Richard Joltes wrote:
> a mate took his immaculate '64 to an auto show here in
> Pittsburgh last year and some guy driving a Rangie
> offered him $50k for it on the spot.
We've talked about this before, but thanks in large part to the
excellent marketing and branding job done by Range Rover
North America (now Land Rover North America) the Land
Rover brand is now seen as a super-status symbol in this country.
Land Rover, not being stupid, have capitalized on the growing
market for luxury SUVs and have helped by pushing the Range
Rover and to a degree the Discovery to ever-greater heights
of passenger comfort and amenities.
I suspect that most new Range Rover, Discovery, and
Freelander owners in the US are familiar with the history
of the marque only in whatever reference is made to it in
Land Rover's current literature. So while the Series is correctly
thought of as the forerunner to the current crop of vehicles,
I'd be willing to bet that in most cases, new Land Rover
owners think that Series vehicles are just "older" versions
of what they just bought. They have no clue as to the
Series' weak performance, high maintenance, and
lack of creature comforts. So the Series, simply by
virtue of bearing the Land Rover name, is being carried
along in the upmarket tide that's associated these days
with the Land Rover name.
I read the other day that fourteen percent of the total wealth in this
country is held by one percent of the population. The last
time there was this much disparity between the very rich and
everyone else was in the 1920s. So while the numbers of
very wealthy people is relatively small, the amount of money they
each have is extremely large. So while most of us reel around
wondering what's happened to our buying power, the market for
super cars- cars with prices of $125,000 and up- has never been
better. So you get the new $300,000 Bentley and the
$1 million Bugatti, both of which have their limited production rates
sold out for the foreseeable future.
So if Series Land Rovers are suddenly seen as a "must have"
by the wealthy, who are always looking for a new
toy to buy, what seem to us to be ludicrous
prices will be perfectly acceptable to these people. I doubt we'll
see this sort of run-amok value being placed on Series in other
countries where Series vehicles are much more common, and
have been around continuously from the Series through the Defender.
There, people probably have a more realistic concept of what these
vehicles really are. But in this country, the gap from 1975 to 1987
I think has heightened the "mystique" of the earlier vehicles to some
extent. There weren't that many brought in in to begin with, so the
fever to own a "classic" Land Rover is driven even higher by the
relatively low numbers of vehicles available.
Sure, you can buy a Series in the UK for a song, but most of the very
wealthy don't think that way. They see what they want and
buy it. They don't want the inconvenience of finding a good
on in another country, having it shipped, messing with the
paperwork etc. What they want, they want right now, not three or
four months from now. Add to that the fact that the
value of their time and effort, at least in their eyes, is too great to
be wasted on mundane things like finding an inexpensive way to
get a Series Land Rover, and they'll be happy to fork over $50,000
for a Series already here. They'll probably view it as a bargain.
A similar parallel exists in airplanes. The de Havilland Beaver was
designed as a bush plane, and as such it is a very good one. Kenmore
Air Harbor, where I fly, started back in the
early 1970s rebuilding and improving these airplanes, only 1600 or so
of which were ever made. Until the late '80s, almost all the Beavers
Kenmore rebuilt went to commercial operators, mostly in Alaska but in
other parts of the world as well. During this time, the price of a
completely
rebuilt Beaver with the Kenmore mods, a zero-time engine, and a new
set of EDO floats stabilized at about $260,000.
Then the Beaver was "discovered" by rich folks. For the past fifteen
year or so, Kenmore has not built a single Beaver for a commercial
operator. Instead, their planes have been built for the very rich. Beavers
have become a "must have" item among people with money and who fly
or want airplanes. Movie stars, musicians, developers, dot-com
people- they all had to have a Beaver. Today, the average price for
a rebuilt Beaver is just shy of $1 million. With the exception of some
fancy
stuff in the instrument panel, nothing about the plane has changed from the
days when
the planes were being rebuilt for commercial operators. What has changed is
the price the market is willing to pay.
So a price of $100,000 for a Series won't surprise me one bit, because
there will be someone out there who will be willing to pay it. Here's
a question: as the US prices for Series start climbing, will you be willing
to sell yours for "big bucks," knowing that it may cost you even more to buy
another one if you decide to at a later date? Or do you think it makes
more sense to hang on to what you already have?
___________________________
C. Marin Faure
(original owner)
1973 Land Rover Series III-88
1991 Range Rover Vogue SE
Seattle
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