There is a guy with a glh in my area with 23 miles on it. He is asking the world for it.
There is a guy with a glh in my area with 23 miles on it. He is asking the world for it.
You can still buy a decent GMT 400 shortbox truck for 4 figure money, and a 454 build again for 4 figure money, and you'd end up with a hotter engine and something you could actually enjoy driving.
I love these trucks, but they money they ask is just stupefying. It was a TBI 454- it made like 250 HP. Honestly you could build a mouse motor to make that kind of power- and you'd lift 200 pounds off the nose of the truck.
My wife had one of those 454 shortbed trucks about 5 years before I met her. Same color as that one and everything.
She made the mistake of letting someone else drive it and they took it off road, too fast at a corner and up a tree. Burned her leg on the exhaust pipe climbing out of the wreck, still has a scar. Totally do not get having a groovy ride and not driving it. 
Locally here there was a CL ad for a time capsule (10k miles or so) 88 Pontiac Grand Am. He wanted $14,400. For an iron duke, 110 hp FWD economy car.
I was tempted to call and offer $1440.
Streetwiseguy said:That would be right about the time that muscle cars started to become stupid money, and a 454SS pickup truck is the closest thing to a limited edition collectible muscle car that was readily available at the time. Maybe. Or not.
And those 454SS trucks were only 235 hp. Leftover TBI wheezers.
This happens every decade. Those 1-2% of perfect cars that were mothballed or driven seldom come up for sale first and everyone scoffs when they go for big money. The savvy collector realizes that cars are only original once, and paying more for a nice car, assuming you can, is way cheaper and easier.
We were shocked when we saw the first perfect, low mileage Miata show up and sell on BAT for $10,000-12,000. As a guy who has restored several Miatas, that now looks like a deal. This GTI I just finished was rough around the edges and had been sitting for ten years. Still with original paint and a perfect interior, it was easy to bring it back. Jump on these cars when you can.
Don't buy Lotus Elans and Elvas that are broken in half. Only an idiot would do that.
This thread makes me happy I didn't mothball my 96 Impala SS.
I Hunter-S-Thompson'ed the heck outta that thing.
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!” -Hunter S Thompson
Simple economics tells us that, almost without exception, those cars we think will be collectible won’t be. They’re bought up new, put away and kept, and hence the supply stays up to where at any point in time it matches the demand. It’s the ones nobody sees coming-that nobody ever thinks about that will be super collectible. Nobody saw the muscle car craze coming. You almost couldn’t give them away in the late ‘70’s. Nobody saw the 911 craze. Non turbos were dime a dozen even in the oughts. Cadillac Eldo convertibles? Corvette pace cars? All bought up and put away. What are they worth? About what they were when they went into storage.
In reply to A 401 CJ :
I think sometimes you can be "smart money". E.g., the Chevy SS - last of a generation! Stick! Or, like, any wagon with power and a stick.
In reply to Tim Suddard :
I don't think anybody's saying these preserved cars aren't worth the money. Quite the opposite I'm trying to say that they were a poor use of the original owners money and the current buyers are reaping the benefit. They were bad investments. Undriven they obviously weren't enjoyed as cars so ...
A 401 CJ said:Simple economics tells us that, almost without exception, those cars we think will be collectible won’t be. They’re bought up new, put away and kept, and hence the supply stays up to where at any point in time it matches the demand. It’s the ones nobody sees coming-that nobody ever thinks about that will be super collectible. Nobody saw the muscle car craze coming. You almost couldn’t give them away in the late ‘70’s. Nobody saw the 911 craze. Non turbos were dime a dozen even in the oughts. Cadillac Eldo convertibles? Corvette pace cars? All bought up and put away. What are they worth? About what they were when they went into storage.
Video game people are always trying to set things aside to get "rich" later. That never works. The video games that end up being worth money are ones that people didn't even know existed when they came out and knew nothing about until years, even decades later. Examples include Stadium Events on the NES, Air Raid on 2600 and NCAA College Basketball 2K3 on GameCube. All those people who found out by reading the magazines that Tengen Tetris on NES got pulled from the shelves in 1990 and stashed them away at the time saw their $50 investment sit at $50 for 30 years since everyone knew it happened and did the same thing.
It's the same phenomenon that made nice Buick GNs be priced at exactly $16,500 from 1995 to 2015 or so.
Some of them sit because it was planned, but sometimes life just happens. We’ve had 2 experiences in my family like this:
My dad’s first car was a 1963 Bel Air. He got it in 1970 from his grandpa. It had 1,800 miles on it. Not the same extreme that we see here, but it was essentially a brand new car.
Similarly, we just bought a small beach boat. 14’ aluminum with a 9hp engine. Nothing special, but we got it at an estate sale. The gas tanks have never seen gas. The tires on the trailer still had the little whisker nubs on them, with a build date of 2006 on them. Guy got old and sick and couldn’t use it, then the estate took a few years to settle. Not quite the same thing, but you can see how it happens.
The intentionally-saved-at-26-miles thing seems a bit weird to me. Same for buying a new car for the investment. I prefer my parents take: buy what you like and take care of it, and just keep it. They wound up with a couple (now) aging sports cars they bought new, with stupidly low miles in like new shape. But they still got to drive them for the 30 years since they got them. Dont drive them in the winter or when the weather is crummy, drive some boring car for dreary day to day activities, and the miles wont add up on the fun car. But still drive them.
The type of car, miles, and current market values are totally irrelevant, because they arent for sale. My mom would probably pull quite a profit relative to the new price of her supra judging by current trends, whereas my dad wouldnt quite make back what he paid for his mustang. Irrelevant, neither are for sale. I could turn a profit off what I paid for my relatively low mile 323 gtx, but I dont care, its not for sale. The things could go up to $50k (not gonna happen) and it's still not for sale.
Caveat here being they arent stored in a field, rotting into the earth based on some delusion they will be worth a fortune someday. The value is in driving them, and they all currently run and are stored inside, as it is road salt season.
My sister recently sold her 2005 Mustang with less than 1200 miles on it for stupid money, but it's still just an '05 Mustang. At least when she did drive it she drove it like Mario Andretti.
drock25too said:My sister recently sold her 2005 Mustang with less than 1200 miles on it for stupid money, but it's still just an '05 Mustang. At least when she did drive it she drove it like Mario Andretti.
And those 3V mustangs are terrible imo
In reply to ChrisLS8 :
but they just look so good tho
In reply to dculberson :
I used to always try to keep miles off any new car I bought and then someone made me realize that if I put hundreds of thousands of miles on something, that I got way more out of it, than if I had low miles on it. So you are correct. Sometimes circumstance dictate these cars stay low mileage. I think the biggest reason is the original owner passes away and family doesn't know what to do with the car afterwards.
Or maybe, just maybe, the guy had quite a few cars they enjoyed, and that's why the miles are artificially low.
Maybe.
Appleseed said:Or maybe, just maybe, the guy had quite a few cars they enjoyed, and that's why the miles are artificially low.
Maybe.
Nah, I'm going with "saw what was starting to happen to time capsule Hemi Mopars that got bought with military money before shipping off to Vietnam and then Johnny didn't come back home" plus "second gas crunch had people thinking performance cars were over". GM just downsized their entire lineup, Ford mostly did too, Chrysler had to scrap all big block tooling as a condition of a bailout, etc.
There was some foreign indie film that came out in '77 where they kept talking about "the last of the V8s", for an idea of the zeitgeist. Buncha guys hotrodding through the desert.
I prefer to take the "not my pig, not my farm" approach.
Yes I'm absolutely on team drive your car, but people enjoy things in different ways. My parents owned a boat and paid rent in a slip for years, and rarely if ever took the boat out. They just cleaned it, and sat on it, and watched other boats drive by, like a floating bench. But that was their enjoyment.
People pay stupid money for all kinds of things to ornament their homes like artwork, signed sports memorabilia, etc. Sometimes the enjoyment is just looking at it, or possessing it. Opening the garage and knowing it's there may bring joy to the owner. Who am I to judge?
Yes it's a terrible investment 99 times out of 100, but so is almost anything to do with cars. They still supported the automakers decision to build it, another unit got moved, and we're able to enjoy viewing it today.
Appleseed said:Or maybe, just maybe, the guy had quite a few cars they enjoyed, and that's why the miles are artificially low.
Maybe.
Sure, if it's a few thousand miles. But 26 miles? Nah.
In reply to 06HHR :
How much of a time capsule are we talking about? I'm still stumbling on very low mileage Jaguars from the 1980 and up to 1996 ( the last year of the XJS ) 30-40,000 miles is common.
They were someone's last car and treated with great care by the owner. A long time Jaguar friend who recently passed away, His wife contacted me to help her sell it.
It was the "right" one 1993 with 31,000 miles 6.0 V12 convertible dark red with tan interior. A fresh battery, oil change, and detailing. 5 phone calls later it was sold locally for $32,000
He'd been wanting that particular car sine the original owner brought it to the club meeting
In reply to frenchyd :
Low miles is one thing, little old ladies buy new cars everyday to drive back and forth to the grocery store. That i get, but 26 miles is something else entirely, that's a car that was bought to be a museum piece (or investment) and driven as little as possible. Even if I had the money to do it, it just doesn't make any sense to me unless, there is only one that will ever be made, like that V8 Aston Martin Cygnet, and i'd still drive it on Sunday.
In reply to Tim Suddard :
I'm sorry I have to disagree. My 1958 Blackjack Special cost me $300 delivered in 1975. It was little more than a scabby body and a rusty hulk of an unusable frame.
I straightened out the scabby body and used it as a mold to make a new one. Then I took the frame that Jack Baker had tried to lighten by cutting triangle shapes in it (like a bridge truss ) in the side And drilling Big diameter holes in the top and bottom of the frame rails.
I built an entirely new frame patterned after that same design. Minus the "lightening"
Went shopping for suspension and missing pieces, finally repowering it with the engine from a rusty Mk10 sedan. ( same as an XKE except the intake manifold goes down slightly instead of up).
A year later I was racing that recreation in every major vintage race in the country.
Decades of racing later selling it at the absolute bottom of the 2008 recession kept me from losing my home. And I still showed a modest profit even with all the cost of all those races calculated in.
The point is the history of a car is the value. Take a race winning Ferrari GTO and roll it into a crumbled ball. A tool room copy of that same car might cost you 3-400,000. But with the serial number off that race winning car will make it worth 10's of millions.
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