The Classic Cars Still Cheap Enough to Buy This Year

Buy the finished one. That's the whole game. A 1990 Mustang GT that somebody already put a clutch, a fuel pump and new paint into will cost you less over three years than the same car with surface rust and a story about how it "just needs a weekend." Restoration costs about the same whether the car is worth ten grand or thirty. So buy the car where somebody else already ate that loss.

With that settled, the interesting question is which cars the market hasn't figured out yet.

What actually pushes a car's price up

Three things, and none of them is horsepower.

The first is a guy turning 50. People buy the car they wanted at 17 and couldn't have. That's why square-body Chevy trucks went from farm equipment to auction stars, and it's why the mid-'90s is the next wave.

The second is a manual transmission. Same car, same miles, three pedals, and the gap keeps widening. If you're choosing between an automatic that's perfect and a stick that's good, take the stick.

The third is parts. A car that nobody makes fenders for stays cheap forever, because owning it's misery. Anything with a healthy aftermarket and a forum full of obsessives has a floor under it.

The Fox-body Mustang notchback

1987 to 1993, 5.0, five-speed. Everybody's been watching the convertible and the hatchback. The two-door coupe, the plain-jane LX notchback that used to be a police car or a rental, is the one that quietly got expensive while nobody was looking. It's lighter, it's stiffer, and it looks like a brick with a bad attitude.

The pushrod 302 is simple enough to work on in a driveway with hand tools. Parts are everywhere. What kills these cars is rust in the torque boxes and the floor under the seats, plus thirty years of teenagers. Check the strut towers. Check whether the VIN on the dash matches the door tag. Half of the ones for sale are three cars wearing one title.

The Jeep Cherokee XJ

1997 to 2001, 4.0 inline six, with the updated dash. It's already climbing and it's still cheap relative to where it's going, because it's the last honest small SUV. Solid front axle, boxy glass, a straight six that will run with the oil light on longer than it has any right to.

Rust is the whole inspection. Look above the rear wheel arches, at the rear floor where the seat bolts through, and at the frame rails behind the front wheels. A clean southwestern XJ with a five-speed is a genuinely good buy. A northeastern one with bubbles in the quarters is a parts car with a windshield.

The NB Miata

1999 to 2005. The round-headlight NA already jumped. The NB is the same car with more power, better brakes and a glass rear window that doesn't yellow, and people still talk about it like it's a used commuter. The 2004-05 Mazdaspeed turbo is already spoken for. A stock 2001 six-speed isn't.

One real thing to check: the early NB uses a short-nose crank, and if a previous owner ever let the crank pulley bolt go loose, the keyway wallows out and you're pulling the engine. Grab the pulley and look for wobble or witness marks. Ask for the timing belt receipt.

The Mercedes W123 diesel

1977 to 1985, the 300D with the five-cylinder. Slow. Genuinely slow. You merge onto a freeway by planning ahead the day before. In exchange you get the most over-built sedan ever sold to normal people, a car whose doors close like a bank vault, and an engine that treats 300,000 miles as the warm-up.

The catch is everything around the engine. Vacuum lines run the door locks, the transmission shifting and the shutdown. Old ones crack and the car gets weird. The interior wood and the climate control are where the money hides. Buy one with a working AC or accept that it'll never have one.

The dentside Ford pickup

1973 to 1979 F-100 and F-150. Square-body Chevys of the same era doubled and then doubled again. The Ford of the same years sat there getting ignored, which is exactly the setup you want. Same look-across-the-hood appeal, same crew-cab shortage, better prices.

The 300 cubic inch inline six is the sleeper choice. It makes no power worth bragging about and it'll idle for a decade. Cab corners and rocker panels rot first, and they rot from the inside, so press on them with your thumb. Reproduction sheet metal exists, which is the whole reason this truck is a buy and not a trap.

The Porsche 944

A front-engine Porsche with near-perfect weight balance that costs what a used crossover costs. The reason it's cheap is honest: the timing belt and the balance shaft belts are a scheduled job, and if the belt snaps the valves and pistons meet. A belt, water pump and roller service at a shop that knows these cars is a four-figure bill.

So the math is simple. Pay more for one with a stamped, dated belt service in the last three years, or subtract the cost of that job from whatever you offer. Don't tell yourself you'll get to it in the spring.

The Volvo 240 wagon

The brick. Rear-wheel drive, red block four-cylinder, a load floor you could land a plane on. Clean manual wagons stopped being cheap a while back and the automatics are following. It's the family-hauler classic, which is a small and useful category. Your kids can ride in it and nothing about it's precious.

Check the odometer gears, which strip and freeze the mileage. Check the flame trap on the crankcase vent, because a clogged one blows out seals and makes a healthy engine look tired.

What I'd skip

Small British roadsters. MGBs, Spitfires, TR6s. Lovely cars, cheap to buy, and the market has been flat for so long that "flat" is now just what they are. Buy one because you want one. Don't buy one expecting a payday.

I'd also skip anything a magazine declared "the next big thing" last month. By the time the story runs, the sellers have read it too, and the asks go up before the sales do. The money is in the car nobody's writing about yet.

Do these four things before you hand over cash

• Run the VIN and read the title. A salvage brand or a title that's been jumped through three states without a transfer is a problem that follows the car forever.
• Get it on a lift. Not a jack. A lift, at a shop you chose, not one the seller recommends. Sixty to a hundred bucks buys you the frame rails, the floor and the fuel lines.
• Insure it right. Agreed-value collector coverage is a different product than your daily driver policy, with mileage limits and storage requirements. Ask your agent what those are before you buy, not after.
• Drive it home. If the seller won't let you take it on a highway at 65 for twenty minutes, there's a reason.

The best classic anybody I know owns isn't the fastest or the rarest one. It's the one that starts. A car you're afraid to drive isn't an investment. It's a very expensive piece of garage furniture with a battery tender attached.