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WE MUST Raise Our Prices

The high prices for Chevy stuff confounds me. A 454 LS-6 70 Chevelle is their high water mark car. And you can replicate it for next to nothing. It just isn't logical. The LS-6 is a neat car, but it's components are not like Hemi parts. You could clone that motor from 4 door parts. Explain the prices to me.
 
its not the clone thats the high water mark it the 4000 actual LS-6'S that bring crazy money and its very easy to see why.. it is a monster, Hemi class.. I think these young guys who buy these new (and great ) muscle cars will be shocked as they depreciate like day old bread , while I enjoy my loud, torquey old muscle car thats like money in the bank .. with care it will be worth what I paid and put into it or more when and if I sell .. its not numbers matching stupid barrett/jackson stuff which is a gamble, just a great muscle car built the way I wanted
 
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1st off the high end European cars ARE affordable when they're 10yrs old (used...like our muscle cars). I am not pointing any fingers on this site but I have owned many cars, many makes and been on many forums...and what I am about to say has been consistent on all of them...while you own and come to the site everyone supports you-when you go to sell-everyone says what's wrong and why it's not worth what someone is asking.
The reality is, as it's been said clearly and logically...if you think your car is worth "X" because people not int the market to buy/sell tell you it's worth double that "X" and your phone isn't ringing, your bids are below your reserve, guess what?
I just sold a fully rotisserie restored Cuda ...did I say "it's a real Cuda so I'm gonna stick a bull$hit number on it? No I know what the market is, I knew what was right and wrong...guess what-priced it realistically and it sold in 7 days...now the OP brought up someone selling their car since late November/early December...I like the car, that being said he still has it and all the rhetoric has been on value...there is one method to get your price if it's high...A) you don't need the money B) you can wait for the 1 guy that's willing to pay your price...or you sell at market value and buy something else that you love the way you used to love the one you're selling ...my .02
 
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I can see all the sides in this discussion that's for sure. My GTX needs everything,,, I'm sure I can buy one done for less.... my E has been my science project going, update update update.... never get all the money out if it. Piss on it, nothings for sale anyway.
 
My theory has been as the boomers die off prices will go down even more. But I'm usually wrong about investments.
 
The value of my car is in the fun I get from driving it and the appreciation from others who see it on the road.
 
its not the clone thats the high water mark it the 4000 actual LS-6'S that bring crazy money and its very easy to see why.. it is a monster, Hemi class.. I think these young guys who buy these new (and great ) muscle cars will be shock as they depreciate like day old bread , while I enjoy my loud, torquey old muscle car thats like money in the bank .. with care it will be worth what I paid and put into it or more when and if I sell .. its not numbers matching stupid barrett/jackson stuff which is a gamble, just a great muscle car built the way I wanted


I LOVE chevelle ss's, especially 70', actually I love all 1970 muscle cars, they were all pretty much better than the year before and obviously better than the year after, lol... (with the exception of the z28, 69 is a tough year to beat), but to me the 70' coronet RT hemi car is the end all to all muscle cars, 1 year only, super rare, fast, comfortable, marketable, and just plain bad ***..


ANYWAY, here is what I see..

Mopar is now getting some aftermarket and repopping love, you can NOW build a fuel injected, aluminum head, stroker 440, with a roller cam for under 6K, years ago that would have been a $20K motor, lol... Now you can buy hemis in crates for $14K, and 98% of the 68-70 b bodies and 70-74 e bodies are repopped (and them are mopars claims to fame, them 2 bodies in the years and the hemi mill, thats it...

SO as others have said, something is happening to the guys that appreciate these cars...
1-getting older, sorry, its true, I am 35 and in most of my similar age friends, they could give a **** about the late 60's early 70s muscle, and my kids who are 15-17 have interest because I am into it, BUT are more interested in Diesel pickups and jeep wranglers...

2-NEW CARS ARE BAD ***, I dont care who you are the new challenger, vettes, camaros, mustangs, are ******* insane, we are going to have turn key, pump gas, traction controlled, paddle shifting, well handling, muscle cars breaking 1000HP and lasting for 200K miles in a few years, for $70K!!!!!!!!!!!! So if you were buying a muscle car to have muscle? Guess what, I had an 800hp caddy lol, a 4 door that stock vs stock was faster and controlled better than any car made before 2005, lol...

3-like I said, the parts are cheaper and easier to find new and repopped, that makes the old stuff worth less, and as the cars get cheaper to build, they are cheaper to buy...

4-ATTENTION, her is how I know the muscle car era is dying, go to a car show or cruise night, if you can find them, I remember not that long ago, I finished my first chevelle SS, it was a big block but a clone, I did 100% of it myself, so was proud of it, there was a cruise night EVERY wed, thru, fri, sat, and sun morning during the spring, summer, fall... And car shows almost every weekend with in driving distance... NOW, there is a cruise once a month, and the shows are scarce, normally just big ones.. I blame this on the values, guys think their cars are worth as much as their house so they dont want to take them out...


5-amount of cars for sale on the market, when the economy was booming, people bought them up, now they have the "I DID IT< ITS SITTING IN THE GARAGE COLLECTING DUST AND TAKING UP SPACE< PUT IT ON EBAY", its that simple, now the economy is just so so, and people can use the money, plus dont forget the investers that unload now and then!!! that kills the market, i know a gun in NY just put 30 cars on the market, he lists them all over the country and makes them look like they are private owner, but they can all be seen in NY, lol...


So the only thing we have going for us is the fact they arent making any more, lol.. And what does that matter when no one wants to buy them, lol..

I will admit, jumping in my 2ss camaro and blasting around a bit, is just as much fun as jumping in the 69z28. I have a few cars, and I drive them, and the ones I restore, i drive and show for a season then sell in most cases, I keep the cream of the cream, most of which I bought restored, because its hard to find a yenko or copo unrestored, lol... I am jus being honest, don't jump down my throat for this, but the chevys for some reason get MORE attention than the mopars, I am not sure why, but I bring my ls6 chevelle to a show, and its FLOCKED OVER, my uncles parks next to me in his 68 GTX (car is BAD ***, power nothing, radio delete, 440, dana, just a race car, and a really good color, with the pistol grip and road runner horn, lots to look at in other words), and he says it all the time, what do they see in that chevy. They are walking buy a 68 gtx race car!!! Then forget IT if I bring the dZ Z28 out, hugger orange, its a whore for attention, lol...

It doesnt stop me though, I still have my list to follow, and 1970 v code super bee hemi orange (hopefully done by mid summer this year), 70 plum crazy rt (will be done this winter), and the future 1970 Convertible R/T Hemi clone, since the guy who owns the real ONE (LOL) isnt in the market to sell it and that car will probably be 2 -3m if he did want to sell it, I am going to clone the car, EXACTLY...

ALL THAT SAID, I appreciate and love them all, you like what you like and thats all that matters, **** the value, if its something you want, buy it for what it costs and enjoy it, getting too hung up on resale value takes some of the joy out of it (I should know, my mind wont let me forget about money, so i am always paying attention to it)....
 
This is a tricky one, of course I'd like the price of my finished cars to be more when I sell but when I buy I want it damn cheap.its how were programmed . But if I can score a deal and there's a young guy standing in front of me with his piggy bank and he truly loves the car (the kind of guy who drives by 4 times a week to just see it) I will not make any money on him in fact if he can't afford what I payed then I let him make payments. I just did this with the super rare 3 on the tree car young guy had a few rusty charger s the market was priced way out of his range so he took parts cars and tryed to fix them. He found my car and wanted to just see it because he couldn't afford it he drove 4 hours knowing he couldn't afford it and stayed here for hours looking at it and dreaming of the day I asked him how much could he afford (not enough to even get my money back) so we worked out a payment system and he couldn't believe he owned a real mopar that was worth fixing. Sometimes it's not about money and this isn't the first time I gave high dollar stuff away very cheap guy had a rallye charger and someone stole his tail lights ! He was an older man retired air force and all no money couldn't afford the $1000 price tags that people wanted he came to get a few parts from me and saw I had a set asked if they were for sale I said no sorry I'm saving them he told me what happened. And I already made profit on the car I parted out so I decided that money wasn't everything and gave home the tail lights as a gift from one mopar guy to another he was so excited. A few months later after he got his car together he drove it down 3 hours and took me out to lunch. Sometimes it's just better to leave money out of the equation.
But there's some that I take no pitty the a holes that are trying to buy a car for half of its value and then sell it triple (kinda like a gas monkey garage) those guys can kiss my *** yes I'd like my projects cheap and what I sell to go up but the reality is I never loss money ,I don't really make anything but that's not the point the point is it's a hobby not a job you restore cars because you enjoy it if you get your money back when you sell it at the end your ahead of the game and if you decide to keep it your way ahead of the game you got a new car purity much without the new car price tag and yours is much cooler .
 
With all "Classic" cars there has always been two groups of owners/collectors, the investors and the true car guys. The investors are rich so they can afford to either buy the best or pay for high dollar restorations. The cars may be in a giant man cave museum with a lot of neon signs or just stuck in a warehouse but their primary purpose is the same as a stock portfolio or a safe full of gold bullion. They bet that the price will go up, sometime they win and sometimes they lose but in the end they have no real personal connection to the cars.
The car guys are at the other end of the spectrum. Definitely not rich but willing to spend a good chunk of their income on cars that they have a personal obsession with for many different reasons. They would love to make money on the sale of a car because they can then spend that money on whatever next car is on the obsession list, but even if they lose money they will keep on going down that list.
Personally I can't remember the last time I made money on the sale of a car and if I come close to breaking even I'm happy. My list always continues and changes constantly so I don't usually keep cars very long. You have to decide which group you belong in and that will determine how you look at the money side of the hobby.
 
Folks need to remember that supply and demand applies to more than just the cars. It also applies to the buyers. Collector car prices were highly manipulated by investors going all the way back to October 1987 when the stock market created enough worries to drive investors away from Wall Street and towards investing in cars. The Wall Street shift started the ball rolling, and multitudes of lower-level investors followed suit... a classic "monkey see, monkey do" situation. Then another sea change came in 2008 when the housing collapse caused investors to start bailing out of banking and the housing market and they turned to gold. As gold became the new investment standard, it didn't take long for the folks who were holding onto millions in collector cars realized they could sell them off, invest that money in gold, and keep it in a free safety security box instead of a climate-controlled garage. That was when we started seeing all the major collectors start selling off their collections at the major auctions.

So what we're seeing now is the collectors finally regaining control of the market. There are more of them, but they have less money to spend. On top of that, tens of thousands of cars that normally would have been scrapped, crushed, or parted out were saved and/or restored, so there is a major glut of cars on the market, far more than are needed to meet the demand of buyers, which is why prices are tanking for most cars. Now, you factor in the reality that many of the biggest fans of these cars are dead, dying, or greying out these days, and younger folks have their own dream cars they wanted as kids in the 1980s and 1990s, and the buyer pool gets even smaller.

The result is there are two types of cars that are gaining in value in this market. The first are the very limited-production, high-end, cars and the second are resto-mods. The high-end cars are going up because the wisdom is if you're gonna get one of these cars, get the best. Hemi, Six Pack, and some 440s meet that criteria, everything else doesn't. The days of a 340 Cuda or 383 Roadrunner bringing in top dollar are gone. Even 440 Superbirds are having it tough these days and have gone from being $300,000 cars down to having a tough time breaking a third of that number. The resto-mods are going up because they give the younger buyers a car that looks retro but doesn't come with all the driveability hassles of an all-original car.

So I think the bottom line today is if you're looking to restore a car, and make it worth the effort from an investment perspective, it better be a super-rare and ultra-desireable car. You go dumping $50k into a 383 Roadrunner and you're gonna lose a ton because there's a flood of full-restored cars on the market selling for well less than that and the fewer and fewer buyers who want them will buy those instead of yours.
 
There are lots of young people at the Mopar events I go to. I feel pretty good about the Mopar market staying strong.
 
To me , I look at the street rod / hot rod market and what has happened to it as those guys & their cars age out, Now days bucket tees ,30s and 40s rods values have dropped like a rock { except the 32 fords } those used to be the autorama , world of wheels indoor show stoppers. Sooner or later most muscle cars will follow the same path, there will be exceptions like the 70 hemi cudas ect just like the 32 fords live on.

To young folks today a 94 formula TA ect. is a classic. as soon as their kids are through college ect those guys will be hunting their high school cars again. But to the question of a increase in mopar values , I think we have seen it and will be lucky if they just hold their own over the next 10 yrs. Im prob wrong but that's how I view it.
They are my generation of hot rod and my personal choice is mopar no matter what the value is.
 
My theory is to drive and race all of my cars into the ground so the next generation will be able to afford an "easy resto, great father/son project. That way it follows the right of passage theme we have been forging as these cars age. The future gear heads won't appreciate all of the hard work if we leave them nice, restored cars they can just get into and drive.

Go out and beat on your car. The future of the nation depends on it!
 
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I would never sell but I have a 63 Plymouth Bel 9underA Max Wedge car, been race all its life, was fitted with Ali front ect when it was a few months old by the owners Milne Bro's Plymouth. it is one Mopar that I think is way under priced. Would it be around $60k ? not sure. Should be $200k :icon_smile:
 
i'll say majority of comments here spot on.

me, i'm 67, played with Mopars since mid 80's. I have small herd of (5) A bodies and 1 B body, because they are my toys, enjoyment. I fix them and drive them. NO show cars, just driver quality.
i'm glad the market is "down", I can pick up a project for very little. have fun. the price of parts is what kills me. I do almost all my own work. I have too many ??. probablt.... would I try to sell off any now? NO. they can just accumulate as I don't care to deal with the "potential buyers". like the other guy, if a worthy person can along I would try to help him obtain one of my cars. but I have been shot in the foot before trying to do that! Ha

will my grandkids care about my old cars when i'm gone? don't know, that's up to them. depends whether they were born with any "car genes"...
 
This is a topic where no one is wrong depending on their situation and I'll leave it at that.

For a guy looking for a deal these days, he should be looking north of the border with the CDN dollar as it is. I know of a J code 68 Hemi GTX here that would be a real deal for someone south of the border.

Here's an example of the crappy CDN dollar. I just slipped over the border and picked up a Summit order at my US shipping address today. The US price of the order was $3,014.00. It cost me however, $4,308.00 CDN! Sure would have been nice for that order to have been $1,300.00 in my favour.. View attachment 301158


You guys need smarter leaders and voters. Ours are dumb-asses, but at least we have something to compare our deflated dollar, to. Maybe if your country made money by keeping it's garbage/refuse industry in Canada...instead of Michigan, there'd be some more workforce and income. Considering 90% of your population lives within a 100-200 miles of America, I'd say you have room for your garbage. As for the prices, what does your country manufacture? Seems like your government wants everybody else to deal with enviro messes. There's a price for that.[little rant off]
 
There are lots of young people at the Mopar events I go to. I feel pretty good about the Mopar market staying strong.

There are lots of young people at art galleries and museums too, that doesn't mean they are buyers of fine art. :)

I think a lot of folks don't understand just how over-saturated the market is right now. Barrett-Jackson and Mecum used to have one or two major collector car auctions a year. Now Barrett-Jackson has four, Mecum has 13, and now there's four or five other major auctions that have started up. All of these auctions can thrive because there is a lot of inventory to move out here, and those are just the higher-end cars. When you factor in all the drivers, projects, and parts cars... that's a helluva lot of cars for sale when normally there would be about 25% of that number.

And it's going to get worse as folks who've had thousands of cars squirreled away as investments, or hoarders who've had cars stashed here and there pass away and those cars go to family members who don't want them, start adding to the glut.
 
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