2009 in review: We utterly fail to anticipate anything

A year ago,  I came up with nine predictions for the year ahead, including the state of the industry and the collector-car scene. As some of you may have noticed, the year didn’t really turn out as any of us anticipated, and I’ve been dreading reviewing my prognostications from back then. In memory, they were laughably far off base, but let’s take a look and break it down.

I said:

1. Detroit as we know it will survive.

Yeah, doomsday, bailout, blah blah blah. We at Hemmings aren’t looking at the last 10 years of the industry and calling that history – we’re looking at the the industry since 1890, and these crises happen. Heck, Willys-Overland had gone bankrupt what, twice? by the time WWII came around, and still survived into the Fifties. Bankruptcy, even for a major automaker, is not the end of the world, and should be good for the car buyer, allowing the manufacturer to jettison some baggage in the form of outmoded management practices. With Federal money flowing it’s not in the cards for 2009, although it may be a different story when the notes come due. We’ll end the year with the Big Three intact, and Ford will continue to be the healthiest, improving market share.

I’m going to be smug while I can. I didn’t see the Chrysler-Fiat thing coming, but I nailed the rest. Ford, you may send the F250 directly to my house rather than to Hemmings.

2. A major American nameplate will disappear.

GM is well aware they have too many overlapping brands, and have already started killing previously-announced models. Saturn has also been a brand without a mission for a while now, and while GM claims Buick is integral to their corporate ideal, a lot of people would have said that about Oldsmobile, or Oakland, or about Chrysler’s Plymouth. And while Chrysler doesn’t have much left to shed, Ford hasn’t exactly been lavishing love on Mercury lately. They’ll probably keep Lincoln alive, though, just to stay in the higher-end game. That pretty much narrows it down to Saturn or Buick. Buick is a big international brand for GM and while it could leave the American market while staying alive in China, it’d be awkward, so…it’s been good, Spring Hill.

Did I say “A major American nameplate will disappear?” I meant “A major American nameplate might survive.”

3. The collector-car market will start to pick up in late spring.

Monterey in August was the last of the high times; by October, the market was heavy with overpriced cars that weren’t selling, and the last two months have not been good. Right now, people are feeling upside-down in their cars, but can’t realize a profit by selling. It is a great time to be bargain hunting, though, and we should see good volume in Scottsdale next week, if not high average transactions.

It did not. Happygrams from the PR people notwithstanding, most of the year was crummy, including Monterey. It was only into the fall and early winter that action really started to pick up, and it’s nowhere near the levels of 18 months ago.

4. It won’t be a good year for high-end European exotics.

Too many of those cars are owned by non-car people, whose answer to an underperforming stock is to sell it. Those with the wherewithal to make deals on Ferrari 250 GT SWBs are doing so.

It was not. Some big cars went unsold; I’ve heard through the grapevine that there were big transactions between private parties, but a lot of people selling retail took a bath.

5. It won’t be a good year for Fifties American cars.

To a surprising extent, big-fin car values have been driven by European collectors. High demand and weak dollars have allowed European collectors to pay higher prices than many American collectors care to. That gravy train has sailed, Freunde.

I’ll think of 2009 as the year when Seventies cars came on. The meat of the Fifties market stayed flat and while the Disco iron didn’t make huge prices, a lot of very interesting, low-mileage original cars emerged, laying the foundations for a cool future in barges and boats. Several people I know snapped up deals in this market.

6. It will be a good year for crème de la crème prewar American cars.

There are lower-end Full Classics, Studebaker Presidents, smaller Packard 1200 series, Buicks, LaSalles, and I don’t expect them to do anything spectacular. But there is some pent-up demand for not just Duesenbergs and Pierce-Arrows, but the fine, expensive automobiles of the Oughts, Teens and Twenties. The first stage will be some right-of-first refusal private transactions, likely already happening, and then Peerlesses and Marmons will appear in greater numbers. And remember when all those Full Classics went to Japan? They’ve been on the move again for a while now. This should result in an accelerating trade, with some bargains at first, then the market getting pumped up by the time the big East Coast fall auctions of prewar American cars come around.

Not even close. The top sale of a prewar American car was $1.620 million for Kruse’s 1911 Rambler (we’re not counting the controversial ACD car). Between 2006-2008, six cars did better than that, including two Duesenbergs for over $2.6 million. In 2009, no Duesey made half that.

7. Muscle cars will recover.

For the same reasons as the European exotics, muscle car values took a hit in 2008. I’ve seen some screaming deals, especially 440 Mopars. Mustangs seem to be holding on OK, but there are also (certain) Chevy LS6-powered cars out there relatively cheap, like El Caminos, and Mustang isn’t the only name in the Ford performance portfolio. Yeah, some people got burned on Hemis and fakes, and expensive gas scares people away. But here’s the thing about muscle cars: They only came around once, and they’re incredibly fun. Yeah, we have some wicked hi-po cars right now, but they’re not the same thing, which you know if you’ve driven one.

This was the most surprising failure for me. I really thought all the fat was out of the muscle car market, but apparently not. You priced a 440 Six Pack Super Bee lately? Shop around and you can find an authenticated A12 Mopar, 429 Cobra Jet Mustang or LS6 Chevelle for around $50,000, which you could not do in 2006.

8. My imported collectible pick for 2009 is the Jensen Interceptor.

What? Remember when Big Healey prices started to skyrocket? They took prices of every other British roadster along with them, to the point where there were $30,000 MGBs for sale (before things fell apart). This year’s surprise was the Italian-American hybrid, but the Isos and Bizzarrinis are now out of reach. The Interceptor will catch a perfect storm, nexus, whatever word-of-the-minute you want to use. It has big, fun American Chrysler V-8 power and British heritage, it’s distinctive and Seventies cars hit the right demographic. I saw one at Russo and Steele in August in showroom condition–the consignor turned down a $65,000 bid, which bought two Interceptors two years ago.

I doubt one sold in the US for more than $20,000 in 2009; the highest sale I saw was about $15,000. (though Bonhams and Coys each sold one in London for around $24,000) If anyone paid any attention at all to Jensen Interceptors in 2009, it was to sell them as cheap as possible.

9. My American collectible pick for 2009 is the Ford Falcon.

What? Really, it’s more a class of cars rather than the Falcon itself. The Falcon, Valiant, Lancer, Nova, American, Comet, F-85, Corvair and other Sixties compacts are the forefathers of the cars we drive today, and share some characteristics with modern cars that make them attractive for a collector. Decent mileage and handling and garageable size are both real concerns for the car owner on a budget. Remember that flooded market and bargain hunting I mentioned? A 1960 Valiant, Falcon or Corvair, as the first of the breed, are historic cars that are about to be half-a-century old, and few of them cost very much (top asking price today for a Falcon on Hemmings is $29,000, and you can do a lot better than that). For better or worse, we wouldn’t be where we are today without them.

Falcon prices have picked up over the last year. High-quality convertibles now trade in the $20,000-$25,000, substantially up from 2008. Not that anyone got rich speculating on Falcons or other early compacts, and there’s probably something that did a heck of a lot better, but they did OK.

I figure I batted about .555 on those. Robert Silverberg says that guesses on the future will be correct 16% of the time, but .555 will get you into Cooperstown any day.

Now the big question: What’s going to happen this year? I’d love to hear your thoughts.