Future Classics

littlevillage wrote: »

The Elephant in the room regarding "classic" cars is that nobody will be driving vehicles with Internal combustion engines in 20 years time. Everything will be electric/battery/hydrogen by then.

A couple more smallish advances eg. ramp up the infrastructure (charging points) and make a few improvements to battery life ....and its curtains for fossil fuel engines.

So your future classics could be worthless .. it will probably be illegal to drive them. (or prohibitively expensive to pay for a special carbon emissions license $$$$)

Won't be the case at all, far too many car fanciers worldwide and people who won't be able to afford new cars so they will have to keep their old clunkers on the road.

Sure they take smoky old 19th cent technology steam locomotives out for runs here and in the uk burning nasty old coal and our usually OTT H&S culture doesn't have a blue fit about them either.

littlevillage wrote: »

The Elephant in the room regarding "classic" cars is that nobody will be driving vehicles with Internal combustion engines in 20 years time. Everything will be electric/battery/hydrogen by then.

A couple more smallish advances eg. ramp up the infrastructure (charging points) and make a few improvements to battery life ....and its curtains for fossil fuel engines.

So your future classics could be worthless .. it will probably be illegal to drive them. (or prohibitively expensive to pay for a special carbon emissions license $$$$)

Yes .. probably we will all be driving Electric (or at least hybrid) cars in 20 Years time .. but that will make traditional Internal Combustion Engined cars even more exclusive .. so possibly more valuable. (for those that can afford to run them)

littlevillage wrote: »

The Elephant in the room regarding "classic" cars is that nobody will be driving vehicles with Internal combustion engines in 20 years time. Everything will be electric/battery/hydrogen by then.

A couple more smallish advances eg. ramp up the infrastructure (charging points) and make a few improvements to battery life ....and its curtains for fossil fuel engines.

So your future classics could be worthless .. it will probably be illegal to drive them. (or prohibitively expensive to pay for a special carbon emissions license $$$$)

Not a problem. If everyone has an electric car in twenty years, I'll just pull the biggest motor I can out of a crashed car and transplant into my W123.
As there are almost no wearing parts, second hand el. motors will be cheap as chips.

Anyone remember the German guy who did this with his Mk 3 Polo?
He works for the electric forklift manufacturer, Jungheinrich.

Some people are missing the point, OP means cars practically worthless now that will rise in price.

How many Mk1/2 Escorts were driven in fields or blocking gaps? Look what there worth now... Try to find the modern equivalent.


Mk1 Mondeo (A Ghia or Si Model)
Can't remember the last time I seen one on the road, Not going to go Mk1 Escort mad obviously.

Mk3 Fiesta, Will follow on the Mk1&2s.
Also a Puma 1.7.

E36 has to be in with a chance, How many got diffed/wrecked. I can see a decent 318is & bigger being worth €5k in a few years.

DakarVert wrote: »

Mk1 Mondeo (A Ghia or Si Model)
Can't remember the last time I seen one on the road,

I reckon a Mk 1 Mondeo is as collectable as galloping knob rot!

littlevillage wrote: »

The Elephant in the room regarding "classic" cars is that nobody will be driving vehicles with Internal combustion engines in 20 years time. Everything will be electric/battery/hydrogen by then.

A couple more smallish advances eg. ramp up the infrastructure (charging points) and make a few improvements to battery life ....and its curtains for fossil fuel engines.

So your future classics could be worthless .. it will probably be illegal to drive them. (or prohibitively expensive to pay for a special carbon emissions license $$$$)

Will we all be wearing silver suits, eating protein tablets, have hunger and poverty banished and spend our days 'contemplating'....and will 'freedom fighters' worldwide have abandoned their Toyotas in favour of 'emissions friendly' hydrogen powered troop carriers.... 20 years is a very short amount of time... the world wont have changed that much..

It pains me to say it, but I reckon the Civic Type R's will be (but not the new turbo one). The last of the proper screaming naturally aspirated engine and decent FWD handling. The current crop of RenaultSport Clios also for the same reason.

Any proper Fast Ford (but not the "warm" versions) will always have a following, the decent Golf GTi's also. The '02 Passat & Bora diesel I can see in 20 years going for silly money due to people reliving their felt Spec days.

What will kill off cars I reckon will be spares availability of things like DMF's, DPF's, ECU failures and silly sensors. There is so much difference in electronics even between trim levels in some models that swapping parts out of a scrapper (thats not the same year and trim level) will become very very hard.

I think the Bini and the new 500 won't become classics as they are marketing ploys to cash in on an old brand and in the classic world, people will want the original. That being said, the Bini Cooper S is a very fun car to chuck down a twisty road.

I haven't seen an early b5 Passat with orange front indicators in years. The base models had these. They hardly all swapped them for clear ones?

^^^ I spotted a very straight '98 Passat in use today. (I didnt see the front...I presume it would have orange indicators?). There's a few survivors out there!

Nekarsulm wrote: »

The amount of Passage that pass through the local scrap metal recycling yard is astounding. The front drive shafts, intercooler hoses and throttlebody and other sensors vanish at once.
For a car that sold in tens of thousands, the early passats with the squarer tail lights are getting scarce.
Same as happened with mk2 escorts, mk4 cortinas , Asconas and Rekords .

I was offereda B4 Passat recently (a late 96 model) and felt it too new to be bothered with for shows next year. I haven't seen a good one in an age mind. It was a 2l petrol model.

colm_mcm wrote: »

theres a whole generation to whom the bmw mini is just a cool car, and they don't care as much about the original one. I can't see how it wouldn't be sought after in the future. especially as they seem to get less charismatic with every revision.

No young lad would be seen dead in a new Mini or new Beetle, smacks of a "daddy's little girl" car.

whisky_galore wrote: »

Think what will kill a lot of future classics is the amount of electronic/computerised gimcracks manufacturers put in cars nowadays. Going to be hard to source or repair these.

There's lots of cases of obsolete hardware being emulated by software running on generic modern hardware. You'll end up with a generic ECU that can be configured to operate for a range of cars, common cars from Asian markets will be most likely to be supported.