I go to a lot of car shows, and I definitely see cars I don't love. For example, the low riders, they're just not my kind of thing. But I fall in love with each car because low riders are family cars. These families don't buy and sell cars. When they buy a car it's an investment for them and they will keep that car. Their kids are born and these kids work on the car and then their kids. This car can end up having three generations of family members loving this car and going together to car shows.
If you want to see passion, if you want to see obsession for a car, go to low rider shows. They never stop working on them. They just keep doing more and more and things with these cars and you have to admire how much they love these cars.
So any car can be a class or a collector's item. If you ask which are the most popular cars - well that is affected by value. There is a supply and demand and the hottest cars in the collector car field are the cars which are going to attract the most money. It is really interesting to me that the hottest part of the market place right now is hot rods. I grew up with hot rods. I never dreamed back in the 50s that in 2005 hot rods would be the hot thing. But the hot rods are selling for hundreds of thousands dollars. Similar to that, are muscle cars.
Muscle cars came out in the 60s and the 70s and we are seeing muscle cars now that sold back in those days for $2,500 selling for $200,000 today. Unbelievable, but the ones they are selling for the most are the ones that are exactly as they were when they were brand new.
If you wanted the most expensive '57 Chevy it is a convertible and it's probably fuel injected exactly as the car was when it came off the showroom floor. A convertible '57 Chevy with fuel injection was rare, so they will attract the highest prices and those prices can go up close to $200,000 for the right one.
So, muscle cars are the biggest right now, and the old brass cars they used to make back in the 30s - old Packards and Duesenbergs. They have been selling for years into the million or two to three million dollar range. That is softening a bit because the people who like those types of cars are dying out.
It's all about supply (how many of a certain car are available) and demand (how many people want the cars). Sometimes what happens is that you are into cars when you are kid. You get married and you can't afford to play around with cars because you are spending your money raising kids and putting them through school. Then finally you are an empty nester and you have some disposable income for the first time in years. You tend to go back to the car that was important to you when you are a kid. And so you go back 40 years and what was big at that time and right now it's put you back in the muscle cars. That's why muscle cars have come on so strong over the last couple of years.
