Areader recently sent me a stack of DVDs containing a bunch of sports car racing movies from the mid- to late ’50s. As I watched one, I caught a glimpse of a red Morgan at the 1953 Pebble Beach Road Race.
Was this the 1952 Morgan I’d just bought? I knew it ran Laguna Seca a few years later, but …
Counterpoint: having a pedigree based on history is limiting to your ownership. The more important that pedigree, the more limiting it is - to the point where even washing the car can decrease its value. You start moving your functioning vehicle away from a vehicle and more towards an investment, where your efforts are spent preserving and enhancing that pedigree instead of making the car better and driving it. Now that CM knows that Elva is possibly worth $100k instead of being a $5k basket case, they're constrained in what they can do. If you enjoy cars as an investment, great. But to me, it would almost be disappointing to learn that I had a significant car on my hands if I had purchased it for other reasons, because those reasons probably didn't include a carefully curated restoration so someone else could purchase it.
Taking bids on this 2022 VIR 12 Hour South Course Class B winner. Bids starting at $1,000,000 for a race winning piece of history.
Depends, are we talking a famous and prestigious event from the '50s-'70s or the winner of the local demo derby? 
On the lower-end side of things, a friend of mine once won a local drag series championship with a supercharged Toyota RunX and got an offer from a Caribbean zillionaire car collector to name his price for the car. With that money he was able to import a spec BMW 3-series liftback and enter it into stage rally and rallycross.
Keith Tanner said:Counterpoint: having a pedigree based on history is limiting to your ownership. The more important that pedigree, the more limiting it is - to the point where even washing the car can decrease its value. You start moving your functioning vehicle away from a vehicle and more towards an investment, where your efforts are spent preserving and enhancing that pedigree instead of making the car better and driving it. Now that CM knows that Elva is possibly worth $100k instead of being a $5k basket case, they're constrained in what they can do. If you enjoy cars as an investment, great. But to me, it would almost be disappointing to learn that I had a significant car on my hands if I had purchased it for other reasons, because those reasons probably didn't include a carefully curated restoration so someone else could purchase it.
I pretty much feel the same way; if I had some car with great provenance I'd end up selling it because A. the temptation of a huge profit would be to much and B. I know I'd constantly worry that something would happen to it.
I too like the freedom of being able to modify a car how I see fit.
My Formula 500 has some minor provenance; I'm hoping it's just enough to get it a entry into Monterey some day...........if some day it turns out to be more than minor it will likely get sold.
Some historical car's history is that it went through a number of changes (class-wise, engine-wise, etc.) so it's value may depend on which version of that car you are getting.
I dig knowing the history of a car but wouldn't want to be burdened by the idea that it was a collector's item.
If you're not careful the things you own end up owning you.
In reply to Keith Tanner :
It's only limiting if your reason for owning the car is as an investment, rather than as a car. :-)
Yes. Had to dig up a 14 year old thread on rx7club and reply to it.
Most of the reason I have the car now is because it was a friend's car with provenance. That is what made the car valuable to me, and worth spending a few years doing the parts hunt to do a mechanical restoration to bring it back to competition ready status.
Don't get me wrong, it is MY car now, and I am tweaking it as I see fit, but part of the charm is its history.
Somehow I do not think that former SCCA rallycross champions will bring the big bucks at Barrett-Jackson, but the point isn't to make other people ooh and ahh, the point is to make me smile. If I am not enjoying owning and driving a car, why own or drive it?
In reply to Tim Suddard :
Thanks for your thoughts Tim! I've gathered several olde race cars over the years: A COFFIELD mk-III g/h modified, a Dolphin Porsche F1, a 1940 FIA F1 GMC, a TR GT-6+, a C mod Ford (unknown make) and a Triumph F Junior. Some day I'll have to research their provenances, now--to busy wrenching~~
Michael D. Rogers
Good on you for saving the Elva. Yes, it's a living piece of history. They are beautiful, simple designs that can be raced and enjoyed for what they are. We enjoyed Goodwood Revival last month. Great fun to watch beautiful rare cars race hard on a historic track with spectators and teams in period dress.
Hope to see you at the vintage races someday. I'll be in the red '62 Lotus 23.
I semi disagree about the point about purpose built racecars, because they have what I would call latent potential value. Obviously a basket case is not going to be worth very much but the potential of what the car is worth fully restored to mint condition is value X, and then any history adds a varying value of Y on top of the X value. For instance, we picked up a basket case Brabham BT2 and a basket case Brabham BT16, knowing their potential values as what the current market is without factoring in history. The BT2 in this case is very likely to be Ernie De Vos' Canadian Formula Junior Championship car, elevating its potential restored value, while my BT16(Pictured Below) has no provable history as of yet(unless you want to count the previous owner almost putting a literal rocket in the back of it in the '80s), which means it can only reach so high in value.
Now I also have a Formula Ford De Sanctis that's value is currently being lowered by its history. It was originally a 1968 F3 car converted to FF by the factory in '69 for a US buyer, who I am still in contact with. in 1968 De Sanctis and Jonathan Williams won the Italian F3 Championship. However, because we cannot prove its F3 history, but CAN prove its Formula Ford history, and built it as such, this lowers its value. Not that I mind, I love this car and am currently running it in period correct livery of how the US buyer ran it.
As far as productions cars are concerned, it probably fully depends on the history of who drove it and what results were achieved. If Joe Shmoe modified his little roadster to race, but never achieve any results of merit and maybe even crashed the car, I think you could argue that this hurts the overall value of the car because of the abuse the car received.
And at the end of the day, monetary value should only make up a fraction of the reasons you own a classic car, in my opinion. What truly matters is its value in your heart and if you like the car or not.
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