Any car is only worth what someone is prepared to pay for it. So it was good to hear from Damien, who told us of his affection for sports cars from a few decades ago. “I’m a child of the 1980s and my second car was a 1992 Toyota Celica ST with the fabulous 21R engine,” he said. Like most of us, he has had a recent attack of nostalgia and has been rather taken by a dealer-owned ’84 one.
Apparently it’s pretty much as new, so there is a stiff £23,500 asking price, reduced from an even more preposterous £25k. Hardly surprising that it has been hanging around for a year, is it? Realistically, Damien sees it at £15,000 maximum, and he’s probably right, although even that was more than he was prepared to pay.
Classic car prices, and indeed all used car prices, are hard to predict at the best of times because there are such variable factors. However, this Celica had an automatic gearbox, which is not a major selling point when it comes to a sports car. What we have here is a premium price because of the mileage, which is just under 4000. Otherwise £12,000 would seem to be fair, but it all depends on what the dealer paid and their stand-in value is (including what has been spent on any refurbishment). That explains why the dealer is holding out.
Classic cars will always be a special case and, nominally with most used cars a decade or so old, a little book could help you. Sure, there are classic price guides, but there is so much more to it than that: the seller is hoping that the buyer will be so drunk on nostalgia that the actual price becomes academic. Do you want the classic or don’t you?
I know about Minis and I saw a Morris-badged van at £12,495 – and, actually, that’s not half bad at all. I could make a commercial case for that, once sign-written. The working Minis were mostly run into the ground, so the survivors are few and this isn’t a silly price. The dealer with that one also had a Ford Escort RS 2000 Custom up for £47,995. To me that seemed like an absurd amount of money. Old Fords don’t do it for me, so that perfectly demonstrates how we all look at classic cars: individually. What is a fortune to some is making a dream come true for others.
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Celicas moved away from the
Celicas moved away from the 21R engine in the mid 1980's switching to variants of the 3S engine - 3S-FE, 3S-GE, 3S-GTE if 2.0 litre, or a 4A engine for the 1.6
Kadjar or Qashqai?
Kia Sportage (see the a/m What car? 2018 reliability chart)
£12k-£15k Supra v a Modern alternative
Well with 4k mile on the clock you're effectively buying a nearly new, Japanese decent sports car that should last 15 years with daily use. OR for £12k'ish more you could get a new Toyota GT86 that'll last 16 years.
Sure you might need to renew hoses and bushes (do it yourself for next to nothing) but at the end of the day £12k is alot of dosh, you might not even have the £12k anyway.