The Hagerty Market Rating measures the current status of the collector car market in terms of activity or “heat,” directional momentum, and the underlying strength of the market. It is expressed as a closed 0-100 number with a corresponding open-ended index (like the DJIA or NASDAQ Composite). To learn more about how we calculate the Hagerty Market Rating, read here.
The Hagerty Market Rating has now decreased for five consecutive months, after recording a 0.41-point drop. The current value of 58.81 falls under the pandemic-low of 58.95, set in September 2020, and is now the lowest the Market Rating has been since the spring of 2011. That was nearly a decade-and-a-half ago. How much further it will fall remains to be seen.
The Hagerty Market Index, an open-ended stock-market-style version of the Market Rating, dropped again this month following a short reprieve from its continued slide. The Market Index has dropped 31 out of 34 months since its peak in December 2022 and, following the 0.86-point decrease this month, has lost 16.4% of value.
At the start of the month, we released a new edition of the Hagerty Price Guide. As the classic car market cooled over the past couple years, many values in the Hagerty Price Guide have decreased in tandem. The average #3 (good) condition value of all vehicles in the guide has dropped to $174,431, its lowest value since the start of the year, but when accounting for inflation, it’s at its lowest point since 2013. Similarly, the median #3 condition value dropped to $23,400, the lowest since April 2022. However, when accounting for inflation, the median #3 condition value is at a record low.
While most of the over 39,000 vehicles in the Hagerty Price Guide didn’t move at all this book, as the chart below shows, nearly twice as many vehicles depreciated in value (20%) compared to those that appreciated (12%).
As you would expect, certain segments of vehicles are performing differently than others. When accounting for inflation, the Hagerty Hundred, a weighted average of the 100 most insured vehicles in the Hagerty Price Guide, fell 1.78 points to 49.08. This is its lowest point since the introduction of the Hagerty Market Rating in 2006 and the first time it has fallen below 50. The Blue Chip Index, which consists of the average #2 (excellent) condition value of 25 high-end classics, fared slightly better this month, falling only 0.43 points to it’s lowest point since late 2013.
We are seeing a similar trend in our insured data. The ratio of requests Hagerty gets to increase vs. decrease insured values for vehicles worth under $250,000 has been falling for 10 consecutive months. However, we are still getting more calls to increase values. At its peak, the ratio was 17-to-1. Now, it sits just above 6-to-1. For high-end vehicles, the ratio increased slightly this book, but has hovered around 1.4-to-1 for the past year. At its recent peak in 2022, it was 6.1-to-1.
The classic car market takes a short breath until January, when massive auctions take place in Arizona and Florida. Until then, it is likely that the Market Rating will continue to slide as sales activity slows and enthusiasts pack away their cars for the winter.
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