6 Depressingly Expensive Retro Cars That Used To Be Affordable

If you’ve kept an eye on classic car prices over the last few years, you’ll know they’ve gone absolutely bonkers. The rich and famous have been dropping ever more absurd bundles of cash on rare old Ferraris and Aston Martins, but it’s not just at the premium end of the market: the sort of stuff us ordinary folk might be interested in is getting further and further out of reach.

The other day I dug out a few old classic car mags, one from two years ago and one from around six years ago. It made me a little sad to see how much more expensive things have become, even when you take inflation into account. Here are a few once affordable retro rides that have experienced crazy price increases over recent years:

1. BMW E30 M3

With prices starting at around £6000-£8000 five or six years ago, the wide-arched E30 M3 really was an attainable classic. Now? Not so much. It’s not uncommon to see tidy versions of this homologation special changing hands for around £30,000. Want the even rarer Sport Evolution model? You’ll need more like £90,000.

2. Ferrari 308

The 308 was never dirt cheap, but with prices hovering around the £20k mark not so long ago, this was a Ferrari you could genuinely aspire to own. These days, though, you need to quadruple that figure to be in with a shot of buying one. Even in the last couple of years, values have almost doubled.

3. Ford Sierra RS Cosworth

Having a flick through our stack of old mags shows that a good three-door RS Cosworth would set you back around £10,000 six years ago, and even as recently as two years ago, you could nab one for about £15k.

Today, the going rate for these bewinged 204bhp bad boys is more like £30,000, and a dusty barn find even hit a preposterous £47,250 at auction recently - that’s double its estimate.

4. Audi Quattro

The appeal of the classic Quattro is easy to see. They’re powerful - with 217bhp available in the pokiest 20-valve version - have a gorgeous warbly five-pot engine, all-wheel drive, and are blessed with the sort of beautifully boxy looks that make us love cars from the 1980s. Recently, starting prices of about £5000 made these a tempting retro bargain.

However, that £5000 figure was about on the money five or so years ago, but if you want one now, you’ll need to triple that figure. And if it’s a very tidy one you want, be prepared to spend over £20,000, or even £30,000 in special cases. Boo.

5. Lancia Delta Integrale

Remember the time of the £3000 Lancia Delta Integrale? I do. In fact, in a moment of bravery/stupidity I thought about buying a tatty eight-valve example before instead buying a Mercedes 190E ‘Cosworth’.

Unfortunately, my dreams of a relatively inexpensive (well, inexpensive to buy, not necessarily to run) all-wheel-drive rally car for the road have been crushed by rising prices. Where £5000 was enough five years ago for a rather tidy eight-valve, today you’ll need to bring £10,000 or more to the table.

6. Porsche 911 Carrera 3.2

Before the slightly flakey, water-cooled 996 took over, these pre-89 Carreras were one of the most affordable entries in to the world of the Porsche 911. £10,000 was enough for a fairly tidy example, but now prices of all air-cooled 911s - 964s, 993s, the lot of them - have exploded, a budget of at least £25,000-£30,000 is needed.

James May’s gorgeous Guards Red example, for instance, was purchased by the former Top Gear presenter in 2007 for around £15,000. It’s recently gone under the hammer for closer to £50,000. Sure, the celebrity connection will have added a premium, but much of that price is simply down to the fact it was a good example.