Car collectors are getting younger – as are the objects of their affections. And it’s
transforming the auction market, says Ben Oliver.
In 2023, the 10 most valuable cars sold at the Monterey Car Week auctions dated, on average, from 1950. A year later, their average was 1968. Last year it was 1984, meaning that the top 10 had become 34 years younger in just 36 months. The effect was even more marked among last year’s top five: four were from the 1990s onwards and two of them – including the top seller, the $26m 2025 Ferrari Daytona SP3 sold for charity – were from the 2020s.
Our notion of what constitutes a blue-chip collector car is changing rapidly. The best auctions are now awash with cars that are plainly neither ‘vintage’ nor ‘classic’ and are often fresh from the factory. They’re making huge money, drawing attention – not to mention cash – away from what were traditionally seen as the more beautiful, glamorous, and historically significant cars that have up to now dominated the collector-car market.
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Of RM Sotheby’s’ nine major auto auctions last year, three were almost exclusively for cars from the 1990s onwards. Its last sale of the year was held in December in Abu Dhabi, where it set a new world auction record for a 1994 McLaren F1, the most desirable and valuable modern classic, at over $25m. That’s around three times what it would have made 10 years ago and high into the value stratosphere once dominated by the great Ferraris of the 1950s and ’60s.
Some of this is down to a natural demographic shift. Collectors typically get started in their 40s, and the cars they buy first are those they wanted in their youth. You expect a car to start appreciating in value as it hits 30, when those who had pictures of it on their bedroom walls as teens acquire the means to put the real thing in their garage. But what’s different is how hard and fast these ‘young-timers’ are rising in value, and how the same effect now extends to the most recent releases.
There are two things going on here. The first, somewhat obviously, is that people are getting rich younger. The new cars that a 25-year-old multi-millionaire coveted at 15 are only 10 years old now, and younger buyers are more likely to want cars laden with technology rather than history, as tech is what they understand (and it’s often how they made their money).
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The second is that the supercar-makers are manufacturing scarcity like never before. Around 15 years ago, Ferrari began producing more limited-production, even-higher-price models: think LaFerrari and the new F80, the Icona series referencing its historic models, the more extreme versions of its standard road cars such as the 812 Competizione, and the track-only FXX series. Greater supply of supposedly rare models has been more than counterbalanced by seemingly unlimited demand. These cars sell out instantly to loyal customers who also buy an example of every standard new Ferrari just to stay on the list for the special stuff. McLaren, Lamborghini, and Aston Martin are all now attempting the same trick, and the established supercar-makers have now been joined by low-volume producers such as Singer and Gordon Murray Automotive, whose cars sell out equally rapidly.
If you missed out on one of these models from the factory and one comes up at auction, you’ll try pretty hard not to miss out twice. The clamor for them is just as fierce on the secondary market as it is at the factory gates, and it’s transforming the auction scene. A $600,000 Ferrari 812 Competizione from 2024 is $2m at auction already, and a $2m LaFerrari Aperta from 2017 is now $7m. The final examples of the GMA T50 are only just being delivered but it made its auction debut at that Abu Dhabi sale. The car offered cost $3m new but was hammered at $5m: not a bad return for a few months’ ownership. The fact that all 100 sold within 48 hours should have been a clue.
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Steve Wakefield heads the Swiss-based Kidston K500 classic-car market intelligence service which spotted that stat from the Monterey sales. “Those cars, that scene: that’s where the buzz is now,” he told me as last year’s auction season ended in Abu Dhabi. But what does that mean for you, as a collector? If you’re offered a low-numbers Ferrari, take it. Be prepared to pay strong prices for almost anything rare, collectible, and recent. If you already have one of the greats, like a 1960s Ferrari 250 or a 1930s Alfa 8C, your many millions are probably safe, as those cars are currently seen more like Old Master paintings, their values less susceptible to changing tastes. But as the tide of interest and cash begins to wash away from the cars of the ’70s and earlier, many will be left unfairly ignored and undervalued, despite their beauty, rarity, and significance – and the way they sing when you drive them. Many of the younger crew might not know what a 1950s OSCA or Cisitalia is, yet. If you do, now would be time to buy one.
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