Location: Cookeville, TN
Posts: 322
My VIN: 628
Club(s): (SEDOC) (DCUK)
Just my .02 cents but the more expensive these cars get, the closer we come to parts becoming more expensive.
I truly hope these cars never reach six figures as I do not think anyone wants to pay Porsche or Ferrari level prices for parts but this is absolutely just the worst case scenario.
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Posts: 504
My VIN: Yes.
Club(s): (DCO) (DMA) (DCUK)
Well, the question of parts prices is interesting - apart from the some of the obviously rare pieces, parts pricing seems to me to have stayed pretty consistent, which means
the dynamic between the price of parts vs a whole car has changed a lot. And this affects the relative merits of doing a restoration, etc.
But I don't think we're going to see the price of driver cars reaching $100K any time soon. People predicting this are getting a bit too excited, and it's not reflected in the
history of classic car pricing - big price increases are always very short term. There's 2 cars up for auction at Mecum today; it'll be interesting to see how those shake out.
Posts: 1,250
Location: Cookeville, TN
Posts: 322
My VIN: 628
Club(s): (SEDOC) (DCUK)
Posts: 1,250
Some parts will probably alway be reasonable. For example, engine parts and some suspension parts. This is because they are common to other cars or easily manufactured. (Think lower control arms) But I could see body parts and glass becoming very expensive in the future.
Location: Pittsburgh, PA
Posts: 504
My VIN: Yes.
Club(s): (DCO) (DMA) (DCUK)
Well, I wouldn't want to second guess that. Ultimately that's a business decision, but there are several factors in play here. One is that we are very lucky to have multiple vendors for parts as well as very active used parts market. And
there seem to be quite a number of efforts to reproduce/improve certain parts. But also I can see, at least right now, there's a lot of shortages, and stuff I'd expect vendors to have is OOS. And I can see other NOS items
are running out (at least in one example I can name).
The short answer is, I don't know. But if prices rise too much, people will find/make alternatives. 3D printing is part of that.
Rising values are such a double-edged sword. Folks who have had their cars for a while will finally have some positive equity in them (back in the day you'd never be able to sell your car for what you had in it- ask me how I know). It's also refreshing that the cars are finally get the last laugh among the haters, too; they're red hot collectables right now. Rising prices also likely means more cars are coming out of long term storage; cars that would not have been deemed worthy of restoration just a few years ago are now being brought back into the land of the living.
The downside is rising prices for everything; cars, parts, insurance, etc. Increased risk just taking your car out to enjoy it.
I've been in the DeLorean community over 20 years. Parts prices have absolutely increased. Some of that is simply inflation over a two decade period. Some of it is due stock piles of some parts depleting or becoming NLA; some of it can be attributed to tooling costs for reproduction parts. That being said, DeLorean parts are still child's play compared to other high-end European makes of era. Ask me how terrifying it was to maintain a 90s era Mercedes SL.
The DMC franchises are getting $70-100k for their nicer "pre-owned" cars right now... and DPI is apparently getting up to three times that for their "build" cars. So the era of six-figure DeLorean sales is indeed upon us. That being said, private sellers and non-DeLorean dealers aren't getting a slice of that action yet. Most of those sales seem to be in the $45-55k range.
Louie Golden