Dans Papers - June 8, 2007 - Classic Cars with Bob Gelber

One of the most common e-mails I receive asks the question, "What current cars do you think will become classics in the future?" The simple answer is that highly desirable car today will be coveted in the future. The more complex answer is that the previous sentence is not always true.

Nobody wanted the Tucker Motor Car when it was introduced. The BMW 507 sold poorly when it was on the market. No one in America wanted a 1950 Volkswagen Bug or a 356 Porsche of the same era. Recently at the Barret-Jackson Car Auction I saw a 1960s Dodge Super Bee bid to $60,000. Besides its silly name, this car was always a joke among car enthusiasts. Yet, who among us wouldn't want any of the above cars, with perhaps the exception of the Super Bee, in our garage? The point I'm making about car collecting and values is that the rules are the same as they were in the movie Fight Club. If you remember, the first rule of Fight Club was that you do not talk about Fight Club.

There are some cars that are instant collector cars - Ferraris, Porsches, Corvettes, certain Mercedes and Bentleys. These high-priced vehicles have always had a wish list following and always will. Twenty to thirty years from now, the kids who have pictures of them hanging on their bedroom walls will have the purchasing power to buy their childhood dream as a collector car. These types of vehicles are the blue chips of current production cars. Buy one, keep it maintained, waxed, rust free and garaged for decades and the odds are that you'll make money on it.

However, and it's a big however, do you really want to keep a car that long? How many people have enough garage space to house the same old car for that period of time? Like most car enthusiasts, I sold my Ferrari, Porsches and Fords many years ago, usually because I tired of them and wanted another car. I was astounded to learn that my old Porsche racecar sold for $1 million a decade after I sold it for a paltry $10,000. Why didn't I keep the Porsche 550 racer, the Ferrari and the Ford Woodies? Like most older car collectors say today about the current value of collector cars, "If we only knew."

The days of the $3,000 1955 Mercedes Gullwing and the $500 1940 Ford coupe are gone, but there are interesting cars currently in production that should make for an enjoyable investment at a reasonable price. The car that immediately comes to mind is the Mazda Miata. This car is solely responsible for the rebirth of the low-priced sports car. Like the highly desirable British collector classics such as the 1955 MG-A or the early Austin Healy 100, the Miata will someday have a strong collector following. An added bonus with the Miata is that the car is virtually bullet proof from a mechanical standpoint. I would put my money on the original first series Miata. Like a 1955 356A Porsche, it's the first series and the purest looking of the marque. Speaking of Porsches, the mid 1990s Porsche 993s were the last models to have an air-cooled rear engine. I see their prices already rising. A Porsche will cost you considerably more than a Miata, but you will see a bigger return on your investment. A good 1990 Miata will cost under $10,000 while a good Porsche 993 can be found for under $40,000. By "good" I mean an all-original car with proven low mileage.

There are a lot of sleepers out there. The Acura NSX is one of them. A truly excellent landmark car for the Japanese, its only weakness is that it has always competed with the Italian and German sports cars for dominance. The same can be said for the Z cars from Nissan, or the Mazda RX-7 and the excellent but unappreciated Toyota MR-2. Japanese sports cars have never gained the street credit that the European cars have achieved.

Speaking of credentials, there are a slew of high performance Japanese cars that are making waves - the Subaru WRX, Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution, Mazdaspeed four-door sedans and the screaming Honda Civic SI. My guess is that in the future these will be highly desirable collector cars appealing to an entirely different kind of car enthusiast than we have in the marketplace today. Other long shots are the current Mini and Volkswagen GTI. Like I said earlier, if you want 'em today, you'll want them three decades from now. Forget about those SUVs. In the future, gasoline will be so expensive, no one would want a collector SUV. A "collector SUV," now there's an oxymoron.

Bob Gelber, an automotive journalist living in the Hamptons, appears regularly on television as an automotive expert. You can email him at bobgelber@aol.com