Play the classics, not the stock market

Instead of playing the stock market you should be sinking your money into classic cars.

As an investment, they’ll deliver a much better return in the long run.

That’s the message from a company called Kwik-Lift based on five of the most expensive vehicles Barrett-Jackson sold in January 2018.

These results were calculated by using a dollar amount invested into Standard & Poor’s (S&P) 500 Index, a series of funds commonly used as a benchmark for the US stock market, and comparing it to the same dollar amount to purchase a vehicle.

“There’s always someone who thinks restoring a car is wasted money, so we tried this little experiment to prove the value of the classic car hobby,” says Jason Peters, director of Kwik-Lift.

“Whether or not it actually proves our point, having the conversation and creating this chart was a lot of fun.”

Using models from 1968 through 2015, here’s how the team calculated the return on these motor vehicle investments:

Start with the MSRP of each vehicle. These numbers are based on historical or actual vehicle records.
Take that MSRP amount and consider an investment placed into an S&P fund on January 1 of the car’s model year.
Take the 2018 value, or the price it fetched at auction, for each vehicle. Subtract the MSRP from that number. There’s the return on the car.
Using the DQYDJ S&P Periodic Investment Calculator, the team calculated the return of the MSRP investment that would have been deposited January 1 of the specific year. The chart represents the returns on the S&P investments as of March 31, 2018.
The caveats: These calculations do not account for vehicle maintenance nor insurance costs for the cars. The calculations for the stocks do not include taxes.