The next round of future classics......?

[arrocuda]

^^ Totally agree with this and the previous post too!

Modern cars look so similar that nothing stands out as a possible future classic any more. Short of looking at supercars or limited edition high performance production cars that is.

[loudandproud205]

Like said about the Saxo, but I'd put the 106 up there instead XSI is all but gone and Rallye's are starting to command strong money again.

An S1 106 is becoming a rarer sight.

[V-Force]

Civic Jordans will be worth a lot in the next couple of decades, I can't see them getting much cheaper any time soon, there's less than 300 of the original 500 still in existence and a huge portion of them are modified.

This one's at £2375:

www.pistonheads.com/sales/3620302.htm



This one's up for £3800:

www.pistonheads.com/sales/3670295.htm





This 333bhp turbo one just sold for £4k:

[skinnylew]

the way I see it the future 'classics' are what we call retro at the moment, 80's and early 90's stuff.

Future retro imo is stuff like:




etc

[poweredbyhopealone]

Not you AX is it Lew? Cheeky monkey

[GavinJ]

My guess,



Phase 1 172 Renault Sport Clio,

Quite limited numbers from new,

Titanium Silver, 934 in the UK
Pearl Black, 117 in the UK
Odyssey Blue, 116 in the UK
Iceburg Silver, 99 in the UK
Flame Red, 60 in the UK
Sunflower Yellow, 31 in the UK

Wonder how many are left now 12yrs later?

[stealthstylz]

It always makes me LOL when people say that all modern cars look the same. Cars have always looked the same, I did a pic thread about it years ago. Same with people saying old cars have character. They do now, but when they were new they were just as dull as moderns are now.

[Brian Damaged]

Mar 27, 2012 19:53:25 GMT stealthstylz said:

It always makes me LOL when people say that all modern cars look the same. Cars have always looked the same, I did a pic thread about it years ago. Same with people saying old cars have character. They do now, but when they were new they were just as dull as moderns are now.

This.

I'm 47, so I can remember most of the stuff you young whipper-snappers enthuse over so much when it was the same, anodyne bin-fodder that most modern cars SEEM to be at the minute. Classic car shows 25 years ago were full of men in brown trousers saying "Pah. Today's stuff will never be classic. Imagine walking down rows of bloody Montegos, Cavaliers and Sierras".

'Plus ca change....plus c'est la meme chose'*

I'm just looking forward to 2042, my care assistant fluffing up my pillows, screwing on another colostomy bag and placing this month's copy of 'Practical Classics' on my dinner-tray, then opening it and seeing a Buyer's Guide to the Perodua Nippa and adverts for the Hyundai Atoz Drivers Guild.


*'The more things change, the more they stay the same' for non French-speakers.

[orion1600e]

Mar 27, 2012 15:40:31 GMT doobie said:

Less than 40 left according to DVLA and thats both the B3 and the facelift B4 and they are still being scrapped. VR6 engine, 140mph top end, electric everything, leather, cruise, gotta be a classic of the future IMHO.
Well I hope so anyway as this is my B3 ;D

My mate had a white one of those VR6 passat estates ( K730 UPV) and it was such a sleeper !! The only bummer with it was that it snaped a drive shaft and a replacement was neer impossable to find ( got one from the USA in the end !!) and the exhaust front pipe was impossable to find !! It went rotten in the end ( sills ) and was scraped about 2 years ago but the engine was kept though.

[arrocuda]

Mar 27, 2012 19:53:25 GMT stealthstylz said:

It always makes me LOL when people say that all modern cars look the same.

They don't call 'em 'shopping trolleys' for no reason.

[Garry]

Criteria for something to become desireable,

1. Once were common, now hard to find
2. Cars you grew up with
3. A Q-factor (performance, rarity, novelty?)

Tick off any two of those things when thinking about a car, and in theory, you'll have a future Retro on your hands.

Guys who are 14-18 during a certain period will associate that with what they lust after (usually). Hence 70's kids wanting 80's cars, 80's kids wanting 90's cars etc.

[stealthstylz]

Mar 27, 2012 20:21:12 GMT arrocuda said:

Mar 27, 2012 19:53:25 GMT stealthstylz said:

It always makes me LOL when people say that all modern cars look the same.

They don't call 'em 'shopping trolleys' for no reason.

So you're really saying that there were massive aesthetic differences between a Mk2 cortina, hillman minx, datsun 510, fc victor etc.

[Deleted]

All the stuff I was genuinely interested in growing up seems to be terminally unloved now, things like the Citroen BX, Austin Princess, Nissan Cherry and Volvo 240. Perhaps I just have bad taste in cars?

I'm going to propose a couple of econoboxes that were massively commonplace, reliable little troopers that are definitely considered disposable at the moment but are very much of their time. To me, they're like a contemporary Austin A35.

Volkswagen Polo 6N. Everyone and their granny used to have one of these, they were (probably still are) a great first car and round-town runabout. But the tolls of bad modifications and poor maintenance combined with a disposable attitude will likely see these become rarities in a few years.



Nissan Micra K11 (specifically this shape and colour). Like the Austin A35 before it, this has the look of an archetypal car, as drawn by a child or as a doodle on a notepad.


Peugeot 1007. Nobody will remember these and few will survive because of that woeful sliding door, but they represented something important about the issues faced of congestion and lack of parking space in cities and for that, they deserve to survive... but probably won't.


Now just to check back in 20-30 years to see if I'm right.

[Fiat Daft]

Spot on matt.

[surprisingskoda]

Mar 27, 2012 15:52:17 GMT TurboDieselWeasel said:

If you ask me - a 'classic' is not defined by a certain age a car has reached. It is more defined by an era, the era that car was designed & build in... Like with music. Classical music will never come again, modern music will never be classical. And that's not bad. It is part of the identity of a generation of that era.

Erm, classical music is still being written today ;D

[OVY871]

Like the Austin A35 that has been mentioned which was designed to be a car that used hardly any fuel whilst transporting a family (would have to be younger kids though really cause I can't fit in back of my A35) It could be any small car that people have grown up with so think Peugeot 106, Citroen Saxo, Vauxhall Corsa, Renault Clio.

And then you have things like Hillman Avengers, my dad had one after the A35 when I asked him what he thought of his Avenger that he had in the 80's once he said it was absoloutley rubbish. But yet we have people who look after them as their classic.

So yeah my prediction are the cars people used as cheap runabouts will be the next gen classics. But people will want to upgrade them to look like their sporting models.
So Where it has been:
Hillman Avenger -> Tiger
VW Golf Mk2 -> GTi
Austin/Morris Mini -> Mini Cooper

And in the future we will see things such as:
Peugeot 106 -> GTI
VW Golf MK5/6 -> GTI
BMW 3 Series -> M3
Audi A4 -> RS4
I'm sure you get what I mean.

And then other cars I reckon will become classics.
Apart from the current teenager cars like the 106 and Clio, I reckon cars like the Saab 9-3/9-5 will become future classics because of the fact that they are seen as 'different' and they were the last models of Saab.
Add to the list sports cars like the BMW Z4, not supercars just a 2 seater and a 3 litre straight-6... a bit like a Austin Healey?
Ford Focus... dare I say it but the modern Ford Cortina?

And I'm going to try my best to keep a VW Fox for a long time if I can buy it back one day but only if its a particular Red VW Fox 1.2 as it was kinda my first car (first I was insured on). Rubbish car, but so was the Austin A35 and one of those is in my garage... my dads first car...

[waveman1500]

I think that to be considered a true 'classic', a car needs to have something special about it. It can't just be a run-of-the-mill car which is old. For example, an Austin-Healey 100 is a classic, whereas something like a 1960s Morris Oxford is arguably just an old car, or at least a far less desirable classic. So, logically, the cars which will be future classics should preferably have been the cars which people most lusted over in their day, often with racing pedigree.

Some examples which I think will surely be classics in 10-20 years.



Early WRXs, particularly special ones like the 2-door STi.



Partly thanks to Initial D, I think the Toyota AE86 already counts as a classic.



Nissan Skyline R32, especially the GTRs.



Toyota Supra Twin-Turbo, especially manual ones.

The Mazda RX7s will probably be classics as well, because of the rotary engines.

As for Australian cars:



HSV Clubsport and GTS, also to a lesser extent Commodore SS.



Falcon XR6 and XR8, especially the Tickford-enhanced versions. I think the EL and AU XR6s are particularly special.

[jrevillug]

Mar 27, 2012 14:45:24 GMT mikeymk said:

Lots of experimental technology was pushed through, with catalyst-demanding EFi systems getting terminally unreliable as they age.
Bodyshells got more metal layers, and were made of poor metal, over recycled polymers were also pushed through.

Eh? Manufacturers fitted EFI because it was required to make Cats work, not the other way round. It resulted in a generation of cars that required a full order of magnitude less maintenance than the generation that came before.

And they rusted less, not more. People seem to forget that in the early-90s over half of all cars were scrapped BEFORE they were 10 years old (mostly due to rot) - I'd imagine that figure now to be well under 25%, although I've not seen figures. That means that cars from the late 90s rot less than car from the late 70s. Imagine that!

FWIW, I've seen a scruffy mid-90s Punto cut in half at a scrap yard, and the insides of the sills were MINT (in ~2006). Try that with any 50s, 60s, 70s, or 80s FIAT (or BL, or Rootes, or Ford) at 10-15 years old, and cry as the layers come off like those of an onion, revealing scary quantities of rust. There have been people posting on this forum about their Dad's Mates having their Mk4 Cortina's sills and inner wings plated up at 6 years old. Other than Ford KAs (and maybe Fiestas - althought they don't have the same reputation as the KA) and mid-to-late-90s Mercs, what recent cars need that sort of attention at 6 years old?

Admittedly, cars of this era (with ECUs) are perhaps more complex to maintain now than the previous generation (with carbs and dizzies) as the electronics start to fail, but in the era they were a complete revalation - and they are probably easier to keep running now than the cars that followed in the 00s as the immobiliser tends to be simpler and the cars lack CANbus. Bear in mind that the designed-in lifespan of car components is ~8 years, and they are quite remarkable.

IMO, the 90s represented the peak of competant, affordable-to-run, easy-to-maintain cars. Earlier cars rot and use lots of fuel, while later cars have too much in the way of integrated electronics. That's not to say that cars from the 90s are amazing - for the most part they are spectacularly bland, to my mind at least.

[Copey]

my vote for a future classic: Mitsubishi Galant



or better yet, an estate one

[vaughant]

IMO, the 90s represented the peak of competant, affordable-to-run, easy-to-maintain cars. Earlier cars rot and use lots of fuel, while later cars have too much in the way of integrated electronics. That's not to say that cars from the 90s are amazing - for the most part they are spectacularly bland, to my mind at least.[/quote]

110% agree with that,to me the mid/late 90's represented the peak of quality vehicle manufacture,cars that would with only reasonable levels of servicing last pretty much forever,think of mondeos,cavaliers(lesser extent vectras) mk3 astras,corsa's,any vw product,e36 beemers,these are the cars that are still going strong today with very few problems and little rust issues compared to their predecessors,I remember boys having their battery trays and sills done on fords for their first Mot,Nissan micras are probably the worst for it,seen too many to count of those needing new sills.

Realistically,you can buy a 2.0l Mondeo estate on a v plate and never need to change it again,but of course it's a pretty boring old bus!!!
How many 90's cavalier 1.8's,2.0's and 1.7td isuzus hitting 3-400000 miles on their original engines and boxes?
I know of many.
I had an e36 back in 2002 that had done 250000 miles then and still went on in daily use until about 3 years ago,must have been well over 300000 miles by then,still drove as new.

As for future classics I'd say the 172 clio is a great shout,saxo vts,puma's,a mint focus st170,polo mk5 gti (probably getting there now),a mint mk4 golf turbo.

Basically cars that were used and abused or seen as disposable will always become desirable in the future when they become scarce and we all say "those saxo vts' were a cracking little motor,wonder how much they cost now?".

Scooby classic impreza seems a great shout too,again falling into chav hands now and getting the "sticker treatment" with huge exhausts and unsensible mods.

I'd also say e36 m3 but I think their there already.