History is certainly important if it's a rich one. But there are plenty of
old race cars about, and every one has history. Just being on the track a
lot is not significant as far as the amount someone will pay for your car.
These days the value of cars with an illustrious history has skyrocketed.
The performance of the cars hasn't changed since they are maintained in
precisely the form they originated with. So a TR3 can be built that will eat
a Ferrari Testarossa alive. Does that make the TR3 more valuable and the
Ferrari less?
I consider the value of these old race cars to be precarious because they
are faced with a conundrum--stay home and be forgotten, or race and be
beaten by the hoi polloi. Vintage racing has morphed from it's origin into a
truer form of racing, at the expense of having a lot of beautiful and
important cars in the paddock--the element that drew a lot of us into the
sport to begin with. Personally I'm content with the new reality, but it's
still nice to go to the Monterey Historics and see the good stuff. The only
downside with Monterey is the limited track time.
That's the main reason why I'm working on this Columbia River Classic race
so hard--to have a local opportunity to see great cars, and still have a
club event that has lots of racing.
But unless Jimmy Clark spent his formative years racing your ordinary race
car, it's value won't be improved much by it's history.
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