Are Jaguar "E" types overpriced?
Discussion
a8hex said:
TooMany2cvs said:
a8hex said:
There will certainly be a lot of people who won't be leaving more than 20K as that's all they'll let you keep if you need care in your old age, if you've got more than 20K in assets you'll have to pay to care for yourself.
You say that like it's a bad thing.I have no problem with expecting people to pay their own way, but all such systems are open to gaming.
And no, I don't have an answer to this problem. The generation going through this now were promised that the state would look after them to the grave, now they find the state has been making promises it can't keep. The following generations are going to find that more and more of these promises aren't worth the manifestos they were written on.
Of course it captures a few of the people who created their own wealth but for the vast majority it’s just accidental and irrelevant wealth from the enormous inflation of assets such as a house. And in these cases the only people who are probably upset are their children who have been living beyond their means for years forward spending the money they calculated their parents’ would be leaving them.
Will it disincentivive people from saving? No. It’ll just be used as an excuse by those who were never going to save anyway. People split quite nearly into two natural groups, spenders and savers and the former is by far the most prevalent and every one of them will always find an excuse to blame external forces for them not having saved anything for the future.
And savers will always work out great they’d rather not spend the last decade of their life sitting in their own urine in the corner of a room full of cabbages being brutalised by minimum wage labour that despises then. They will be the ones that appreciate that saving will keep them away from the hideous clutches of the State care system.
But, back to ETypes. Are they currently over priced? I don’t think so. While they build a huge number of them and they aren’t exactly rare they are finite. At the same time prices are extremely wide ranging from a few tens of thousands to a few hundred. That shows quite a healthy market given just how unregulated and totally bent the classic car market is. Some of the pinnacle cars are overpriced because they aren’t what they claim to be but ultimately this market, like many others is just highlighting the expanded divide between the ultra wealthy and the not.
DonkeyApple said:
Some of the pinnacle cars are overpriced because they aren’t what they claim to be but ultimately this market, like many others is just highlighting the expanded divide between the ultra wealthy and the not.
Surely rarity is the thing. For example, A friend of mine bought is E-type for a few thousand in 1982. It just happens to be one of four outside lock fixed heads with racing history. Today that would fetch upwards of £500,000 I think because it will give access to specific events such as the Revival and the Mille Miglia. It might be bought by rich people who want to be seen but don't know one end of an E-type from the other, and then again see it as an "investment". We calculate that a surprising (for its age) 60% of all E-types survive, so round about 40,000 of which by far the majority are LHD. 357 flat floor roadsters were built in RHD and 1,581 LHD if the statistics are to be believed. Rarity brings with it a price, even though these are the most uncomfortable car of the lot! But you are right in saying that cars don't have to be that dear; a 2+2 S2 is not liked even though it is the best sorted and costs far less and is, I suppose one might say "affordable" to many. Certainly more so than one of the early cars. Enough said. Time will tell, but I won't be here to see it.lowdrag said:
Surely rarity is the thing. For example, A friend of mine bought is E-type for a few thousand in 1982. It just happens to be one of four outside lock fixed heads with racing history. Today that would fetch upwards of £500,000 I think because it will give access to specific events such as the Revival and the Mille Miglia. It might be bought by rich people who want to be seen but don't know one end of an E-type from the other, and then again see it as an "investment". We calculate that a surprising (for its age) 60% of all E-types survive, so round about 40,000 of which by far the majority are LHD. 357 flat floor roadsters were built in RHD and 1,581 LHD if the statistics are to be believed. Rarity brings with it a price, even though these are the most uncomfortable car of the lot! But you are right in saying that cars don't have to be that dear; a 2+2 S2 is not liked even though it is the best sorted and costs far less and is, I suppose one might say "affordable" to many. Certainly more so than one of the early cars. Enough said. Time will tell, but I won't be here to see it.
Rarity definitely plays an important role but it can’t mechanically explain specific values. It’s money supply that does that. Values of these types of asset are high because of absolutely enormous money supply. If you stop creating currency while also increasing the value of that currency via centralised rates then you obviously reduce that money supply which in turn slows, stops or reverses asset values. The other function that gives value to ‘rarity’ is desirability. That is something that the E Type massively has over other rare cars such as the Austin Princess or white dog pooh.
In a very basic formula you need rarity, desirability and money supply for something to have a value.
If we look at the last decade where values have grown exponentially, areguably rarity has probably fallen in real terms. I suspect there are more E Types up and running today than a decade ago. Has desirability increased? It’s difficult to say. People who desired them as cars still do and that number probably hasn’t changed. Those that desire them as a safe haven for excess cash or for a leveraged speculative punt arguably has increased dramatically but that element is really a function of the third part, money supply. And it is money supply that has boomed meteorically over the decade.
When money supply contracts then rarity will not hold up values all it can do is underpin how far those values will decline against other declining values. Basically the same roll it plays on the upcycle in reverse.
Money supply is a very simple element. Increase it and asset values increase. Decrease it and they decline. Desirability is more interesting as it is actually the most elastic of the three elements. You’d be amased at how desirability evaporates as asset values soften or decline.
As to whether any of us will be around to see the rebasing, this is arguably a function of how healthy or lucky we are v the rate at which debt rates rise.
Yes they are expensive for what they are. But they are also iconic and beautiful and the people that know not about cars have heard of them. So the speculators move in.
Of more concern is the way the market behaves and how few genuine cars are actually out there,
My father in law's E-type V12 roadster, in red with wires natch...
He sold in 1986 and had a picture from then with 82000 on the clock.
Advert in Jaguar World from 1996 has it with 44000 miles on.
Sold recently with 32000 'genuine miles and full history from new'.
My own V12 XJ-S.
I bought it from my father with 84000 on (he owned it from the dealer).
I sold it with 92000 on.
Sold again with 89000.
Last seen with 77000.
Fools! I'd much rather 150000 honest and well documented miles than a cod heritage for a premium price.
A fool and his money...
Of more concern is the way the market behaves and how few genuine cars are actually out there,
My father in law's E-type V12 roadster, in red with wires natch...
He sold in 1986 and had a picture from then with 82000 on the clock.
Advert in Jaguar World from 1996 has it with 44000 miles on.
Sold recently with 32000 'genuine miles and full history from new'.
My own V12 XJ-S.
I bought it from my father with 84000 on (he owned it from the dealer).
I sold it with 92000 on.
Sold again with 89000.
Last seen with 77000.
Fools! I'd much rather 150000 honest and well documented miles than a cod heritage for a premium price.
A fool and his money...
Stick Legs said:
Yes they are expensive for what they are. But they are also iconic and beautiful and the people that know not about cars have heard of them. So the speculators move in.
Of more concern is the way the market behaves and how few genuine cars are actually out there,
My father in law's E-type V12 roadster, in red with wires natch...
He sold in 1986 and had a picture from then with 82000 on the clock.
Advert in Jaguar World from 1996 has it with 44000 miles on.
Sold recently with 32000 'genuine miles and full history from new'.
My own V12 XJ-S.
I bought it from my father with 84000 on (he owned it from the dealer).
I sold it with 92000 on.
Sold again with 89000.
Last seen with 77000.
Fools! I'd much rather 150000 honest and well documented miles than a cod heritage for a premium price.
A fool and his money...
There’s a lightweight which the current owner claims is matching numbers except the original engine was campaigned in a MKII and is long gone. And the owner is fully aware of this and has had several letters sent over the years to the individual who owned and raced that engine. Of more concern is the way the market behaves and how few genuine cars are actually out there,
My father in law's E-type V12 roadster, in red with wires natch...
He sold in 1986 and had a picture from then with 82000 on the clock.
Advert in Jaguar World from 1996 has it with 44000 miles on.
Sold recently with 32000 'genuine miles and full history from new'.
My own V12 XJ-S.
I bought it from my father with 84000 on (he owned it from the dealer).
I sold it with 92000 on.
Sold again with 89000.
Last seen with 77000.
Fools! I'd much rather 150000 honest and well documented miles than a cod heritage for a premium price.
A fool and his money...
It’s a wholly unregulated market awash with money and vast fortunes to be made and that means it is riddled with crooks and fraudsters from auctioneers with fake accents who have been banned from regulated markets to garage owners who build fake cars and owners/speculators who modify the history of their investment.
But I’m not sure it matters. Everyone seems to know which are the hooky cars and I’m sure the current owners are just betting that they can move them on for a nice turn before the market corrects. It’s just a tremendously exciting game of pass the parcel but just with a big steaming turd as the last gift.
Dinoboy said:
I suppose this is what makes the barn find appealing to many.
There’s a farmer out here who lets someone leave cars in one of his open sided barns for months on end. I don’t get why they would store an old car like that as they just get covered in filth and end up looking like they’ve been abandoned in a barn for years. Most odd. DonkeyApple said:
Dinoboy said:
I suppose this is what makes the barn find appealing to many.
There’s a farmer out here who lets someone leave cars in one of his open sided barns for months on end. I don’t get why they would store an old car like that as they just get covered in filth and end up looking like they’ve been abandoned in a barn for years. Most odd. 
I know of at least two 'faked barn finds'........
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