Classic Car Sales Down Slightly at Pebble Beach 2017

The August classic car sales in Monterey, California held to coincide with the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance are a benchmark measure of the classic car market. The LA Times spoke to the people at Hagerty who keep the records on these sales, including the $22.55m Aston Martin DBR1/1 that RM Sotheby’s sold.

This year the sales were off slightly from the previous year showing a continuing consolidation of the classic car market after the rapid rise that peaked in 2014.

[T]he total dollar value for the week’s auctions was $317.6 million, according to numbers gathered by the vintage insurance company Hagerty. That’s off last year’s total of $338 million, and far below the $400 million in sales during a heated 2014 car week. […]

The average sale price this year was $438,000, compared with last year’s $466,000. The sell-through rate was about 57% for both years.

“It isn’t that overall prices are down, but that we saw fewer seven- and eight-digit cars available this year,” Hagerty said.

In her pre-sale story on Bloomberg, Hannah Elliott predicted growth in the lower ranges:

the key spot to watch this weekend is that of a group of vehicles valued at less than $US100,000: Ford Broncos from the 1970s, Chevrolet 3100 trucks from the 1950s, and the odd BMW 2002 or two.

“That group is booming,” says Jonathan Klinger, spokesman for insurer Hagerty. “That is where you’re seeing older millennials (35 years or so) get in for the first time, so from that standpoint the market is healthy. It’s not the same [older, moneyed] people churning over the same cars.”

Elsewhere, the 1954-1965 Alfa Romeo Giulietta and 1957-1970 Lancia Flaminia have increased in value over the last year, with little sign of slowing down. Likewise, the late 1980s BMW M6 and early ’70s BMW 3.0CSL have heated up as the interest in older Porsche models has cooled.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to have been the case as Elliott’s follow story stated: