Economic Crisis and Musclecar collecting - Other Cars Forum - j-body.org

Economic Crisis and Musclecar collecting - Other Cars Forum

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Economic Crisis and Musclecar collecting

Sunday, January 25, 2009 5:39 AM

One of the few bright spots of this recession that's kicking our collective a**es is that musclecar prices are finally down. Not collector cars mind you, those will probably stay high (just look at Barret-Jackson) but I mean your average base Chevelle SS and GTO and Nova and Dart and Charger. I saw a TLC needing 1970 Dodge Charger R/T going for under 20k. I haven't seen that in years.

It was bound to happen actually. The economic mess just pushed it forward faster.

See, I have a theory about why sixties musclecars went up in price so much. Yeah, a lot of it had to do with rich boomers having mid-life crises' and how 80% of cars of that era wound up in the junkyard making them rare. But there was another factor too. Namely that those cars were simply better than the contemporary cars of the late 80's/early 90's. They went faster, better built, were more reliable to drive aggressively, looked a LOT less cheap, and in some cases got better MPG.

Think about it. If you wanted to go fast and look cool. What exactly could you drive in 1987 that would be as fast as say... a 1970 Cuda? There were a few cars that could cut a high 14 in the quarter: Corvettes, the 5.0 Mustang and the Turbo Buicks namely, but beyond that you had nothing. A 1988 Monte-Carlo SS was a 15.6 quarter mile car at best. The IROC Camaros with the 350s struggled to break the 15.0 barrier. Yes, they were modern and comfortable, but they just didn't look and go like classic 60s iron. Plus people had been burned by the biodegradable cars of the mid seventies and were wary of spending 15+ grand on a new car when for the same price they could buy and fully restore a car from their youth. (It was cheaper back then and parts were easier to find. Hell, you could still buy NOS parts straight from the dealerships if you were desperate.)

This is why (I think anyway) the same thing hasn't happened 1975-1987 cars. You'll notice that a 1975 Malibu, even the top end one, has the collector value of syphillis. Yeah, Corvettes are worth a few bucks and people go ga-ga over Burt Reynolds 1977-81 Trans Am, but other than that? Not much. the 1977 Can Am, the Dodge Lil Red Express, the Hurst/Olds cars. That's about it as far as collectibles go. You'll probably see Gran Torino sales go up because of Clint Eastwood's film but they'll go down again once people realize that the engines and transmissions in those cars are made of tissue paper, that it uses two tanks of gas to get to the street corner, and that the 400 cubic inch engine makes about 145hp. This automotive sickness affected most cars made between 1975 and 1985. Back in 1977 the Camaro Z/28 made about 150hp, the Corvette put out 190hp in L-78 form, the Trans Am (Smokey's car) was an honest 200hp car but it needed 400 cubic inches to do it. Pathetic.

So when the generation that grew up with late 70's junk had their mid-life crisis and wanted to buy a musclecar to relive their youth all they had to do was go to the dealership and get a 1997 Camaro SS or a Mustang SVT. It was useless to buy "classic" cars because new cars were so much better, plus they had a warranty, and they only keep getter better.

Which means that the good news is that classic iron is getting affordable again and that's great for us connoiseurs. However, the bad news is that if you look at the "crap" years for cars, 1975 and 1981 especially, you see that they occur right after a major economic crisis. Which is happening again right now, which means that late 90's and 2000s musclecar prices might shoot up like crazy because I seriously suspect that we may see a drop in new car quality like we did in 75/81 with the coming hybrids and smaller engined cars that have to pass the super strict emmissions and CAFE regulations. Already people are talking about the demise of the V8, and even Ford (The last truly committed musclecar maker) has said that the future Mustangs may have Turbo V6s as their top engine option.

Oh well... I'll take my 2010 Challenger R/T in black with a Hemi please. Then the car industry can go to hell.