Time Machines
Collecting cars is a basic passion for gathering that is really no different than collecting thimbles. Or Zippo lighters. Except cars are larger, cost more, present serious storage problems, and there are no Monte Carlo auctions for thimble lovers.
Car collections come in all sizes.
Small, like the one belonging to Sam Jackson of Diamond Bar, who has restored a single 1940 Hudson and has right of refusal on a pickup of identical make and vintage. “I’ve spent little [on the car], maybe $5,000 over 15 years, and it’s worth little,” he says, “but I’m completely absorbed by the hobby.”
And huge, like the fleet owned by reclusive sultan of Brunei. He has collected almost 5,000 vehicles--including the first two of every Rolls-Royce model for decades--with a resale value of about $2 billion should his offshore petroleum run dry. The sultan was not available for comment.
But whether beginner or billionaire, dispassionate investor or weekend zealot besotted by the history and art of old automobiles, all collectors are players in a car market in which prices and rich deals are on their way back after a tumultuous tumble in the early 1990s.
It’s not like the late ‘80s, when buying and selling was a fever and undistinguished production Ferraris that retailed a few years earlier for $134,000 were selling for $340,000. And when a 12.7-liter Bugatti Royale of the ‘30s, one of six built and with a body by Kellner et Freres of Paris, sold for $9.4 million at auction. In just five minutes.
“But the market is recovering and growing,” says Robert Brooks, chairman of auctioneers Robert Brooks Ltd. of London. It’s also changing, with a shift toward sports and racing cars, better bargains and younger, less glamorous vehicles of the ‘50s and ‘60s, which are being sought and bought by baby boomers reaching back to their high school years.
“The heyday of the late 1980s is not yet back,” Brooks says, “but we are starting to see auction weekends bringing in [similar] totals.”
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Latest example: The buying and selling fete that has become part of the annual Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance at Monterey, Calif. Nearly $32 million in classic and collectible cars were sold at auctions on the verdant peninsula during the Aug. 14-16 weekend.
A spokesman for Christie’s, one of three auction houses at the event, says that 90% of cars offered were sold, four vehicles went for $1 million or more, and sales totaled $15 million--50% more than the company’s 1996 auction sales.
More market indicators and positives from Pebble Beach and other collector-car sightings:
* A Ferrari 275GTS Spyder, one of 10 built and campaigned in 1967 by the North American Racing Team, sold for $2.1 million. More important, and as proof that the market is no longer simply a gee-whiz arena for the rare and ridiculously pricey, Brooks moved a 1957 Porsche Speedster for $63,000, and Christie’s sold a 1967 Mustang GT convertible for $29,000. A 1934 Lancia sedan was practically a giveaway at $9,200.
* Celebrity cars have returned to star status as hot-ticket collectibles. A 1989 Jaguar XJS once owned by Frank Sinatra, with the price clearly inflated by the singer’s recent death, sold for $178,500. That’s a record high for any XJS and almost 15 times the estimate Christie’s placed on the car. On a lesser rung of the celebrity ladder, and possible proof that the smaller the reputation, the lesser the price of the used car, a 1968 Camaro Z28 owned by actor Bruce Willis went for $23,540 at the Concours weekend’s Monterey Sports Car Auction.
* As with Malibu real estate and antique light fixtures, impossible bargains are still a matter of timing, fate and dumb luck. Three years ago, Keith Lawson, a Brit, bought his daughter a car for the pounds sterling equivalent of $9,000. It happened to be the 1981 Ford Escort Ghia that Prince Charles gave to Diana as an engagement gift, but that was of no great significance at the time of the purchase. The death of the princess created new life around the car--which Lawson recently sold via the Internet for more than $1 million.
* Classic Duesenbergs, vintage Rolls-Royce and pre-1915 automobiles (Brass Era cars such as Franklins, Stutzes and Pierce Arrows) are sustaining their appeal. As with single-action Colts and Faberge eggs, no more will be made, and that guarantees an endless supply of buyers.
* The United States represents more than half the world market for collector cars, experts say. Our auctions are carefully watched for the setting of world prices and the movement of collector-car trends, they add.
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That’s precisely what happened in the late ‘80s, when America roared, relatively mundane cars sold for outrageous prices in this epicenter, and classic-car auctioneers functioned by a single, infallible premise: There’s a bum for every seat.
Then, as if hit by a twister, what was there was swept aside. At the height of the automotive depression in the early ‘90s, new Ferrari F40s, hyped for sale to nearly $1.6 million, went unsold at $340,000. Jaguar, which had hoped to cash in on the craze with an instant collectible, a production XJ220 super-car capable of more than 200 mph and stickered at $685,000, had customers forfeiting deposits and refusing delivery. One XJ220 struggled at auction to reach $250,000--a net loss of $435,000.
Speculation buying. Greedy pricing. Suspicious buyers. A quivering economy. Even remanufactured or blatantly fake collectibles. All contributed to the crash.
But when things hit rock bottom a few years later, ludicrous pricing began descending to the sensible, a growing economy started building healthier disposable incomes, and most of the fire returned.
“The market is recuperating, but it’s different,” explains David Grant, a Saugus-based restorer who specializes in European sports cars. “The dispassionate speculators are thankfully missing, perhaps because they got their fingers burned last time. People are smarter now, and the cars which appear to fetch good money are rare competition cars.”
Collectors are buying more than the rare, however. At the annual motorcar show held at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton recently, one sign of the shift to more modern and reasonably priced cars was an immaculately restored 1960 Ford Falcon. The widely held theory: As baby boomers have climbed the economic ladder, many are beginning to collect cars of their youth, as well as cars they couldn’t afford in the ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s.
“Most people are collecting what they saw and wanted as kids but at the time was out of reach,” says Ken Gross, director of the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. What was out of Gross’ reach as a high schooler in Salem, Mass., was a quintessential American hot rod.
“So I’m building a ’32 Ford hot rod roadster, no part of which was made later than 1958,” he says. “That’s the year I graduated high school, and that’s my self-imposed and somewhat irrational cutoff date for restoration parts.”
Bruce Meyer, car collector and former owner of Geary’s, the Beverly Hills china and silver retailer, is another belated hot rodder. His restored Doane Spencer roadster won last year’s inaugural hot rod class at Pebble Beach. But Meyer also is an eclectic collector of sports cars, racing cars, classic cars--all cars.
“Collecting is genetic,” he says. “In my baby book, my mother wrote: ‘Bruce loves everything with wheels,’ and it’s true. I like everything automotive. And although rare, and sometimes expensive, my first love is to drive these cars.”
Art, he says, “is to look at, but cars are to be driven, and my wife and I drive them whenever we can. Last winter, I took the Doane Spencer on a run with over 100 other hot rods along the Angeles Crest Highway, through snow and ice, and it was great fun.”
For Meyer, as for others, the enjoyment of car collecting has varied forms. He likes the hunt for specific cars. He enjoys the research into vague histories.
“Then I like to reunite the original craftsmen who built the car with the owners and the drivers, because the people are what this hobby is about,” he says. “The people and the passion make it fun and interesting, and the cars are the fruit of that passion.”
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You don’t have to be rich to be an automobile collector. Nor have a lifelong dedication to a certain automobile. Just ask Sam Jackson, who is director of marketing for the Specialty Equipment Market Assn., the automotive industry trade association based in Diamond Bar.
“I was driving in the country and got lost,” he recalls. “I came upon a farmer pushing an old car out of his barn, and he was ready to sell.”
It was that 1940 Hudson. Jackson bought it.
“But if it had been a Buick, I would now have a memorabilia collection of everything Buick from 1940. Instead, it’s all Hudson.”
Michael Rose is the Santa Monica-based producer of the “Automobiles” documentary series for the History Channel. It has involved him with hundreds of enthusiasts collecting every kind of motorcar.
“What usually connects them is that umbilical cord to their youth,” Rose says. “There’s also a desire to own things that can be fun and pleasurable. Beanie Babies you just own, but cars you can tinker with and take out and enjoy with like-minded people.”
It’s also a great social leveler. In the private sector are the Jacksons and the Meyers. At the celebrity end are fashion designer Ralph Lauren (collects classics) and comedians Jay Leno (collects what he likes), Tim Allen (American muscle cars) and Jerry Seinfeld (Porsches).
“But put them in a parking lot with other auto enthusiasts, and barriers suddenly disappear in the common appreciation,” Rose says. “They each believe that they have the ultimate car, and who’s to say they are wrong?”
Despite a pure fervor for their cars, collectors are never opposed to canny investment, if only to earn more money to buy more cars. But, warns Paul Clark, managing director of Brooks, to sell in today’s market, a car needs to be special. Being old simply isn’t enough.
Model T Fords were made by the millions, for example. Every museum has a couple, older collectors are dying off, younger collectors don’t relate to them, and Model Ts, even Model As, are a dollar a dozen. Well, almost. At an Escondido, Calif., auction of the combined estates of three deceased Model T and Model A owners last winter, a row of 15 chassis and a corral of cowls were offered for $35 a pile. Many parts did not sell.
“Cars of quality and those with history are the ones which people are mostly interested in,” Clark says.
Such as the XKE Jaguar coupe--one of only 12 aluminum-bodied Competition Lightweight race cars built by the factory--bought in 1963 by Howard Gidovlenko of Santa Ana.
Gidovlenko, a former military pilot who owned Jaguar parts and tuning businesses in Orange County, never did race the car, and it remained in his garage until his recent death. There were 2,600 miles on the odometer, many of them piled up during its only racing appearance--under a previous owner--at the famed 12-hour endurance race at Sebring, Fla. With the car was its original bill of sale, its title, its original black California license plates--and a set of racing wheels still in the crate.
The whole batch was sold at the Monterey Sports Car Auction this month. Auctioneers had so much faith in the market that they talked Gidovlenko’s heirs into putting the car on the block with no minimum bid requirement and without even cleaning it up. Windows were covered in garage gunk so thick it was impossible to see through them when the Jaguar was driven with a roar onto the auction stand.
Bidding began with what the auctioneers said was an important family condition in place: Profit from the sale would go to Gidovlenko’s autistic son.
The Jaguar sold to a British collector, who says that now it could be returned home. He paid a staggering $872,000 for the car and the sentiment.
No Zippo lighter, not even the one showing the date of the D-Day landings scratched there by Dwight D. Eisenhower, has fetched that price.
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Times automotive writer Paul Dean reported from Los Angeles. Tony Thacker is a freelance writer based in Pomona. Times staff writer John O’Dell contributed to this report from Pebble Beach, Calif.
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Shifting Into High Gear
The collector-car market is coming back after half a decade in the dumps, and the emphasis is shifting from pre-World War II classics to postwar sports and racing cars. The resurgence and shift were underscored by the nearly $32 million worth of cars sold Aug. 14-16 at three auctions on the Monterey Peninsula in conjunction with the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. Prices fetched by the top five of the nearly 300 cars sold were topped by the almost $2.1 million paid for a rare racing Ferrari:
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Vehicle Sale Price Auction house 1967 Ferrari 275 GTS/4 $2,092,500 Christie’s Spyder N. Am. Racing 1935 Alfa Romeo 8C-35 1,322,500 Christie’s Scuderia-Ferrari Racing 1970 Porsche 917LH Martini-Gulf Racing* 1,047,500 Christie’s 1957 Jaguar XKSS roadster 1,014,500 Christie’s 1955 Jaguar D-Type roadster 952,300 R.M. Classic Cars
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* Documentation unclear
