Pitfalls of owning a classic car

Interest in classic cars has taken off, fueled partly by cashed-up nostalgic baby-boomers buying dream cars from their youth and historic registration schemes that makes the cost of registering and insuring a car that’s over 25 years old dirt cheap.

With the new interest in old, increasingly hard-to-find cars also comes increased values. Some consider that classic cars are now a better investment than real estate.

But if you’re considering buying a classic, you might want to think again. Unless you go in with eyes wide open and consider the following key points, classic car ownership can be a whole world of hurt.

And just even getting into the market with a classic car might stop you in your tracks. A tidy example of an ordinary car you knew you could buy for $5000 back in the day might now sell for no less $50,000.

Aussie classics in particular have gone off in the last 10 years; even a tidy, original but basic 1970s Ford Falcon or Holden Kingswood is no longer a cheap proposition.

Rust is the number-one killer of old cars. Some classics were either made of cheap steel that would rust by looking at it, others were poorly designed with many rust traps, and factory rust-proofing is something that only became widespread in the 1990s.

Unless the classic you’re looking at has lived inland, was a garage queen all its life and/or rarely got wet, it’ll either have no rust or -- if you’re lucky -- had it properly cut out by now.

While outer panels blighted with orange tinged bubbling paint is a sure sign of the dreaded tin cancer, classics can have plenty of rust in hard-to-find recesses.

Even worse, a previous owner may have invested in a large tin of body filler and went to work hiding the rust, which of course will eventually make the rust even worse than it was.

Even if you’re lucky to find a classic that has hardly any rust, painting procedures and technology in some car factories wasn’t nearly as good or consistent as it is today.

In the 1970s and 1980s, for example, you’d often see cars barely five years old that had paint starting to go off.

A classic’s original paintwork can easily have faded, crazed or its clear coat can have flaked off like dandruff, especially if it’s painted in a metallic colour.

Of course, to get necessary paint and panel repair work for any car let alone a classic is not cheap, or quality repair work easy to find.

It’s easy to blow a few thousand dollars on minor rust repairs (cutting out the rust and welding in new metal) and while you can get a $5000 closed-door respray (that is just the exterior panels painted, not door jambs, engine bay and so on), it’s likely that the result will only look good from across the road.

Expect to pay $20,000 (or a lot more) for a quality, drive-in-drive-out complete rust and panel repair and respray.

With most panel shops now concentrating on accident-damaged newer cars that need bolt-on panel replacement and painting rather than old-school panel-beating, finding someone who has the skill to tackle a classic car body restoration is not easy either.

Even then the restorer will have to outsource the repair of parts like chrome bumpers and stainless steel trim if that is required, from a shrinking number of (expensive) specialists who can do such work.

That’s not to mention the cost of reupholstering the interior, especially if you want your classic to look original.

Assuming it’s roadworthy (a big assumption for an unloved, tired classic) there’s nothing stopping you from getting full registration as you would a modern car.

Yet for cars more than either 25 or 30 years old (depending on state) if you want to pay around $40 a year for (limited use) historic rego rather than the standard rego/third-party insurance cost of about $1000, you have to join a car club that participates in your state’s historic registration scheme.

While car club membership is usually only around $50 a year, many of these clubs will make you wait 12 months after joining before they’ll sign and stamp your historic plates application.

Often the club will also set a certain minimum mandatory number of club runs or meetings for members to first obtain and then to keep up the historic rego (an authorised club signatory has to sign the historic rego renewal every year).

So you might not have the time or inclination to participate as much as the club requires.

While you’ll find plenty of people in car clubs that are easy-going, have great contacts for parts and repairs and plenty of knowledge to share about your model of classic, it’s fair to say there will be those that you would normally not want to socialise with.

Parts for a classic can be hard to find and expensive. It’s true that if you have a popular US model you’ll have a vast array or suppliers in the US producing reproduction parts -- and even Aussie cars are catered for with the likes of Rare Spares -- but if they don’t remake the part you need, getting original parts can be difficult.

Even if your car was a popular model back in the day, most new spares have been used up long ago and the once-plentiful stock of classics at wrecking yards have been picked clean and gone to scrap.

As the values of classics rise, cars that were once broken up for parts are now viable for restoration, reducing further the stock of used spares. Often you can be left to bid on auction websites for a rare new-old-stock part you need that sells for the price of a decent new laptop.

If a classic has been either unloved or even if immaculate but left sitting for long periods, it might need a lot of work to be a reliable, roadworthy proposition.

If you don’t have the mechanical skills to work on your classic, getting a mechanic able and willing to do so might not be easy. Overhauling a carburettor, for example, might be the kind of job your local franchise service centre won’t or can’t do.

With the increase in classic car values, they have had a renewed appeal to thieves.

Classics are mostly very easy to steal, with immobilisers only introduced in the 1990s. And if kept original -- without an aftermarket immobiliser and/or tracker fitted -- a classic is a soft target for thieves.

And if you plan to use your classic as a daily driver, your patience with it (let alone that of other drivers) might be worn thin. They don’t go, stop or turn like more modern cars.

Almost anything from the mid-1970s will have power brakes (even front discs!) and enough performance to keep up with the traffic, but power steering was often optional and air-conditioning was a luxury extra until well into the 1980s.

If you can’t do without features such as Bluetooth connectivity and parking sensors, they can be fitted to a classic, but depending on the model you might devalue your car by doing so.

While classic cars can be a lot of fun and even a smart investment, don’t expect ownership to be a smooth ride.