Classics Vs. Muscle Cars
August 1, 2005
The decorous halls of old-car hobbydom are trembling to the thumping idle of a
Hemi-powered muscle car revolution. Perhaps the loudest rumble came when a
1971 Plymouth Hemi ’Cuda convertible changed hands for over $3 million.
That was one of only seven such cars in the country, but other rare Hemi-powered
models routinely fetch over a quarter million dollars. Clones of these cars, or
what some auction- eers euphemistically refer to as “re-creations”–powered by a
nonoriginal Hemi “crate” engine–can command more than $120,000.
What is causing these cars to scorch off the auction block faster than they
did off the starting line during their drag racing heydays? A 1970 orange ’Cuda
convertible used on the Nash Bridges TV show instigated the fracas when it sold
for $148,500 at the 2003 Barrett-Jackson auction. Many experts, however, credit
another television production–Speed Channel’s coverage of the Barrett-Jackson
auction–for the stratospheric prices and attendant frenzied activity in the
muscle car market.
All this activity is eerily reminiscent of the rampant speculation in Ferraris
back in the late 1980s, when public interest was piqued by a Ferrari
convertible–driven, coincidentally, by another fictional television police
detective by the name of Sonny Crockett, who was also played by Don Johnson. At
the height (or depths, depending on your point of view) of the Ferrari frenzy,
even the coupe versions of the (albeit fake) Daytona Spider featured on the show
were fetching more than a million dollars. That bubble burst in 1990, and today,
as Russo and Steele auction principal Drew Alcazar advises, “Those of us who
survived can buy any Daytona we want for $150,000.”
Are today’s muscle car buyers teetering on a similar bubble? Will values fade as
quickly as one of Sonny Crockett’s pastel-colored T-shirts? Or is this market a
true reflection of the changing tastes of cash-laden baby boomers who grew up
with muscle cars as their dream machines, instead of depression-era classics
such as the Duesenbergs and Packards that were the foundation of the
car-collecting hobby in this country?
We polled a cross section of wise old car experts to see if we could make sense
of this phenomenon. Their opinions are as varied and all-encompassing as
Chevrolet’s engine option list was in the late 1960s.
Jim Wangers may
not have invented the muscle car–his boss John Z. DeLorean and a few Pontiac
engineers deserve credit for that–but his creative marketing campaigns for the
GTO touched off the horsepower race that started in the streets sometime in the
’60s and has since moved into the collector car auction houses.
“You’ll notice I’m laughing before you finish the question,” Wangers says when
asked his opinion about the current state of affairs. “There’s nothing different
about the cars in terms of sophistication, or lack thereof, from 10 or 15 years
ago that would affect their value–except [that] some very smart promoters, along
with some smart television producers, have put together a good show. They’ve
created a market around showmanship.”
Wangers understands showmanship. He once duped a major car magazine into racing
a Pontiac GTO, in which he had clandestinely installed a larger-than-stock
engine, against a Ferrari GTO. When the cover story blared the news of the
plebeian Pontiac’s easy victory over the high-speed icon, the muscle car era was
off and running along with Pontiac sales.
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