This 1967 Chevrolet Chevelle caused a bit of a dust up on the General Motors appreciation page I follow on Facebook. Some members taking exception to the $29,000 price the owner is asking for. Here's the rub - NADA pricing guidelines indicate it's not unreasonably priced. Yikes. That's a bit of a head scratcher but it is what it is.
I get that some would be upset. $29,000 might be a somewhat pie-in-the-sky given this car obviously needs a paint job and some interior mending. However, its numbers matching and a Tennessee car! Anybody got a trailer they can loan me?
I also get how many chafe at what these are going for these days. Back in my day this was a $1,500 beater and then many would say I wasted my money on some old Chevy that doesn't have power steering or brakes. What's more, if I said it was going to appreciate greatly they'd think I'd really lost my mind.
Back in the 1980's when cars like this started taking off in value, there was some quasi-discernible line in the sand dictating what cars were worth more than others. Some drew it at the drop in compression ratios in 1971 and 1972, others said safety-bumpers mandated by the government in 1973 and 1974. Meanwhile others say it was the advent of catalytic converters in 1975. Suffice to say, most cars made after 1975 aren't worth nearly as much as anything made before then.
Nowadays, seeing that everything old seems to be commanding a premium, those lines are less important or matter. Even that lime green Pinto wagon I found the other day has an asking price that defies reason. Keep in mind, that one was a pre-safety-bumper Pinto. I say that rolling my eyes.
The values of first (and second) generation Chevelle's has been great for decades now and over the last ten to fifteen years they've gotten, frankly, insane. I can't help but imagine the expression on my wife's face if I was to attempt to justify spending any where near 29K for this red-head in particular. And then dropping, in theory, that much more in restoring it.
My greatest concern, and I've been saying this for years now, is how much more are cars like this and countless others going to appreciate? And who's going to buy them? Who would buy this now? Granted, they've always found buyers but these days I'm more concerned than ever.
Why? Because kids today, in general, don't care about cars let alone "classics" like this. To them, cars are mere appliances to get the from point A to B because they haven't developed a teleportation app yet.
Even my semi-car crazy older son, who's about to turn twenty-five, is fairly ambiguous when it comes to old cars. Sure, he loves the look of them but he knows better than to think that an old Chevelle like this would come anywhere near the driving experience of his 2017 Chevrolet Camaro 1LT/RS.
Can't say I blame him but he's more cognizant of the differences between antiques like this and modern automobiles than most young adults his age. Chalk that up to his dear old dad who refused to resto-mod our 1977 Corvette. Everything I do to our plastic-fantastic is to restore it as close to its 1977 glory days as possible.
To most kids today, even older folks who don't know better, the driving experience of a car like this would have them thinking that there was something wrong with it. Nope. There's nothing wrong it, kiddo. It's just from a different time. Now get off my lawn.
Oh, and if you find that teleportation app in the app store please let me know. That might come in handy.
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