Generously Interesting
Hi Friends!
This week, Hagerty Marketplace dropped the first 200 of what is rumored to be 1300 cars from what they have dubbed the “Generous Collection”. The long-term passion of a Jasper, Alabama cardboard box manufacturer, the name is allegedly the result of his willingness to pay asking or above on cars he would find for sale locally as a means to help out people in his community.
The collection is an impressive hodgepodge of literally everything you can possibly imagine. Lots of Muscle Cars and American classics, JDM, European Sports and Luxury Cars, Hot Rods and general oddities and more. The thing that really struck me in particular however, was the overwhelming presence of late ’90s and early 2000s GM cars. We’re not talking Cavaliers and S10s so much, but things like F-body Trans Ams and Camaros, C5 Corvettes and even a rare Saab SUV (and a few SN95 era Mustangs too). Interesting cars from this era are overwhelmingly present in virtually every one of the photos and videos, in each of the buildings that make up this crazy group of vehicles.
For a lot of collectors and enthusiasts alike, the late ’90s and early 2000s for the American car biz was long looked at as kind of a dark period in automotive history. Questionable build quality, lazy interior design, semi-anemic engineering and plastic, plastic, plastic, plastic to a degree define that era. Additionally, factor in the overwhelming shift towards SUVs and visions of Pimp My Ride style customization and it’s easy to see why people think that way.
This said, this era was also one that featured a lot of experimentation and eccentricity and that stuff may be starting to actually gain a real audience. A few days ago, I left a comment on a Gen Z Automotive Influencers Instagram reel. His post featured a very period customized Pontiac Trans Am and a caption that referred to the era as a “strip club of car design”. I somewhat echoed and applauded this description and several thousand likes and a few hundred comments later, it’s clear that there’s a group of people coming through the pipeline that really appreciate all the craziness.
We also have to factor in the reality that these cars are starting to get far enough away in the rear view that people are starting to have genuinely positive, nostalgic feelings about them (and for that time in general). For example, I had an Electric Green Mustang that was customized in a similar manner to the influencers Trans Am and although largely a problematic automobile overall (for a wide variety of reasons…), I had a lot of fun in that thing and I’ve got a lot of great memories of the laundry list of shenanigans that surrounded it and all the trouble we got into together.
Additionally, during that time period, I worked for one of the bigger Chevrolet dealers in the area specifically selling Corvettes and was fortunate enough to get the keys to a very early Millennium Yellow Corvette Z06 for a day and that’s an experience I will never forget. Even things like Hummer H2s are starting to really come into their own (and candidly I kind of want one now).
Earlier this week, I was speaking to a client who owns a handful of pretty significant entities in and around this industry and recently, they have really started to really double down on cars (and trucks in particular) from this era. My question is however, is the market ready for this? I suspect that Hagerty has some questions about this also as they are actively only trickling out certain selections from this collection in smaller numbers over the next several months. If you really think about it, this is a lot of cars to hit the market at once. Sure, Mecum does this every few weeks and Barrett-Jackson does numbers like this in January in Arizona (lots of Arizona Car Week updates coming soon by the way….), but how ready to handle a hundred barn kept 2001 Camaros (or whatever) is the market really?
I also suspect that this isn’t an isolated incident. We’re almost assuredly going to be seeing more collections like this hitting the market moving forward as a lot of these guys were scooping up cars as they were coming out of the factory in the early 2000s as well (trust me, I was selling them).
We know there’s an influx of mid-century metal hitting the market right now and that’s factoring largely in the downturn we’re seeing in a lot of segments that are the bread and butter of this hobby across the board. What if supply smokes demand and this segment crashes before it even leaves the runway?
There’s obviously going to be some management and some restraint required in order to avoid this, but I think this is a path that has been traveled before and the parties involved are aware. The question is, are people (let’s not forget how much publicly traded money is now involved) ready to be patient or is it always going to be about the quick buck?
This is going to be a collection to watch and for a number of reasons and the interest it generates should be generous…..
That’s it for this week……
Darin Roberge
