11:21 am, April 5, 2020
- Our friends at Car & Classic have written us a piece about how the classic car market is holding up in the wake of the coronavirus crisis. Here, the site’s Noah Robinson updates us on what the recently-relaunched website has seen in market.
COVID-19 is currently working its way around the world, creating new challenges for businesses to face and knocking consumer confidence.
As the world as a whole scrambles to gain control of coronavirus, you may be wondering what is going on in the classic car market.
At Car & Classic, Europe’s largest classic and specialist vehicle marketplace we’ve been tracking the early effects of the COVID-19 pandemic – and the following is what we’ve seen over the past two weeks.
We feel like we should preface this by saying that the classic car market is a funny old thing, there was a time, not that long ago, that a Porsche 964 was not a particularly valuable car, but now? Any remotely special 964 is easily a six-digit car and as quickly as values can rise, they can fall too.
The Status Quo changes, fashion or interests flip, and if you need an example of that just have a look at Ferrari 550 Maranello values for a fall from grace.
We’re now well into the UK’s lockdown and although a drastic change for most to their daily lives – the classic car world has seen little slowdown, although the ability to transact is clearly currently off-limits.
In the UK’s first week on lockdown, the team at Car & Classic launched a revised and refreshed website, the first update for 15 years.
As a result, we’ve seen an increase in the number of users on our website, more than 15 per cent of increased weekly traffic compared to the week prior, and we’ve seen an increased number of email enquiries sent to advertisers on Car & Classic.
While the world is indoors, the classic car community is still looking forward and Car & Classic users are searching for their next classic, spending on average five per cent more time browsing the classifieds.
It’s early doors and we don’t know how the economy will be affected, how quickly it will bounce back, or how long this may go on for.
The thing we at Car & Classic think you should remember is that classic cars are there for enjoying, they are there to be driven, enjoyed and tinkered with and that last point is how we believe classic cars will help to support the economy’s recovery in a post-COVID-19 world.
We’re coming into April, a key time for seasonal classic buying and selling so we expect to see the typical seasonal increase continue as people prepare for the pandemic to be over and the restrictions to lift.
Look on the bright side: If you already own the car, now is the time to get those winter niggles sorted in advance of getting out there to enjoy driving it when the restrictions lift.
If you don’t own that car you’ve always lusted after, now’s a great time to browse some of the thousands of vehicles on sale and choose yours to buy in time for the restrictions being relaxed in the summer.
In the meantime, stay safe, stay home, protect the NHS and have a scroll through Car & Classic to find your next set of wheels.
