Classics with low miles always seem to be worth more. On the surface, the math checks out: The lower the miles a car has, the less wear and tear on the car, in theory.
But is low mileage always a good thing? If, for example, a car from 1985 only has 20,000 miles on it since new, that means the car…
Who in the hell reads an article in order for the author to print "What do you think"?
Idiotic.
In reply to robertdhogan :
I apologize if the intent of this article was not clear. I wrote this as a discussion topic for our readers.
Please feel free to chime in if you would like.
Who do you think you are, Asking your readers Direct questions like that !
We're looking to you to provide All the answers !
( Just kidding )
Any rubber parts will have aged and dried out, but getting a constant workout will have been harder on "them".
Rust doesn't care if the car was driven or not ?
Ambient air, humidity, vs. getting splashed or rained on...
Is the oil 20, 30 years old too ?
Kept in a garage in Arizona/Nevada and driven 20 miles a week by Granny to church on Sundays
vs.
Bob's car In Sudbury, On, Canada, driven year round through slush and snow with 100,000 miles
I'd take granny's car, but it would still need some work, and it would be worth more, but how much Extra would you be willing to spend ?
5, 10, 20k ?
It would depend on what its worth to you vs. some wacko at an auction :)
Low mileage on an older car may or may not be an advantage. Here are some situations where it is not an advantage.
1. The original owner drove it for 50,000 miles without changing the oil and then traded it in for a new car. I know someone who did just that.
2. The car was in an accident or a number of accidents and spent a lot of months in the body shop being repaired.
3. The car was essentially a 'lemon' and was not driven much.
4. The car sat for years unused and needs everything rubber and plastic replaced.
5. The car never worked well and passed through many owners before being parked for years.
6. The car was flooded and the owner just could not part with it. Instead, he parked it for years.
Years ago, i bought a 1970 Olds Cutlass with 14,000 miles in 1977. It took a lot of restoration and sorting before it was a good car.
In my view, the most important factor in a car's value is body condition. If there is extensive rust in the body, it is expensive to fix, if repairable at all. Often requiring outside skilled help. Mechanical issues are usually much more straightforward to fix. In short, if it's a rustbucket, walk away. Otherwise, do your due diligence with an open mind. Remember, there are cars out there, that even if you got it free, you paid too much.
I have to agree with Royb056. Body condition, especially the absense of rust, is absolutely the most important factor in a car's value. The exception might be if the car was driven by or owned by someone like, say, Stirling Moss. I recently paid probably more than my MGA is worth for rust repair, crash repair, and paint work, but the car had belonged to someone who was very important to me.
As an owner of a classic car with low miles…
I have the green 1975 Dino 308 GT4 that won "Best of Show" at the 2022 Classic Motorsports Magazine Monterey Kickoff, if you frequent this site or get their emails, then you've seen the car. I bought the car at the tail end of 2021 with only 27,022 actual miles on the odometer. Was mileage a factor in my search? No. I would have bought this car if it had double or triple the mileage. In fact, I usually don't bother looking at cars with excessively low miles. For me, that's a big turn-off. I was far more concerned with the overall condition of the car than a particular number on the odometer.
The article about my car in Classic Motorsports Magazine is titled "Accidental Showstopper" and it is just that. When I set out to buy my Dino after 30+ years of dreaming about it, I had no intention of buying a concours level car. I was looking for a good driver quality car. As fate would have it, that wasn't what I found. I ended up with a car that far exceeded my expectations, it was so much better than anything I could have imagined.
The car had sat for 25 years. This was the result what happens when someone buys an expensive car and has a mechanical failure and doesn't want to deal with it, or can't afford to get it fixed. Fortunately, it was in a garage that whole time in a dry climate in the LA area, and due to this the car had no rust. Had it been stored in a different environment, especially one with any moisture, it would have been a rust-bucket and not worth much at any price. The previous owner before me bought the car out of storage and did all the heavy lifting; essentially rebuilding the engine, suspension, refurbishing the interior… etc. Basically replacing everything rubber and rebuilding everything mechanical.
That is not something I would have undertaken, and the records that came with the car show exactly why… there was a lot of money spent getting this car roadworthy after 25 years of sitting, an amount almsot equal to what I paid for the car in excellent condition.
Today the car has 34,367 miles on it. So I added 7,345 miles to it in about two and a half years (which is almost double the amount of miles the previous three owners added combined). And for almost one year of my ownership it was getting restored back to its original color! I don't believe a car should sit idle and never be driven. What's the point in owning a great car if you're never going to drive it?
I don't care how many miles I put on the odometer. I'd rather perform maintenance on my car because something wore out or broke due to use, as opposed to parts deteriorating due to time.
Most buyers will pay a premium for a low mileage car, but then if you drive you'll be devaluing the car by putting miles on it… the very reason you overpaid for the car in the first place. I would suspect those type of cars just keep trading hands in the collector circles… which is a sad life for a car.
I'm really looking forward to the day my odometer flips over.
For me, low miles make it special and rare. High mile cars are just used cars imo.
In reply to dyerhaus :
"I don't care how many miles I put on the odometer. I'd rather perform maintenance on my car because something wore out or broke due to use, as opposed to parts deteriorating due to time"
Amen. This right here. Drive the car, that's what it was designed for! Those engineers and designers spent all that time designing the car to DRIVE.
In reply to dyerhaus :
"I don't care how many miles I put on the odometer. I'd rather perform maintenance on my car because something wore out or broke due to use, as opposed to parts deteriorating due to time"
Amen. This right here. Drive the car, that's what it was designed for! Those engineers and designers spent all that time designing the car to DRIVE.
The lower the odometer reading, the less sense it makes to drive it and add miles, because it hurts the 'value'. Cars with only a few thousand miles on them to me are pretty useless as cars; they have moved to becoming static display items. It makes no sense for someone like me to pay extra for low mileage.
Adam from the Rare Classic Cars YouTube channel would disagree, but he has so many cars to drive that he can't add that many miles to his collection even if he wanted to.
All of my current fleet have done the rollover. They are all nice vehicles, and a perfectionist would love to use any of them for a restoration project because they are used but not beaten or rotted out. I can have multiple cars for what just one low mileage example would have cost.
Different strokes, and all that. No answer is wrong, but for myself the ultra-low mileage car simply isn't useful to pay more for less use.
In 2011 I bought a 2003 Morgan plus 8 with 300 miles. Long story.
Delivered to NYS from out west. Ran well but had to replace a minor componet.Since that time we have driven it 24,000 miles with out any real problem.We also have a 1966 Morgan plus 4 purchased in 1980, have not put that much miliage on it in all these years. I do take care of them when not being used. On the other hand, have a 1973 Datsun 240Z since new. Been stored since 1985 is a dry area. Do turn it over by hand with lube each year. It will take some doing to get it going again. When put in storage there was nothing wrong with it. Never realized how valuable they would become.
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