IS THAT A CAR OR AN INVESTMENT?

IT’S EASY TO empathise with Lewis Flynn’s email from last issue. Sometimes cars stop being cars!

As much as I enjoy seeing ‘real Aussie iron’ (one could argue we merely rented a car industry back from the Yanks after selling out rather than having a truly home grown/owned car manufacturing industry) at car shows and the like, it’s hard not to wonder how many of them are really not much more than garage queens and investments first and cars a distant second.

I think you could replace most of the references to cars in Lewis’s email with references to houses without much of an impact on the point he’s making.

Cars are for driving and enjoying and houses are for living in and enjoying but their attractiveness as investments has complicated matters in recent years.

However, back to cars, as desirable as 1970s Aussie muscle cars have become, for pure driving pleasure the modern alternatives that Lewis refers to are likely to provide much more enjoyment for the money and that’s a great and fortunate thing.

Also, thanks to skyrocketing input costs (land, rents, electricity, professional services, regulatory compliance etc) the cost of resto-mods has also gone through the roof in recent times.

However, the wages many people earn to buy the cars they want have remained stagnant for decades. If Lewis wants to understand more about why that’s occurred in Australia, I can recommend a book called Game of Mates by Cameron K Murray, a great read.