That’s what usually drops the value of a car. Nobody wants the old bodystyle when a new one comes out.
The 03-04 SVT Cobras haven’t appreciated, but a clean low mileage example can still get $20-25k. It was the last SVT Cobra made, and people still want it. The GT500 has the snakes on the fenders, but it’s not a Cobra.
Good point. Of course, once Ford realized they had a hit on their hands they could have found a way to produce a second generation GT at lower cost and higher volume. Thus are the risks of the collector car market. It’s also likely that the F430 will rebound someday, as have the early water cooled 911s, but it’s unlikely that it will ever have the same cachet.
But in '03 could anyone have predicted that the Terminator would be highly valued today? The SN95 Cobra isn’t worth a whole lot today, the Mach 1 is just another New Edge, and the SVT Focus is just a Focus. The SVT Cobra is a standout among Ford special edition cars from that era.
Collectors were snatching up the Bullitt edition Mustangs in '05, and the GT-H Shelby Mustangs. And then Ford produced a gazillion special edition S197s and destroyed the collector market. I’d say anyone who bought an '04 Cobra hoping to strike it rich in 50 years may have just gotten lucky; I don’t think their powers of prediction were any better than someone who bought an '06 GT-350 for the same reason. It’s a toss of the dice.
If anyone knows of a VW Corrado VR6 that’s been stored in a hermetically sealed vault for 20 years, I am ready to buy.
Not hermetically sealed, butseveral of these had ~30k miles:
Bookmark that, check frequently, buy a super clean 22 year old car for under 10 grand.
Pssst… I think you mean GT 500 . The GT 350 was an aftermarket stripe kit.
(sorry, but being a Ford guy, you understand)
Didn’t Ford make A Shelby GT that wasn’t a GT 500 though?
On wiki review, I guess it was just called the Shelby GT, minus the 350. The civilian version of the GT-H, so a Mustang GT with some FRPP bolt-ons and cosmetic doodads. Obviously not as modified as the Terminator Cobras or the GT500, but the point remains, it was a limited edition mustang with a Shelby nameplate that received a lot of hoopla in 2006, and now I don’t hear about them anymore.