A $140,000 station wagon

Saw this in the October 25 issue of Old Cars Weekly. The selling price surprises me. I always say that there are three legs to the car value stool: rarity, condition, and desirability. You need all three to be high to get high value. In this case, the first two are certainly met, but desirability? I understand that the mid-'50s Nomads are very popular, and this close cousin to those would likely be popular as well. But $140,000 popular? Wow. I would have thought removing the first 1 on the selling price would be a good value for something like this. What do I know.

 

Desirability is a fickle mistress, and one of the problems in speculation is that when one person shows that desire, the speculators take it at face value to be applied to everything. Almost like the application of the saying, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander."

 

It's not abundantly clear from the text next to the picture, but I assume this was sold at auction.
I have seen some incredible sales numbers for vehicles sold at auctions. In many cases of high sales price a bidding war has ensued between multiple parties who have large disposable incomes and are often times fueled by liquid courage. While those sales numbers are "real" and have to be considered, the reality is that the average vehicle matching that description for sale on the open market isn't going to bring that high of a number. I suspect this Safari is one of those outliers.

Of course this has an affect on other folks selling a vehicle similar to the proverbial "one that sold at auction" They now think their's is worth close to or the same as the auction vehicle...

 

That $140k is WAY above what an excellent '55-'57 Safari normally brings. That's even great money for a '55-'57 Nomad, which are usually worth more than the Safaris, in spite of there being many more of them, because of the desirability factor.

I suspect we're missing some component of the equation here, as to what made this particular Safari worth so much.

 

Yes, it was sold at the Worldwide Auctioneers auction in Auburn, Indiana over Labor Day weekend.

http://www.worldwide-auctioneers.com/login.cfm?e=n

 

I just now went to the auction website to see if I could find out anything more about the car. I could find no details at all, but one thing the site does say is that the car sold for MORE than $140,000. The site says it was $154,000.

 

It did say it's a Tri-Power car which makes it even more rare, but that sure is big money. The '57 Safari was the most rare of all 6 (3 Chevys and 3 Pontiacs). I'd have to research the numbers, but it was pretty low. That car could be the best one left in existence. Museum quality I would say.

 

A quick search shows that only 1,292 '57 Safari's were built.

I believe we could safely say that less than half of those are still around.

Even though I'm a big Nomad fan and the '56 my favorite (had two), the '57 Safari was the most impressive in my opinion.

 

The auction companies include the buyer's fees in their selling prices: $140,000 plus 10% buyer's fee = $154,000.

 

I think it's safe to say that there are fewer than 1% still around. Vehicle scrappage rates show that about 1% of a particular vehicle's original production is still on the road after 25 years. As desirable as this car might be today, it certainly wasn't anything other than another car on the road back in the '50s and '60s, so there would have been no reason for people to preserve them. Especially since it is a station wagon, and those were seen as utility vehicles like pickup trucks, not glamorous, to-be-seen-in vehicles.

 

This is from the 2018 U. S. Department of Energy "Transportation Energy Data Book." The trends have followed this pattern for many years.

 

Let's now figure out how many of that 1% were originally Tri-Power equipped. That might even be the last one left

 

Whatever the original number was, I can guarantee that there are many more tri-power cars now.

Nice chart, Jaunty. Of course, that's the fleet average. "Collectable" cars probably have a higher survival rate than do, say, more-doors.

 

It depends on when a car came to be considered collectible. Some cars were recognized as likely to be long-term valuable early on, while others didn't become recognized as collectible until later. If it happens after the 25 year mark, it's too late. They've already been scrapped. Attention turns to saving what's left.

People, for a variety of reasons, are now starting to pay closer attention to the late '70s and '80s cars, few of which were recognized as future collectibles at the time, but it's now been 30-40 years for most of those cars. The scrapping has already been done.

 

I'm not sure you would find 'collector vehicles', that have some strength in the resale market, would fit into that graph, Jaunty. Ones that are recognized as collectible early enough in their history (which the Nomads and tri-5 Safaris would have been) would tend to be 'valued' more by their current owners, and kept in better condition. That graph would apply to 'ordinary' older vehicles, like a '58 Chevy Biscayne sedan......