And the winner of dreamer of the year is...

wotzgoingon wrote: »

9 grand for a DC2, madness. I know it is a '98 spec model and sounds like it is enthusiast owned but I would never pay that for it and I like DC2's.

If it was original/stock then I could see it. Good original cars are going for that in the UK, in sterling. In Europe they're getting 10-15k euro, but again for original spec. Same in their homeland of Japan(and they can be mad money in the US). "Upgrades" pretty much always hurt the value when a car starts moving into the "classic" category. Which these most certainly are. Classic car mags/sites have been plugging them a lot recently as have auction houses. The introduction of the new Civic R has brought even more attention to them. The days of them being bought for buttons are gone*.

But not in the Irish market. Our market is pretty much dead for these and similar. It's also a little odd. EG

Noveight wrote:

Could get a beaut of a DC5 for that money.

Everywhere else the DC5 has levelled out and is dropping in value. It's seen as the poor relation of the "real one"* and not an emerging classic. Except for here. For some reason Ireland prefers them. Irish buyers seem to be less put off by upgrades too. If I was selling a DC2 I'd advertise it in the UK, not here. If I was selling a DC5 reverse that.


*folks can forget that even "icons" like the Lancia Delta Integrale hit the low point once(around the late 90's). Sure loads of people raved about them, but didn't want to buy one and dealers just couldn't shift them. Now they're going for decent money. Ditto for Sierra and Escort Cossies.

**though the DC5 is still a remarkably modern looking car considering the design is nearly 20 years old(the DC2, especially with the round headlights looks more like late 80's). More torque, more power, more comfort too, but missing that special something the DC2 had. Back in the day I had the choice of either and drove a few examples of both, but the DC2 won out. It's got the better chassis/suspension setup.

Like so many of that era's Japanese stuff they went dirt cheap and/or they were "customised". A load were written off/stolen, some were K20 swapped and turned into track cars, or when the insurance got too high were parted out as at one stage they were worth more in parts than as a whole car(might still be the case in Ireland). This happens with pretty much every vaguely affordable "hot" car.

Going further back all sorts of hot hatch Peugeots, Renaults and Fords went through the same process and few enough all original examples survived. The late 90's customising I just drove through Carnoisseur(remember them) covered in glue period was vicious for it. VAG stuff tended to avoid much of that, or at least more say Golf GTi's survived relatively intact and original and you rarely saw tarted up Corrados. Alfa tended to avoid that madness too.

Now I have nothing against personal customisation of cars. I say fair play if you want something more unique(it'll do eff all for the real world performance), but down the line when selling it or the model becomes a collectible "classic", personal taste is a bloody hard sell and is guaranteed to mean the costs of upgrades directly affect the value. In a decades time that 9k DC2 will be worth far less than if it was left standard.

That said, because of the uniquely Irish situation there are a fair few older cars that are "bargains", if you had a few quid and storage. Buy something like a DC2 in original state for 4-5 grand and I'll bet the farm you can double that in a few years time, in ten years time I'd bet triple that. Another one I'd look at would be the Fiat Coupe, particularly the 2.0 turbo and you'll get a better return than any bank would give you. They're daftly and puzzlingly cheap when they come up. There'd be a few Alfa's in the mix too.