Is a collector car actually a better investment than your 401k? The math is starting to look real tempting.

Posted by hanzoku_alliance@reddit | Autos | View on Reddit | 27 comments

Honestly, if it’s got three pedals and a high-revving naturally aspirated motor, it’s basically a savings account on wheels at this point.

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FingerPuzzleheaded81@reddit

What about storage costs? What about insurance costs? What about maintenance cost? What happens when you guess wrong?

My father in law did this with a model T. He bought it as a retirement plan quote any input because it was a good deal. He bought it for 30k. He sold it ~12 years later for 26k. In that time, he spent at least 30k on it for insurance, storage and some vehicle Maintence cost. So his 30k investment turned into -4k.

That 30k was invested prior to him buying that car. If he left it invested, that would have been ~70k today. If he saved the money spent on insurance etc. at 0% instead, he’d have 100k.

And for those of you about to say at least he drove a piece of history while he owned it, he didn’t. He never drove it. He never even started it.

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Ran4@reddit

It's kind of crazy just how cheap the model T still is.

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2oonhed@reddit

Maybe......IF :
You have a clean, indoor, climate controlled and secure place to keep it.
And IF : you clean it every time you drive it.
and IF, you know how to keep and maintain a collector car. And by that I mean, even IF you never drive it, collector cars still need battery and fluid maintenance every year or so.
Keeping the value up on a collector car is work.
You can't just park it and forget it.
AND you would have to watch out for thieves.

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damnitryon@reddit

Your 401K can’t get rear ended by a teenager distracted by texting.

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OnlyFuzzy13@reddit

Your 401k can get wrecked by a President texting though.

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damnitryon@reddit

The market/your 401K can recover.

Your car has at best irrecoverably lost value, at worst, completely written off.

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Newzachary@reddit

No but it can get rear ended by market crash.

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damnitryon@reddit

Except for that analogy to be applicable, everyone else also got rear ended at the same time. I’d also point out that the value of most sports cars and collectibles usually isn’t particularly durable when the market crashes and the pool of potential buyers shrinks substantially and sellers look to liquidate assets to weather the storm.

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Newzachary@reddit

So, just like the stock market.

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moistmonsterman@reddit

And thats highly likely as well

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BackwerdsMan@reddit

Car markets crash too

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damnitryon@reddit

I guess I may not have explained clearly.

Your car gets destroyed, it’s destroyed. The value of everyone else’s cars are unaffected.

Your 401k gets destroyed, so does everyone else’s. A uh, lowering tide lowers all boats? So you’re still in relatively the same position as compared to everyone else.

You could very well be the cleanest shirt in the dirty pile, and you’ll do substantially better once the government inevitably starts bailing everyone out.

The government will not bail your totaled Porsche out. 😂

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Doom_Sing_Soprano@reddit

Here's to hoping my Z4m appreciates in value.

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mr_lab_rat@reddit

No.

There are rare cases where it can work. You happen to buy the right car at the right time. You enjoy it but don’t put too many miles on it.

For every one of those cases there are 100 of cars that got hyped up but then nobody wanted.

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wrongwayup@reddit

Do not take investing advice from Porsche people. Especially Macan people.

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Fromthe802@reddit

Don't tell us, tell Barb otherwise you're in the doghouse, Sonny!

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tuckermans@reddit

If you’re talking about a 5 million dollar Pagani, maybe. Not your 75k shitbox.

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nopester24@reddit

NO. it is not. if you're holding a car as an investment for retirement you're fooling yourself. on an average scale you'd get somewhere around $100k or less. only a very few rare / special vehicles have ever pulled in a million or more.

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Rough_Cancel7265@reddit

No, the math has been done on this a lot. Keeping the math simple and say you buy a 20K car, even if it doesn't lose value you're still going to spend money on maintenance, registration and insurance. Even a basic high yield account will give you back $600 for doing absolutely nothing.

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beermaker@reddit

I've been driving mine regularly for over five years... I get a lot of enjoyment out of it, and I don't know if it would command a high enough price to recoup the cost of its fuel injection and disc brake conversion, transmission and transfer case rebuild, and everything else I've done to improve its driveability. I pay a pittance for insurance, its only real drawbacks right now are lack of power steering and single-digit mpg.

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Classic cars, even if you have a bunch, are all the same type of asset. Even if you pick well, you’re still subject to the whole class of assets losing value.

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