Is the Mopar Market Softening?

[Mike DC]

 
A Babe Ruth signed baseball is worth something like 100,000x the cost of the baseball & the ballpoint pen ink on it.   

Most (non-rare-factory-Hemi) musclecars are never gonna do that.  There's too many of the 318 cars out there, and too much of the value people have for them isn't linked to the vintage.  Too much of the musclecar market just wants a functional musclecar of any sort.  They won't care if 2/3 of it was manufactured in 2007 as long as it still looks & works like an original.  That puts a certain "ceiling" on the value.  IMHO the value of these cars is always gonna be roughly within sight of the cost of building a fucntional copy.  If it can be cloned for $35K, then I doubt it's ever gonna be worth more than $40-45K even if it's 100% original survivor. 


A few years ago I might have felt differently, but these days the reproduction industry is finally showing signs of producing MUCH BETTER sheetmetal and that changes things.  This new generation of repro metal is finally good enough to start attempting "open air" reconstruction of entire missing chunks of a car.  (You no longer have to cut up & use half of an original part just to make the repro work acceptably.)  That begins to nudge these cars out of the realm of "irreplaceable."

 

[BigBlockSam]

i've noticed that the big money cars have come down a bit but project chargers are hot. there holding up well . it's easier to put out $6000 then to come up with  $60000 . Rene

[kevink]

Well, I think that all the people with "ALL" the money has about spent all they want to spend on investments in classic cars. The stock market has rebounded. The company I work for had less than a $1.00 a share stock 3 years ago when it all went south. Today it is back to over $39.00 a share. I talk to a guy 5 years ago that all him and his partner were doing was going around and buying Mopars to store and sell at a later time when the market hit prime. Barrett Jackson and these other TV auctions leave a false sense of the market but, put the market at prime. You will see a small decline I feel but, just like the price of land, they are not making these old mopars anymore. As far as the new Challenger causing a decline in price, I don't think it will. There are still the people out there that had a 1968 Dodge Charger in High School that wants another now.

[41husk]

Yes Rene, but most people can't get them restored for under $54000.

[Mike DC]

As far as the new Challenger causing a decline in price, I don't think it will. There are still the people out there that had a 1968 Dodge Charger in High School that wants another now.

I disagree.  The new Challenger doesn't have to totally eliminate the demand for old cars just to affect it.  I don't think the Chally is gonna rewrite the Mopar hobby or anything, but I do think it will draw a small percentage of buyers away from medium-driver-quality musclecars.

The new Challenger probably won't make much difference in the project cars at all, though.  If you've got your financial sh*t together enough to be looking at buying & insuring a brand-new Dodge Challenger, then it stands to reason that you probably weren't considering any money-loser project cars for $4000 anyway.