Going on ten years ago I blogged about a '78 Chevrolet Impala that was for sale near my home here in Cleveland, Ohio that had an asking price of $4,200. If I thought that asking price pie-in-the-sky, imagine what I think of this '77 Caprice for sale on Facebook Marketplace in Minneapolis with an asking price of $10,000.
Granted, this Caprice has slightly less mid-west patina than that Impala had but still, the hell is going on here? An argument on the Facebook group that featured this car was that if this goes for ten-grand it bodes well for all of us who have a "classic". And he wasn't referring to "classic" as in "Caprice Classic" either.
Well, if we happen to have Grand dad's old car in the garage and we have nothing "in it", then I'd tend to agree with that sentiment but for the rest of us who own a "classic", I fail to see how that bodes well for us. It's kind of like housing prices exploding in your neighborhood. It's all well and good your home has increased in value, but if everyone's home as increased in value - where are you going to move to take advantage of your lottery-esque found booty?
And then there's the risk of deflation. You drop ten-grand on this and then it's value plummets due to either a cratering economy or things finally returning to "normal". Then what do you have? A 1977 Chevrolet Caprice you blew ten-thousand dollars on. I sure hope you really like this car because as an investment it might be as bad as it gets. Seriously, I can't believe anyone would pay that kind of money for one of these.
GM's class of 1977 downsized full-size cars were heralded as watersheds of engineering and design efficiency. I've always thought that fairly whimsical given that all they did was shrink-ray their existing designs back down to what they were back in the early to mid-'60's after a decade or so of inexplicable bulking up. These cars did nothing to advance the state of the art of automotive engineering seeing they all but used the same mechanical ethos they'd been using going back to before World War II. Front engine, rear drive with a live axle, full-perimeter frame. Where was the real advancement?
And the designs, in my humblest of opinion's, were decidedly mixed. Nothing terrible like what they did with the intermediates come 1978 but certainly nothing great or, ahem, "classic". Of the gaggle of '77's, I'm least ambivalent towards the Buick LeSabre coupe meanwhile I find these Chevrolet's as appliance like as a Chevy Cruze. A 1961 GM bubble-top coupe these most certainly weren't.
But how to explain the asking price on this bomber? NADA pegs these on the high end at just under six-grand, average price of around $3,300. Which seems about right for this. And in line with the ambitious ask on Grandma's Impala from a decade ago.
Who knows. Maybe they'll luck out and someone will pay them what they're asking. That, incidentally, would not bode well for anyone but the seller.
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