Here's the truth nobody at the car meet wants to hear. The car in your garage is not an investment.
That's good news. Stop worrying about it and go drive it.
The Super Rare Ones
Yes, some cars make big money. A Ferrari 250 GTO cost $18,000 in 1962 and sold for $51.7 million in 2023.
A low-mileage Ferrari Enzo sold for more than $15 million this year. Those are the rarest cars on the planet.
The One-Offs
Then there are the cars nobody could buy. One of only four HSV W1 Maloos sold for a reported A$1.2 million in 2025.
The "last Holden" made A$750,000. Almost nobody got a shot at either.
Even the Legends Lose
Put the new price of a Ferrari F40, about $400,000, into the share market in 1987 and you'd have around $27 million today.
The best F40 ever sold made $6.6 million. The boring index fund won by a mile.
Your Car
Now the real one. Say you bought a A$150,000 car you love in 2016 and sell it this year.
If it climbed like the average collector car, about 4.5% a year, it sells for around A$233,000. Sounds like a win.
Then take off ten years of insurance, servicing and a 10% selling fee. Kept in your own garage, you walk away with about A$163,000, only A$13,000 more than you paid. Pay for storage and you're left with about A$105,000.
What about an R34?
Fair question. R34 GT-Rs roughly tripled over the last ten years.
Buy one for A$150,000 in 2016 and it sells for around A$450,000 today. After ten years of costs, kept in your own garage, you'd pocket about A$350,000.
Drive it 2,500 km a year instead and you'd still keep about A$290,000, plus 25,000 km of R34 memories.
And the boring option?
The same A$150,000 in a plain index fund is worth about A$353,000 today.
So the average car barely gets your money back, and even an R34, one of the hottest cars of the decade, only ties the fund. Paid storage eats more than the kilometres ever will.
And cars that sit still slowly rot. Seals dry out and fluids go bad.
