Cars are just bad investments, as the age old saying goes. Most supercars alone don't appreciate in value and it takes something truly special (or a special edition Ferrari) to have any sudden appreciation of value in a short amount of time following production, like the Ford GT or Carrera GT. Run of the mill exotics just bottom out and then make a slow gradual climb that never gets back to MSRP levels. Otherwise, all one can do is buy something like an Aventador & hope in 20 years, you can make most of your money back. Cars like the Huracan won't.
Then, you have manufacturers like Ferrari & Porsche that are fighting flippers who try to capitalize on the limited production early on in a car's life cycle who get a car and then ask $50-175K over sticker price for it 1-6 months later (Porsche dealers are actually being scrutinized lately for having a similar tactic with GT3/GT2 RS allocations). Otherwise, it'd be nice to buy a GT3 for $180,000 and then flip it for $220,000 like some examples did just months into the first deliveries.
Of course,
@SPhilli911's last sentence defines it all; even if one wanted to, most car guys don't have the income to take such a risk and those that do aren't going to care if their investment pays off as they have other means.
Buying new cars is largely a bad investment. Being able to spot what will become sort after once it's 20 or so years old and buying when at the bottom of its depreciation curve is a skill that will reap rewards. No doubt that money could be invested in more traditional ways and bring you better financial rewards over that term of investment, but you'd get zero enjoyment from it over that period.
@TheCracker said what I was going to say. It's tough to pick a new car that will give you a return, but for a used car it's not just possible, it's not actually
that difficult. Sure, it's not going to give you crazy 20% return like the stock market has this year (unless you're lucky), but it's practically a guarantee that they will go up. Especially for cars that are already on an upward trend. Only over-speculation would result in the price correcting. Hagerty has created a "blue chip" index of sorts for cars and tracks the trend of those car values over time:
https://www.hagerty.com/apps/valuationtools/market-trends/collector-indexes/Blue_Chip
They have other indexes too:
https://www.hagerty.com/apps/valuationtools/market-trends/collector-indexes/Affordable_Classics
Practically every car that is in good condition eventually rises from a floor in its value. It may take longer than your life, but it happens. Even for something that was insanely mass produced like a Volkwagen Beetle. There are segments of the market that stay flat for loooong periods of time:
https://www.hagerty.com/apps/valuationtools/market-trends/collector-indexes/1950s_American
and market corrections
https://www.hagerty.com/apps/valuationtools/market-trends/collector-indexes/Muscle_Cars
These are long term investments. But let me ask you, Porsche 996 911, you can buy those under $30k right now. Will you be able to in 10 years? No way. Right now you can pick one of those up, you can get parts, you can restore it to excellent condition, and then when it's not so easy to restore because parts are hard to come by, it's a rare and desirable thing. This is a fairly predictable market. You have a decent feel already for what it will do. It won't offer the return of the stock market, and there are upkeep costs to consider, and you have to find a place to store it. It's not for everyone, but I've never had as much fun with a mutual fund as I have with my NSX.
The other thing I like about collectible cars is that they're non-correlated assets (meaning, non-correlated with the stock market). They have worldwide appeal, and you cannot get more of them. The same cannot be said of gold. Gold is mined constantly. With cars, rarity increases over the years. There's also insurance against theft or accident. If absolutely nothing else, it's an inflation hedge.
Bottom line, given a 30 year window you can pretty much throw a dart and pick any random 20 year old car that is in good condition and it will be worth that or more 30 years later. 50 year old cars that are in good condition are not super common. This should not be surprising. You can do the same with houses and index funds. With index funds you'll almost certainly get a better return than either real estate or cars. But you can't really
use an index fund.
The main thing that concerns me about car collecting is when people talk about banning them from the roads altogether in favor of self-driving cars. That would be an unprecedented step in US motoring (you can drive pretty much anything that was legal when it was produced), but it's not impossible. If it happened, and manually driven cars are relegated to private tracks, I have a hard time believing the values of many of them would survive.
