It is inevitable in times of a classic market boom that many diehard enthusiasts – the thousands of us who are never quite satisfied with the size of our fleets – look with dread at rising prices and stalk the values of certain specific models, praying that they don’t catch the wave.
Take a look at our £10k sports car test in the current issue: a couple of models exempted, that is pretty much all new metal with none of the usual suspects, many of which have sprinted well beyond our traditional cut-off price for 'affordable'.
Of course, it makes the magazine fresher for readers to see us blooding a new generation into the classic fold, but what of the older generation rather than these cusp classics that are currently cheap largely because they are bottoming out?
Sure, an element of it is natural inflation, but we all know that the recent rises are disproportionate, leaving the vast majority of us – the impecunious majority, that is – viewing the market with a degree of resentment and scrabbling around for genuinely good and desirable classics that we can still afford.
Admittedly, I have often bemoaned the missed opportunities, the myriad greats that once I might have bought that now I couldn’t put through a decent service, the Aurelias and 3500GTs that would probably have bankrupted me, but take heart because there are plenty more fish in the sea.
