Our friend and colleague, Larry Edsall from the Phoenix Automotive Press Association wrote this article for the New York Times. This was a wonderful meeting that we attended and Larry summed it up beautifully.
By LARRY EDSALL
PHOENIX – Car collectors from around the world are either here in Arizona’s Valley of the Sun (where it’s raining, with more precipitation forecast throughout the week), or they are tuned in via television, telephone or the Internet as some 3,000 vehicles of special interest and historic value are up for auction at a variety of venues.
Tuesday night in the Phoenix Art Museum, three experts shared their thoughts about car collecting at the Phoenix Automotive Press Association’s Arizona Auction preview.
Trends in collecting may come and go, but the collectors tend to remain the same – they’re 40 to 60 years of age, said Don Williams, who has been involved in buying and selling classic cars since he was a teenager in the 1960s. Mr. Williams has bought, sold or been involved in the sale of some 10,000 classic vehicles and has assembled the Blackhawk Collection, a part-museum, part-classic car dealership in Northern California.
While the buyer demographic may have remained the same for decades, Mr. Williams added that “a 50-year-old today doesn’t not want to collect the same vehicles as a 50-year-old did in the 1970s.”
What those graying buyers want first and foremost are the cars they lusted for back when they were in high school. For today’s bidders, those cars often are 1950s and ’60s models, whether European sports cars or American muscle cars.
But such schoolboy nostalgia can “mature backward,” producing serious car collectors who develop an appreciation for earlier vehicles, said McKeel Hagerty, second-generation head of a family-owned collector car insurance company. Before long, he said, a pre-war Rolls-Royce or Packard may be parked next to that late 1960s muscle car.
Donald Osborne, a New York native who performed as a baritone with the Metropolitan Opera for two seasons before pursuing his passion for exotic Italian cars, said what he’s seeing, especially from young collectors who have grown up in an age of digital electronics, is a new appreciation for the really old, “brass era” vehicles that provide a delightful usability and can be driven and enjoyed for their “purely mechanical” nature.
Mr. Hagerty said another trend is the appreciation for cars that have been preserved rather than restored. “A car can be original only once,” he noted, saying such cars are motorized time capsules and are being sought “like jewels” by automotive collectors.
But, added Mr. Williams, each generation makes its own choices about what cars it will value. For example, he said, 20 years ago, he’d never have thought 1950s concept cars would become the object of bidding wars.
Mr. Hagerty agreed and went back to the importance of the classic car buyer’s high school daze. “A 1977 Toronado is somebody’s dream car,” he said.
Tuesday night in the Phoenix Art Museum, three experts shared their thoughts about car collecting at the Phoenix Automotive Press Association’s Arizona Auction preview.Trends in collecting may come and go, but the collectors tend to remain the same – they’re 40 to 60 years of age, said Don Williams, who has been involved in buying and selling classic cars since he was a teenager in the 1960s. Mr. Williams has bought, sold or been involved in the sale of some 10,000 classic vehicles and has assembled the Blackhawk Collection, a part-museum, part-classic car dealership in Northern California.
While the buyer demographic may have remained the same for decades, Mr. Williams added that “a 50-year-old today doesn’t not want to collect the same vehicles as a 50-year-old did in the 1970s.”
What those graying buyers want first and foremost are the cars they lusted for back when they were in high school. For today’s bidders, those cars often are 1950s and ’60s models, whether European sports cars or American muscle cars.
But such schoolboy nostalgia can “mature backward,” producing serious car collectors who develop an appreciation for earlier vehicles, said McKeel Hagerty, second-generation head of a family-owned collector car insurance company. Before long, he said, a pre-war Rolls-Royce or Packard may be parked next to that late 1960s muscle car.
Donald Osborne, a New York native who performed as a baritone with the Metropolitan Opera for two seasons before pursuing his passion for exotic Italian cars, said what he’s seeing, especially from young collectors who have grown up in an age of digital electronics, is a new appreciation for the really old, “brass era” vehicles that provide a delightful usability and can be driven and enjoyed for their “purely mechanical” nature.
Mr. Hagerty said another trend is the appreciation for cars that have been preserved rather than restored. “A car can be original only once,” he noted, saying such cars are motorized time capsules and are being sought “like jewels” by automotive collectors.
But, added Mr. Williams, each generation makes its own choices about what cars it will value. For example, he said, 20 years ago, he’d never have thought 1950s concept cars would become the object of bidding wars.
Mr. Hagerty agreed and went back to the importance of the classic car buyer’s high school daze. “A 1977 Toronado is somebody’s dream car,” he said.
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