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The Nineties Are Back: How Nostalgia is Driving the Collector Car Market
We hate to tell you, Millennials, but those cars you coveted in your teens are now considered vintage—and they’re back on the market in mint condition.
M uch like the vinyl revival, analogue automobiles (i.e. cars that directly preceded our current digital era) are now considered "vintage" or even "classic". For millennials and Gen Z, the future of the collector car market is parked somewhere between the VHS player and the first iPhone. Cars of all types and values from the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s—Ford Sierras and Peugeot 205s through to Porsches and Ferraris—are now collector's items.
This shift is partly down to nostalgia, but nostalgia alone doesn’t explain it. Young people faced with today’s homogenized, anaesthetic (and soulless) hybrid and electric cars are looking to the past for their kicks: cars that offer individuality, eccentricity, purity, excitement, value, and an emotional connection. Suddenly, a 1997 Volkswagen Golf is a legitimate exotic, not least because few have survived in original condition.
This new collecting category—let’s call it Millennial Classics—can tug at the heartstrings in a variety of ways. Maybe your mom drove the aforementioned Golf. Or perhaps, now 42 years old, you’re finally able to acquire the yellow Lamborghini Diablo you had taped to a bedroom wall as a tween. Or maybe the silver Lotus Esprit in Pretty Woman made an even bigger impression on you than Julia Roberts.
These cars can be identified a mile away, unlike almost anything today. They were designed before sat navs and touchscreens. The lack of screens is a relief: physical buttons provide a digital detox. Old cars can also be faster and nimbler than their modern descendants because they’re thinner, smaller, and much, much lighter. Manual transmissions, springs that roll the car in corners, unmuffled sounds—these things unite a driver with their vehicle. The perfect gear change provides a rush of satisfaction no EV could ever match.
The internet’s obsession with nostalgia helps to remind us what we’ve been missing. Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and online auctions have turned previously obscure models into objects of desire, and the market is responding. Of the nearly 200 lots coming under the hammer at this week’s RM Sotheby’s auction during Monterey Car Week (13-15 August), 38 are of a 1985-2005 vintage. They include Ferrari’s 288 GTO (the value of which has risen some 1,500% in the last 20 years), Testarossa, F40, F50, 360 Modena, 550 Maranello, 575M and Enzo, a Porsche 959 and a 40th anniversary Lamborghini Murciélago, as well as more niche stuff like the 1999 Vector SRV8 and a 1988 Cizeta-Moroder V16T (designed, in part, by electronic music god Giorgio Moroder). The star of the sale is the ‘pop art’ 1996 McLaren F1 GTR previously owned by Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason and valued in excess of $35 million.
Trends have a habit of coming back around every quarter of a century. This is why people were paying through the nose for Oasis tickets last year, why baggy jeans are back, and why many of Ryan Murphy’s shows are set in the eighties and nineties.
“They were simpler times,” says John Temerian, 41, the co-founder of Curated, a Miami-based showroom specialising in supercars from this era. “There was more excitement in driving then. As we head towards AI and things like that, I think society will want to revert to the analogue world.” He cites the limited edition Lamborghini Diablo SE30 and GT (“they were built in such small numbers, with so much passion”), and the Mercedes SLR McLaren, as cars whose peak value is still some way off. “When you think of the partnership between those two marques [Mercedes-Benz and McLaren], and designer Gordon Murray, it should easily be worth as much as a Porsche Carrera GT or a Ferrari Enzo.”
These cars, Temerian says, “are drive and aspiration rendered in physical form. Most of our clients have an emotional connection. It’s the first supercar they remember seeing, the first videogame they played, the poster on the wall. That was the seed that made them dream big. I can’t tell you how many clients tell us that this car was what inspired them to go do something special or different with their life.”
The other thing about modern classics like these is that they’re safe and reliable. Unlike a car from the sixties or seventies, you won’t have to cross your fingers each time you start it. “The sweet spot for me is 1999 to 2010,” says Temerian. “Ferrari introduced the 360 and the 550. They were well-built, reliable, usable, and you didn’t need to pull the engine out to fix the timing belt. Same with the Murciélago and the [Porsche] 997 GT3 RS, you see a lot of cars with high miles, they’re comfortable, the A/C is great.”
Maurizio de Angelis, 38, is a Milan-based car collector and founder and CEO of an online watch marketplace. His collection includes two Bugatti EB110 GTs, a Jaguar XJ220, a Diablo GT, a Murciélago LP670-4 SV, a Carrera GT, a Gumpert Apollo, a Bugatti Veyron 16.4 and two Koenig-tuned 1,000bhp Ferrari Testarossas. “I’m not interested in buying the car that everyone considers the ‘right’ one at that moment. I often enjoy the opposite more,” says de Angelis. “I like strange cars, cars with a story, cars that, as a kid, I would see in a magazine and think: ‘Does this thing really exist?’”
Shows like Miami Vice, movies franchises like James Bond, Bad Boys and Fast and the Furious, and videogames like Gran Turismo all left their automotive mark. There was no Instagram when these originated, YouTube was nascent. Cars became iconic via starring roles in movies and music videos. Merlin McCormack, 32, an entrepreneur behind Duke of London, a classic and supercar hub in Brentford, has always had his eye on the Testarossa. “I had the red Burago diecast model as a boy and I was obsessed with it. I’ve had my 1990 Testarossa for four years and I’ve covered more miles in it than any single car I’ve owned. I adore it. It’s totally flawed, but still quick by modern standards and cool AF—and that’s the whole point.” McCormack is drawn to this era of cars because “we’re all tired of haptic buttons and hybrid supercars that catapult you into licence-losing territory before you’ve actually felt any excitement.” He also owns a Porsche 993 Turbo, a Ferrari F12, a Mercedes SLS Roadster and a manual Ferrari 355 Spider. “I like to practice what I preach.”
“For years, many of these cars were simply considered old or too eccentric,” says Maurizio de Angelis. “Today we’re starting to understand that they represent a time in history that will never really come back. The 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s were the last period where it was possible to build truly wild, imperfect, sometimes excessive cars without worrying too much about pleasing everyone. That freedom is what fascinates me, and it’s exactly what I’ve tried to bring together with my collection.”
