Parked outside the mansion block where I live in north London is a red Ferrari 355 F1. Before you get to the end of the street, and it's a short one, there's a grey Ferrari 550 Maranello and someone else (I hope) has a black Aston Martin DB9.
The presence of these cars, each of which costs more than most people earn in a year, perplexes me. I can almost get over the fact that they are parked outdoors rather than in a garage. I can even accept that if you were rich enough not to need a car, you might want a fancy one. But I cannot understand why, with that much money, you pick something so obvious and so likely to depreciate in value? Why not make your mark by driving a car not driven by many others that might also turn out to be a good investment?
London is full of 355s, Maranellos and DB9s. These vehicles are the Renault Clios of the jet set. Wouldn't it be more interesting to buy something that had already shown it was ageing well and would continue to do so - in short, a classic? A car you'd want around as much when you are 70 as you did when you were 35. Think Charlotte Rampling or Chateau d'Yquem. Something that ages well and could appreciate in value, monetary and otherwise.
Let's go like-for-like with the cars on my street. The 550 Maranello, a striking car from the late 1990s, is famous for its 12-cylinder engine but so is the 365 Daytona GTB/4, produced from 1968-1973, and it is likely to gain in value over the next few years.
Instead of the DB9, which also has a V12 engine, I'd go for an Aston Martin with a V8. While there is no denying that Ulrich Bez, chairman and chief executive of Aston Martin, has made the brand amazingly popular, I'd rather buy cars from before his time that are gaining in price because of his success, such as the V8 models produced from 1969 to 1989. I particularly like the late 1970s Vantage coupé and Volante convertible. Both have big boots and seat four.
Bob Houghton, who works on Ferraris in the Cotswolds, says the 355, in its convertible model, could be a classic someday but I'd rather have a 308 GTB (I guess I saw one-too-many Magnum PI episodes).
Here's the best part: I could spend £80,000 on the Daytona, £15,000 on the Aston Martin and the same on the 308 GTB. In total, that's just a bit more than the price of the DB9, at least before it drives off the lot.
Of the three cars mentioned above, I would drive the 308 often and hard. It is a daily driver classic that probably won't grow too much in value. The Aston Martin might gain for the next few years, at which time I would upgrade. The Daytona I would keep for a while, driving only on very dry, warm days. It is likely to get ever more expensive.
Many cars are getting ever more expensive, for two reasons. One is that cars, like photographs, have been around long enough to gain acceptance by auction houses and other sellers eager for new markets. The more important reason is that older people with money grew up in a time when the car defined the culture.
Consider my father. He was born in 1946 in California. By the time he was old enough to drive, he was drag racing and by the time he was in his 20s, the muscle car boom had hit America. My father will be 60 in July. He is at the forefront of the baby boom generation and, like many of his peers, has been prudent financially and has money to spend, if he so chose, on collectables.
In fact, the spending power of my father's generation is so great that it is making many of the cars I already deem classic too expensive for much of my generation. The early muscle cars of the 1970s are enjoying much attention today, with some of the more desirable models reaching six figures and the extremely rare ones reaching seven. One reason for this is that baby boomers are nostalgic. Three decades ago they might not have been able to afford the Plymouth Barracuda, with the Hemi engine, but they can now.
One of the leading car auctioneers, Barrett-Jackson, held a sale in January in Arizona where six vehicles reached or exceeded the million-dollar mark, including bidder's fees. They included a pristine 1970 Hemi 'Cuda convertible, selling for $2.16m, the oldest existing Corvette at $1.08m and a 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS LS6 convertible at $1.24m.
It is hard to imagine that cars from the 1980s, 1990s and this decade will become classics that sell for such lofty prices. Take the Audi A6. Audi has done a great job of reviving its brand during this decade. It builds a wonderful car for what used to be called "yuppies", were later called "bourgeois bohemians" but will always be called "middle class", whether the garden variety or upper.
I'd be proud to prowl around any town in an Audi A6. It has pep. It comes in stately, serious colours that resemble those found on rocks in riverbeds. It has wood and leather interiors that give the buyer a sense of majesty. The person who buys this car often does so when they attain something, say a promotion into a position that comes with a company car. They can be seen in the driveways of McMansions in Connecticut and in front of terraced houses in Chelsea. But will they be seen at a car show in 50 years? I doubt it. Most classic cars aren't associated with middle managers.
So what will and how will we know? On discussing the 50th anniversary of The Paris Review, the literary magazine he co-founded and edited, George Plimpton said that one way of judging the strength of a publication was its "shelf-life". The Paris Review is published quarterly. Plimpton knew that it didn't arrive so often as to "startle a subscriber with its frequency of appearance" thus "rather than being consigned to a wastepaper basket, it is set up on a shelf until it eventually becomes a collector's item."
With apologies to Plimpton, let us speak of the "garage life" of cars, because to be a classic you'll need a car with a garage life of at least 25 years. Terry Lobzun of RM Auctions, a leading seller of fancy cars, says The Classic Car Club of America is credited with inventing the term. The club defines such cars as "distinctive", domestic or foreign-built automobiles produced from 1925-1948. However, he adds that to the public any car over 25 is generally referred to as a "classic".
There are many categories of classic cars but broadly speaking, for the layman, there are four. The first evokes a time.
Nothing says late 1950s or early 1960s like a Cadillac with tailfins. The second transcends its time. Think the Porsche 911. The third involves customisation, currently represented by hot rods and likely to be represented someday by tuner cars such as the Honda Civic. The fourth category, not for the faint of heart, is novelty or ugly cars. Type Edsel or Tucker or AC Gremlin into Google and you'll see what I mean. Better still, type Renault Avantime. These cars were ahead of their time or just plain stupid but people love them.
So which cars evoke and transcend the past three decades and which will be the oddities? I started to think about which cars would become classics when I started regularly attending the New York Auto Show. I loved many of the cars there, including the Audi A6, but had a hard time determining which would stand the test of time. What cars will I buy, or will I wish I had bought, when I am my father's age?
Asked whether there were any cars from 1970 onward that could be considered classics or future classics, RM's Lobzun said that after the mid-1970s muscle car market, there were few cars built that were deemed collectable because many cars were mass produced and offered few options. Lobzun says that "although they will never reach the stratospheric levels of their ancestors" there are a few exceptions built in the early 1980s that could be coined classics, including the Mustang SVO, Monte Carlo SS and Aero Coupés, Hurst Olds 442, and Buick Grand National.
He added that performance cars of the late 1980s are still coveted, including the Ferrari F40 and Porsche 959. Then he threw in the DeLorean for good measure (and he's right, there has been an uptick in interest in the stainless steel wonders).
For the 1990s he picked the Dodge Viper, Jaguar XJ220 and XJR-15, Bugatti EB-110 and the McLaren F1. For the noughties he picked hand-built, low production cars such as the Ferrari Enzo, Saleen S7, Mercedes SLR McLaren, Koenigsegg CCX, and the Bugatti Veyron.
I agree with all of the above but will add a few. From the 1970s, I would pick the Maserati Indy and Ghilbi and DeTomaso Pantera for exotics, the Toyota FJ-40 series and Jeep CJ-5s for offroad vehicles, and the Datsun Z-cars for daily drivers as well as the earlier mentioned Aston Martins.
I also like the Cadillacs from the early 1970s. My father used to drive a Cadillac. It was a Sedan DeVille painted a colour called "antelope firemist". It was a wonderful car. Like all Cadillac saloons, it was a sofa on wheels. It drove like a fat man who can dance - by the look of it, you wouldn't think it could move but when the music played, it could get up and go.
The 1980s are tough - all Volvos and Beamers and ugly Americans. But the Brits pulled through. Roger Moore was James Bond in the first 007 film I saw, For Your Eyes Only, released in 1981. I fell in love with two things in that movie, Carole Bouquet and the Lotus Esprit Bond drove. The Lotus choice was about as controversial as Moore following in the footsteps of Sean Connery but I stand by both.
I'd like to say that "classic minivan" is an oxymoron but they have had a profound impact on the automotive industry and a well-cared-for Chrysler Town and Country owned by a famous person might fetch a big price someday, though I hope not. Another star of the 1980s is the Porsche 944. Anyone born after 1970 who grew up in a US suburb subsisting on a diet of John Hughes movies and MTV knows the 944. Like a Ferrari, it needed to be red like Jake's in Sixteen Candles. I get nostalgic for that car but fear it has aged as well as the film career of the guy who played Jake.
It might be better to go for the 928 or a Mercedes convertible such as a 380 or 450SL or even a Corvette. One of the powerful names from the 1990s is the Mazda Miata (MX-5), another is the Nissan Skyline GTR.
That brings us to the noughties. Few cars that will transcend time have been built this decade. Sadly, aside from tuner cars such as the Honda Civic, Mitsubishi Lancer and Subaru Impreza WRX, the cars that will evoke it were meant to evoke times past.
Two design trends stand out so far this decade. One seems to be designing cars with drag coefficients in mind rather than beauty. The other is to recycle the past, not replicate it. Think the new Mini or the new Ford Mustang. Some of these new spins on old designs may be an improvement.
Lamborghini's concept car for the Miura has turned heads but it will be hard to top the original. Dodge's new Challenger and Chevy's new Camaro will drive the muscle car revival further and will certainly be safer than their forebears but it's hard to imagine them gaining in price over time.
To protect against this it might pay to buy the car that is serving as inspiration. Aston Martin is set to make a four-door called the Rapide. You could buy the last saloon, the distinctive (and that word is carefully chosen) Lagonda. Or you could take a tip from Audi, which is considering a concept for the TT that is a shooting brake (industry term for fast estate or station wagon) and buy an old shooting brake from Jensen or Aston Martin.
One car that could evoke this decade is the new Ferrari 599 GTB Fioriano. This is a car for plutocrats and their hangers-on. The number stands for the displacement of its V12 engine. GTB is short for Gran Turismo Berlinetta, to remind potential buyers of the other Berlinettas in Ferrari's stable, some of the best prancing ponies built (the 599 has 600 plus horses). And Fiorano is the private track Ferrari uses to hone its Formula One and road cars.
This is a quick age and the car does that trait justice, going from zero to 62mph in 3.7 seconds and heading on past 200mph. This is also a technological age and the car has technology in spades, including something called a magnetorheological fluid suspension to keep the driver on the road.
"If I were to buy a new car it would be a 599, which could become a classic," Houghton said, adding: "Too early to tell."
I bet that doesn't stop someone from parking it on my street.
