I have been following this subject with great interest and have tried to study it a bit.
There are certainly less GOOD cars for sale, but probably even less "sheds" than ever before.
However, prices have taken a significant tumble in recent times,in the private sale market especially in the last 3 years. When I was looking to buy my first one 5 - 6 years ago good V8s were going for anything between £6 - 10k with the average decent MOT'd 2 litre at around £2,500. FHC's have remained more or less the same.
V8s have suffered the biggest drop in price, mainly due to fuel cost I would suspect but 2 litre convertibles have suffered a noticeable drop as well. You certainly would never have been able to buy a 4 litre Grinnall in the condition I did recently 5 years ago.
From what I have looked at, any classic car is a bad investment in terms of financial gain and appreciation, the time to buy cars as an investment passed with the 1980's. In the next 10 - 15 years there will be an inevitable drop in demand and surplus of classic cars hitting the market as current owners become older and even die. There is no younger population with the same level of interest to take these vehicles on and so demand will drop and the numbers of cars for sale will gradually rise.
Couple that with rising costs of motoring and legislation to limit our ability to drive in the fashion we do now and it looks a little bleak for the classic car market long term in my opinion.
There is always the argument that a car is worth as much as people want to pay for it of course.
Moral is I reckon - enjoy every momnent of our owning our brilliant cars while we can, but dont expect to get back even a fraction of the money you spend on running and buying them [:D]
Purple 2.0 Litre DHC Grinnal
<font color="red"><b>My two 1980 Wedges...</b></font id="red">
