Let’s say you come into quite a bit of money a young age. As one investment strategy you decide to buy today what you think will be very collectible cars in the future. You want to store them so they will look as good as possible at the end of 30 years. You want to use the best methods possible to do this within reasonable cost limits. You can’t go insane regarding the initial or ongoing expense of doing this because the cars have to be sold in the future and make a profit.
What is the best practices way to go about doing this if you want the best result at the end of 30 years? Assume the cars are all more or less brand spanking new.
There’s no storage technique that will keep a car in perfect, or even drivable condition for 30 years without attention. It should be kept in a climate-controlled garage, driven a small amount every few months with all systems fully exercised, and maintained on a reasonable schedule. Attention to cosmetic care should be paramount, including “exercising” or flexing all cloth and leather and keeping dirt out of everything. Good polish and wax job every couple of years.
Anything less will simply result in a 30yo collectible with excellent restoration prospects. As it is, most soft parts will likely need to be replaced before it’s truly road-safe at that age - tires, brake lines, seat belts. Battery and fluids, too.
If you don’t drive them periodically, the best result after 30 years isn’t going to be pretty.
Rubber seals are going to dry out. Water from the atmosphere will condense and will get into all sorts of things, including the engine oil. All kinds of stuff is going to rust. Even the insides of the cylinders will rust. The gasoline in the car will go bad and will cause varnish issues. If you drain all of the gasoline to avoid this, the tank will rust and the seals will dry out and fail. If you leave the battery connected, it will go dead in a month or so and will chemically self destruct. If you disconnect the battery, it will slowly self-discharge over 30 years, and again will end up chemically self-destructing. You can at least attach a battery tender and keep the battery charged and healthy. The rotors are going to rust. The moving bits in the brake systems are going to rust. If you leave the car flat on the ground, the tires will develop huge flat spots. If you jack the car up, you can avoid the flat spots, but the rubber will still dry rot over 30 years.
You can avoid a lot of these problems by driving the cars every few weeks, making sure that you drive them long enough that they completely warm up so that any water in the engine oil and in the exhaust (water is one of the combustion by-products and also enters the car all over the place just from condensation out of the air) will flash into steam and will be ejected from the vehicle. People who only drive their cars for a couple of miles once a week and don’t run them up to their full operating temperature usually end up having the exhaust system rust out and fall off of the car in a surprisingly short amount of time.
It’s a bit of a challenge to get a car to start after it’s been sitting for 2 or 3 years (I’ve done it a couple of times). Getting one to kick over after it’s been sitting for 30 is going to be brutal.
Amateur Barbarian’s suggestion of keeping the car clean and waxed is very important as well. For example, bird poop is acidic, and will eat the paint away if it is left on the car. A lot of other things will permanently stain the paint if left in place for a couple of decades.
An alternative investment strategy would be to take that money and invest it in stocks, say an S&P index-linked fund. And in many cases, that would be a better investment.
Actually, a friend of mine did buy a bunch of collectable cars at least partially as an investment. He drives them and does a lot of work maintaining them, though.
One other data point. I own a kit car which is basically a 1960 Beetle that was converted to look like a 1929 Mercedes. This sat in a garage in New Jersey for 20 years before I got it. I had to replace the battery, change the oil, replace the ignition coil, replace some of the fuel line, and fix a rusty electrical ground at one point. Other than that though, the thing fired right up. The exhaust is pretty well rotted out on it at the moment.
Keep in mind though that this thing is basically an old Beetle, which was an exercise in minimalism. If it wasn’t 100 percent necessary to make the car go down the road, the Beetle didn’t have it. There’s a lot to be said for that kind of rugged simplicity.
Most cars aren’t that simple and are a lot less likely to fire up without some major repair effort after sitting that long.
So what do car museums and rich guys (e.g., Jay Leno, Ralph Lauren, Jerry Seinfeld) do with their car collections? Are they starting these cars on a regular schedule? Or do they just remove the fluids and treat the cars as non-drivable?
This is close to what is actually done by many collectors. Dry nitrogen is fine rather than a noble gas. Much easier to find too. Many will use a positive pressure large plastic bag.
There are collectors who own brand new insanely rare collectable cars. Think Ferrari limited edition anniversary models, prototypes, one off Zagato specials from Ferrari, Aston Martin etc. These guys tend not to view them as investments. The sort of money they have involves buying entire companies or small nations as investments. They just collect as part of the whole conspicuous consumption thing.
But, no matter what some things you can’t stop degrading. Plastics will outgas and harden. The outgassing plasticisers will coat other things. However excluding oxygen will prevent a large part of the degradation, things like leather oils polymerising, rubber oxidising. Even paint oxidising.
One thing I’ve noticed watching Antiques Roadshow is that the best pieces are generally high quality to begin with, a master’s work. For this car investment, you’ll want to begin with a high-end rig; Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini; limited editions, you want rarity in 30 years. Once in hand, tear the thing down, soak all the metal pieces in motor oil, store in Argon. Take careful measurement of all the pieces that won’t keep and in 30 years have them custom made.
<sidetrack> Let’s assume $1,000,000 invested, will this return $15,000,000 in 30 years? There’s risk here, will you have the money in 30 years to put the thing back together? Who inherits it if the unfortunate happens? Will it even sell in 30 years? All questions to answer. </sidetrack>
I agree that it would be very difficult to keep a car in near showroom shape for 30 years and have it stay mechanically sound, let alone near showroom quality. Your would probably need to keep it on display in a literal automotive showroom for that and it would still require semi-frequent maintenance.
However, sometimes you find some oddities. There is an article in a recent issue of Autoweek (September 19, 2016) about a man that inherited a very rare 1916 Oakland Model 50 from his family in the 1980’s, put it in a protective crate for two decades and finally decided to do something with it a couple of years ago. The car had never left the state of North Dakota since it was bought and had been completely neglected (but somewhat protected in barns and then the crate) for more than 50 years.
He opted to just get it running rather than restore it because it was in generally remarkable shape given its 100 year old age. The paint was mostly gone but everything else was there. To everyone’s surprise, a new battery showed that all of the lights still worked and the starter even turned over but you can’t just put some gas in it and drive away in a car that old. Still, it only took three weeks for a specialty mechanic to clean it up, replace the tires, rebuild the carburetor and replace the dry-rotted components. Other than that, the car is remarkably original down to the leather seats and even the fabric top. It is so unusual and original that it started winning historical preservation awards at major car shows right away and is valued at somewhere between $200,000 and $300,000. That isn’t bad for a very used car that cost less than $2000 to begin with even adjusting for inflation.
I think it is beautiful but I am not sure most people want to wait that long to recoup their investment.
Of the three of the guys mentioned, Leno and Seinfeld have a staff of mechanics caring for and driving the cars on a schedule - necessary because both of them drive the cars in their collection, and there’s no rhyme or reason to it.
Lauren uses the museum model for his cars, as he doesn’t drive them much - he has a staff that cares for them, but only a portion are kept in drivable condition for taking to car shows or for loan to museums (his collection is modeled after a museum with exhibits and preservationists, but he doesn’t show his cars himself, and where they’re kept is a secret).
The OP stated that he wanted to do this on the cheap, but what if he added a few bucks and constructed an air tight storage facility, put the cars in, extracted the oxygen and flooded the area with an inert gas, such as argon (of course, he would have to take care that the facility remained sealed and new argon was added as required, so add a few more bucks). Would that improve the cars ability to remain newish for 30 years?
Any components made of rubber will be trash after several years exposure to ozone and atmospheric pollution, tires, fuel hose, radiator hose, belts, window trim and sound deadeners and other bits. Gasoline will sour and turn to varnish. Vermin will try to move in and set up shop inside the exhaust all the way to the manifolds, making nests in seat material, pissing on everything, chewing wiring harness ($$$) etc.
If you find a secure storage area a lot of this can be avoided, but not all of it.