European classics? (muscle car, vehicles, joint, sedans)

[The Continental]

So what does the European classic car market look like? What kind of stuff gets restored? What are some of the top, rare, entry level, etc classics? What are some of the most iconic or extravagantly styled cars? How does it compare to American classic market.

[Merc63]

That's a huge question with a huge answer....

For the older classics, look at the Bugattis, Talbots, Delage, Voisin, Hispano Suiza, etc. even early Mercedes and pre-war BMWs. Then we move up to the more modern stuff, such as the early Porsches, Ferraris, Alfas, Maseratis, Pegasos, Citroens, Iso, etc.

Even the more "plabian" stuff from Opel, Ford, VW, Renault, etc will be restored.

If you want to add the UK into the European market, you hav Rolls and Bentley, Wolsley, Bristol, Morgans, Jaguars, Astons, TVRs, and more.

And then there are the huge numbers of smaller shops that built sports cars and race cars. Like Osca, Turner, Bizzarini, DeTomaso, and many, many more.

YOu want pictures? Google each of the names I posted.

Here's a touch to start you off:













http://www1.mayvilleschools.com/poellot/Assetts/lamborghini%20350gt.jpg (broken link)

[ferretkona]

I have shipped a few old Volvos to Europe. A 1800 and 2 122 wagons, to Sweden.
There are little to no wrecking yards in Europe. Many cars are destroyed to lack of parts. Many savvy owners will buy a car in bad shape to store for parts.

[sunsprit]

I'd say that most of the European bespoke cars of the pre-War II era that were collectable and desirable ... if not restorable ... have been in the hands of collectors since the mid 1970's-1980's.

Many of these cars were the price leaders of the bigger auctions through the 1980's-early 1990's ... when the availability of them for restoration dried up. For example, after I-F, Hispano Suiza, R-R, Bentley, Voisin, Lagonda, Alfa-Romeo, Lanchester, Delage, DeLahaye, Maybach, Horch, and a host of other bespoke cars started getting into the mid-high 6 figures (and up), and rare early survivor cars ranging from DeDion and early M-B's hit those stratospheres ... we saw more modern euro cars such as Ferrari's go through the roof. Simultaneously, the money chased M-B 300SL's ... with gullwings being very strong in the market; I'd had the opportunity to buy several nice ones at the $30-40,000 range that were snapped up by others and restored at a cost in excess of $500,000 ... and then re-sold for a profit, while the later roadster 300SL's languished in the sub $100K market. Customers of mine told me that they'd turned down buying gullwing 300SL's years before at $7,000 ... when the cars had less than 20,000 miles on them and were quite pristine, still daily drivers and not exceptional collectable cars. We saw a run-up in 356 Porsche's, too ... where early 1960's cars that had been $4,000-6,000 cars were getting $30,000+ restorations and taken off the street; the one-man shop adjacent to mine specialized in these cars and I was stunned to see the prices he was getting for full resto's right down to OE decals under the hood ... I'd have to say his workmanship was superb, and the cars were really straight when he got done with them. But streetable? not if you wanted to see the typical road damage of a couple day's driving with rock chips devalue the car by $20,000 and need a repaint again ....

With those popular cars becoming rare to restore, then the market turned to other cars, and we've seen the price points for those attract a lot of money ... especially in the domestic muscle car market.


Essentially, those old euro bespoke collectables have primarily made it into musuems or collections of the seriously wealthy who tend to have numerous cars. In my case, I worked for a car collection owned by one fellow who'd bought hundreds of these cars, starting his collection back in the 1960's when they were simply "old cars" of interest. His circle of car collecting friends around the world were all the same ... with large collections which they traded around amongst themselves. Many of these highest value cars simply came out of the retail/auction marketplace and made it into a closed group of known collectors. You don't see many of them show up at the big auctions anymore ... and the few that I've seen in the last couple of years that were still in private hands and now available for sale at high prices generally would require mid-to-high 6 figure restorations before being roadworthy or desirable again. Parts are difficult to obtain ... and in many instances, must be custom fabricated or reproduced at high cost ... there are numerous shops who do this type of resto work, and they're not cheap for their artistry. The original cars were, for the most part, hand-built to a great extent and you're now replicating that level of workmanship from an era when labor wasn't so expensive.

Which leads you to the marketplace of more common euro cars ... Jags, M-G's, Triumph's, A-H's .... the survivors as manufacturers that went on to mass produce many more cars than the bespoke limited production vehicles (many of those manufacturers simply didn't make it financially past the 1930's, even with a lot of consolidation and buy-outs of the companies). Those cars have become collectable only because they are available, parts are available, and they're relatively inexpensive to acquire and restore .... I had a 1961 MG Coupe, purchased with a few typical problems, for $600 in 1970, which cost me very little but time to fix up and keep driving. I sold it for $600 a couple of years later, and the car was a daily driver for almost 10 years before the motor was blown up. The fellow sold it for $250, and it sat in a garage for almost 20 years .... The car underwent a restoration a few years ago and sold for $22,000, with a modest profit for the seller. I have less than fond memories of driving this car ... other than now being a relatively rare survivor, it really didn't have much going for it as a car other than a slightly better heater ability in cold weather than the rag-top version of them.

I could say the same about my 1970's vintage Alfa-Romeo's ... the memories I have of them back in the day don't get matched the driving of them now. They're more nostaglia pieces than anything else, and not worth very much money today for a reason ....

[Merc63]

Something you're going to be seeing a lot more of, both in the American and Euro collector market are survivor cars. Cars that are being shown and traded in unrestored condtion and being LEFT that way. A good example is the Bugatti that Wayne Carini found in CT in a garage. The car was basically just washed and left as found.

There's still a lot of stuff changing hands, and some of the lower end stuff is starting to move a bit. It helps to seek out the more obscure, and as always, performance and style oriented cars do better than others.

For fun, however, ANY older Euro car can be a good choice. You can't go wrong with something like this to keep around as a survivor:

1970 MERCEDES 250 CLASSIC

And of course, for ease of parts, small british sports cars are great, as you CAN make them like new again. I'm working on a '73 MGB GT right now, doing the rust repair and repaint for a friend, but I've got another MGB convertible to finish after that. Same as my last Fiat 124 Spider. Cheap to rebuild if you do the work yourself, and new enough to be useable as a real road car if you want.

[sunsprit]

If that 250 MB is worth $3,500 in that marketplace ....

I've got a 1971 220 MB w/auto, A/C, Becker AM/FM radio, power steering, and manual windows ... with a rebuilt (30,000 miles) later 230 4 cylinder motor with the Stromberg carb and the trans was overhauled about 28,000 miles ago. Got the toolkit and OE tire jack and wrench. Has been repainted once with a two-part catalyzed urethane, and could polish up real well except for those areas (very common on these cars) just behind the headlight doors where some rust repairs and bondo work was done about 20 years ago, along with some door dings and badly dinged mid-line body trim. TMU, but unlikely to be more than 125,000 miles. I've had it for sale in my regional marketplace for 9 years without any interest in it whatsoever. Last week my wife handed me an ad from a local wrecking yard and suggested I get their BID on it if I took it to them ... they said they'd had no interest or calls in 114/115 chassis MB's for at least 6 years and their offer was $250 for the scrap value of the car. As we want to reclaim some of the storage space for some of our farm equipment, this car ... and a few boats of mine ... are going to have to go away soon.

FWIW, I still have a sizable inventory of tune-up parts, including points/cond/air & fuel & oil filters, plus frequent failure parts like the A/C to heater fan change-over switch, TS switches, brake pads w/shims, driveline carriers, flex joints, belts, hoses, and carb parts and kits ... for all of these 4 & 6 cylinder carb'ed motor cars in stock. As well as a sizable inventory of specialty parts for the Bosch Mechanical FI MB's of that era ... injection pump thermostats, aux starting nozzle switches, points (including the dual points for 6.3's, IKAR brand), and so forth. When I closed my retail shop down a few years ago, there was no demand for this inventory ... I've sold less than a few hundred dollars worth of this stuff since, and the demand is so low that I was offered ten cents on the dollar of my wholesale cost to take it all off my hands a few years ago by friends that still see a few of these cars in their shops yet today.

But, for the most part, these 114/115 chassis MB cars are off the road ... not even seen as "Sunday drivers" anymore. They weren't especially notable cars other than the exceptional durability of the 220/240D series cars .... and they certainly didn't have the comfort, handling, styling or capabilities of the larger 108/109 series cars, or the performance & styling of the 107 chassis cars.

Of the few 114/115 chassis cars I've seen available for sale around here in drivable condition, none were priced over $450 ... and they weren't selling. I saw 20 of them (along with a bunch of VW Bugs, Audi 100's & Audi 5000's) at a farm auction about 6 years ago in NE. Well advertised, it would have brought out any regional based interest to get a deal on them. The VW's got a lot of interest, and sold at prices which I thought were a bit strong ... but the Audi's and the MB's got not one bid. The minimum asked BID was $50, and the auctioneer had to pass over every one of them. Just for grins, the same auction house had a 1976 MB 450SLC last fall with under 100K miles, two sets of spare alloy wheels with tires, and a wad of maintenance records from a local import repair shop (of reasonable competence) ... and heavily advertised it as a feature item in a regional auction publication. I Bid $300 for it and the only other Bid was from the shop owner of that local import shop ... at $500. In my assessment of the car, to bring it back to daily driver status with all of the systems working would have required many hours of my time ... and I already have the parts in stock for the central locking, A/C, tuning, brakes, belts, hoses, VG seals & timing chain, ... and that would have still left the needed paint strip and redo, and a host of trim parts that were missing from the car. I saw the opportunity to spend about $10,000 on it to make it a saleable car in the $5-7,000 range ... not my cup of tea, I was happy to see it go to somebody else. Can't say I'm really fond of 107 SLC's ... and, apparently, neither is the marketplace when I see what they're bringing around the region in nice condition.

I'd say that unless you have a more desirable model MB than the lower level models, then you don't have a lot of upside in one of these cars at this time. And this comes from an owner who had the entire family in 114/115 MB's for over 25 years ... with one 1971 MB 220D (later repowered with a MB factory 240D motor) reaching over 400,000 miles before my wife totalled it on an icy I-25 one winter night as she went off the road to avoid a 30 car pile-up. Safely, I might add ... but the car's undercarriage was ripped out and I sold the motor out of it for more than the car was worth after the accident.

If I was looking for a more collectable modern MB but still at low cost, I'd be looking for 108 chassis 280 SE/SEL's, perhaps a 280SEL 4.5, or a 109 chassis, or an early 1970's 107 chassis model. From what I've seen, there's a lot of them around today at substantially less than the $3,500 asked for that 250 ... and they're much more car when they were new and still today. Parts costs for resto work will be comparable as there are a lot of outfits around that are direct importers from the OE suppliers that have a lot of inventory yet to move.

I'd also agree ... that from a pure fun driving standpoint ... the numerous two-seater Brit roadsters around offer one heck of a lot more fun per dollar to acquire and restore than low-line MB sedans of the same era. $3,500 will put you a lot closer to a driver that looks pretty decent than it ever will in the low-line MB, too.

[Merc63]

The MB was just a quick search on the local craigslist. There are thousands of various choices, from all sorts of manufacturers. My favorites for older sedans are the Jag XJ6s. Those MBs, however, are now finding a lot of favor in the "classic daily driver" community, along with the early E12/E28 5 series and Bavaria. All of which can be had in driveable form under $2k, but can be quite nice with a little elbow grease. Not as collectable as the coupes, which carry a much higher price tag, but interesting classics nonetheless that parts and community are readily available for.

[The Continental]

As far as those MBs the styling was tame to begin with and didn't change much from 60s-80s. I think this is also what hurts a lot of those roadsters as they don't have real unique styling to separate years or even makes.

[jtur88]

I am even more fascinated by the prospects of a Japanese car lasting through WWII and being maintained in the post war years.

I saw a few beautiful "drivers" of pre-war European make in Uruguay, where new cars were prohibited imports for a couple of decades and old ones were maintained.

[The Continental]

Yeah that would be interesting especially since Japan is so small