The rise in the trend of Classic Cars

Classic cars were created in a world where designers used pencil and paper to create beautiful and iconic cars with elegant shapes and flowing lines. Take the Ferrari 250 GTO, for example, these classic designs are beautiful in their own way, but are shapes and styles that no modern designer would create. These classic designs belong to a previous age that many of us look back on fondly, where designers were not constrained by crash tests, or aerodynamic drag coefficients, and instead created shapes that reflected the fashion and trends of the time.

Modern mass production techniques have also removed the character from new cars. A combination of mass production, soulless computers and robots on the production lines producing identical parts 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, are focussed on one thing: meeting the targets and quotas set by the car manufacturers to maximise efficiency and production.

On the other hand, classic car production was a manual process performed by expert craftsmen using tools with decades of experience to create panels by hand and by eye. The results of this are creations that have withstood the hardships of daily usage and weathered the passage of time.

The rise in trend of classic cars can largely be attributed to one cause; nostalgia. Many people have classic cars because they remind them of their youth and their own first car. Or more often than not, many adults buy the cars they dreamed of having as children, whether this is an Aston Martin from James Bond, or a Lamborghini Miura from the Italian Job or a DeLorean from Back to the Future.

Baby Boomers have played a significant role in boosting the car market back to where it is today. But we face a new problem; Boomers are getting older. The oldest boomers are 72 and they are selling more and buying less. We must look to the new generations, the Gen X’s and Millennials who have grown up with the likes of BMW’s 1983 – E24 M635 CSi or Mazda RX-7.

With the introduction of mass-produced vehicles and the new age of classic car enthusiasts, what do you think the future of classic cars will look like?