The Classics Are Changing
Why the cars we once restored are losing ground to the cars we once drove, and why the restomod may be the future
The classic car market is changing. In some parts of it, rather dramatically.
When I was younger, the cars which eventually became classics were obvious enough. MGBs, Triumphs, Healeys, E-Types and the like. They started life as desirable cars, became slightly tatty second-hand cars, descended for a while into the hands of people armed with fibreglass, Isopon and very little judgement, and eventually emerged at the other end as Classics. Once the word acquired a capital C, prices went up.
For years an MGB in really good condition could fetch £10,000 or £12,000. A TR6 restoration project which looked as though it had spent twenty years at the bottom of the Bristol Channel could still command quite serious money because, when finished, the car was worth enough to justify restoring it.
That calculation is becoming rather less convincing. You can now find TR6 restoration projects below £5,000. Ordinary MGBs aren’t making anything like the money they once did. And there’s a fairly obvious reason.
The people who wanted them are dying. There isn’t really a tactful way of putting that, so I shan’t bother trying.
The chap who desperately wanted an MGB when he was 21 in 1968 is now approaching 80. If he actually bought one then, he may now be at the stage where getting into it requires planning permission and getting out requires assistance. His children don’t necessarily want it.
They may think Dad’s MGB is rather nice. They may even have fond memories of sitting in the back of an MGB GT with their knees somewhere near their ears. But it wasn’t the car they had pinned to the bedroom wall. Their cars were XR3is, Sierra Cosworths, Golf GTIs, Peugeot 205 GTIs and BMWs, and, sure enough, those are becoming the valuable classics.
This is slightly disconcerting for those of us who still regard an XR3i as a fairly recent Ford Escort. The Cosworth is an even better example. Once upon a time it was the car most likely to be seen disappearing rapidly from a filling station accompanied by four policemen and somebody else’s number plates. Now collectors discuss originality, provenance and matching numbers while peering solemnly into the engine bay. Time does strange things.
There are exceptions to all this. E-Types remain valuable, although even they have softened. Mercedes Pagodas still attract serious money. Aston Martins inhabit another universe altogether, partly because scarcity, international demand and James Bond have relieved them of the need to depend upon somebody remembering one outside the Dog and Duck in 1967.
But the ordinary British sports car market is plainly changing, which brings us to another development I find rather more interesting: the restomod.
Twenty years ago, modifying a decent GT6 was almost an act of vandalism. Originality mattered. Correct carburettors mattered. Correct wheels mattered. Somewhere, presumably, there was a chap who knew what sort of washer Triumph fitted to the nearside rear shock absorber in February 1969 and became quite distressed if you used the wrong one.
That made sense while originality also meant value. It makes rather less sense if you can spend £25,000 restoring a car which is worth £15,000 when you’ve finished.
Hence my GT6. It is getting a Mazda MX-5 engine, Mazda rear suspension and a Garrett turbocharger, at which point the originality department may need a lie down.
I am not particularly interested in recreating every engineering decision Triumph made nearly sixty years ago. Some of them were excellent. Michelotti’s body certainly was. Some of the others were dictated by what Triumph happened to have lying around.
That was how British motor manufacturers worked. If somebody found a suitable component in a parts bin in Coventry, there was a fair chance it would shortly appear on six completely unrelated cars.
The GT6 will therefore retain the thing which really matters, which is that gorgeous shape. But underneath it will have a modern, reliable engine, a five-speed gearbox, properly sorted independent rear suspension and a Garrett turbo to provide rather more enthusiasm than Standard-Triumph ever intended.
In other words, it should still look like a GT6. It just won’t accelerate like one.
I don’t see that as destroying a classic. I see it as making the thing usable, and rather more entertaining. And I suspect that is where a significant part of the old-car world is going.
There will always be cars which should remain original. A genuinely exceptional survivor ought to be preserved. A historically important car shouldn’t be hacked about merely because somebody has discovered an angle grinder.
But most MGBs, Triumphs and similar cars aren’t museum pieces. They’ve spent sixty years being repaired, repainted, welded, rebuilt and occasionally attacked by previous owners who thought a walnut dashboard and eight extra gauges constituted engineering. They’ve already had lives.
Perhaps the future isn’t endless concours restoration at all. Perhaps it is taking the best bits of an old car and quietly removing the bits which weren’t terribly good even when they were new. Which, thinking about it, isn’t far removed from what we’ve always done with motorcycles.
The classic vehicle market isn’t dying. It is changing generations, and the next generation appears to be rather more interested in driving the things than worshipping the hose clips.