Our Parents Won’t Like The New Breed Of Hot American Classic Cars

Gavel Gazing American Classic Topshot
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Ah, classic American cars. All tail fins, V8s, and chrome, right? Wrong. While the golden age of the ’50s and ’60s still plays an outsized role in the American classic car market, new generations and new open-mindedness are propelling cars that previously weren’t seen as classics to new heights. Oh yes, it’s time to go post-’73. Way, way post-1973.

Welcome back to Gavel Gazing, where we take a look at cars that have recently sold on internet car auction sites and share what’s piqued our interest. First, a disclosure for anyone speculating: None of these cars are the next big thing, because anyone certain about the next big thing is either pumping hype or just guessing. These cars are the new big things, unexpected movers in an unexpected market.

1998 Jeep Cherokee Limited: $27,750

Xj Cherokee 1

I blame David Tracy. Alright, not entirely, but spreading the gospel that the Jeep XJ Cherokee is God’s gift to mankind may have played a role in the unyielding rise in values over the past few years. Case in point? This 1998 model with 109,000 miles on the clock just hammered for new Hyundai Tucson money: $27,500. My jaw is on the floor.

Xj Cherokee 2

This Cherokee isn’t perfect. It has its fair share of paint imperfections, It’s been fitted with aftermarket headlights and clear side markers, it spent most of its life in Maryland, and yet it still went for big money. Don’t get me wrong, its still a rather nice example, but collector appreciation of the Cherokee has been positively meteoric.

Xj Cherokee 3

Back at the start of 2017, the most expensive Jeep Cherokee sold on Bring A Trailer went for $12,500. Now? This thing hammered for $27,750, and it didn’t even come close to setting a record. Bring A Trailer is known for flukes, but this particular XJ Cherokee isn’t one of them. What’s more, values aren’t exactly contracting, in spite of what we’ve seen in much of the traditional enthusiast car market. The floor for these things is still trending upward, so who knows where it could land?

1992 Cadillac Brougham: $10,500

Cadillac Brougham 1

And now for something completely different: Cadillac’s penultimate attempt at a truly old-school flagship. Resplendent in faux wood and sheer acreage of sheetmetal, this barge wasn’t about speed, handling or precision, but instead a way to cruise across America in the highest comfort possible. Sure, the 5.7-liter V8 may only make as much horsepower as a new Mazda 3, but the air-con in these things is ice-cold, and the seats just let you sink right down. It’s a classic mentality, just engineered in the ’80s.

Cadillac Brougham 2

Like the Jeep Cherokee, these Cadillacs used to be cheap, but suffered from attrition at the hands of teenagers imagining the possibilities of a bench front seat, proper skint people who just needed something durable, and the executions of wills. I, for one, am glad to have grown up on the tail end of land yacht affordability, as experiencing a full-size body-on-frame American sedan is something everyone deserves.

Cadillac Brougham 3

While certainly in decent shape, this isn’t an exceptional Brougham, with dings, paint imperfections, and all the hallmarks of a car that’s seen regular life. There’s a little bit of rust, a little bit of wear, and plenty of indication that this car was loved, but not exactly preserved in amber. Still, it fetched $10,500 on Bring A Trailer, a solid result level with what we saw in both 2021 and 2022. Five figures might just be the new normal for a nice Cadillac Brougham, especially with another generation of enthusiasts seeing these as classic cars.

1985 Dodge 600 ES Turbo Convertible: $4,800

Dodge 600 Es

Here’s a sentence I never expected to say: Overall Chrysler K-Car values on Bring A Trailer are still on the way up. More than just a punchline in a Barenaked Ladies song, the K-Car redeemed Chrysler, despite however crappy the actual cars were. Arguably, the K-Car also changed North American cars forever, with widespread platform sharing, heavy adoption of front-wheel-drive, and spawning a little thing called the minivan.

Dodge 600 Es 2 classic

Sure, the Dodge 600 ES Turbo Convertible isn’t the most desirable K-Car, but it’s still a turbocharged four-seat convertible, which means it’s basically a Bentley Continental GTC. Indeed, just look at all the luxury you get in this thing. I’m talking electronic digital instruments, loads of metallic interior accents, white seat covers, and the convenience of an automatic transmission. That doesn’t sound like much, mostly because it isn’t, but with a top that goes down and classic boxy looks, there’s an off-brand John Hughes appeal to this thing.

Dodge 600 Es 3 classic

While this Dodge 600 ES Turbo Convertible certainly isn’t the most expensive K-Car to hammer on Bring A Trailer, it definitely isn’t the cheapest despite certainly not being the nicest that’s hammered on Bring A Trailer. Considering it was only seven years ago that a LeBaron GTS set a then-high bar on Bring A Trailer at $1,950, this has certainly been an ascent to watch.

1996 Ford Explorer: $6,600

Explorer 1 classic

Hey, here’s something else with a controversial past that’s no longer a scrap value car: The second-generation Ford Explorer. Fewer than 25 years ago, the Explorer was embroiled in a bitter legal battle between Ford and Firestone, with lives lost and liability on the line. Now, though? These things are nostalgic, a little trip to a time of post-Cold War optimism.

Explorer 2 classic

This Explorer has a lot going against it. It’s being sold as a total mileage unknown vehicle due to an odometer discrepancy, it’s not an especially special spec, and it was torn apart by technical school students in Arizona for years on end. Sure, it might technically be a low-mileage vehicle, but in this case, it’s not the mileage, but the stories it can tell from its life.

Explorer 3 classic

Still, this thing sold for $6,600, definitely not the cheapest Explorer to ever hammer on Bring A Trailer, but at the bottom of the current market. Just a few months ago, a pristine two-door Sport model hammered for $19,250, and Explorer values have been on a steady rise on Bring A Trailer.

Objective: Survive

So what have we learned here, other than that nostalgia is cyclic? Well, condition and attrition both affect car prices. There are very few blue chip cars in the grand scheme of things, so the bulk of the classic car market is all about timing. None of us are Michael Burry, so forget about any short-term gains, or even being able to drive a car for free by having appreciation cover maintenance and insurance costs. However, if you buy anything near the bottom of its depreciation curve, keep it nice, and keep it long enough for it to become a classic, you could see a return. It still likely won’t be enough to cover running costs, let alone inflation, but when you’ve fallen out of love or exhausted what you can do, it helps when moving onto the next thing.

(Photo credits: Bring A Trailer)

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68 thoughts on “Our Parents Won’t Like The New Breed Of Hot American Classic Cars”

  1. So David’s XJs are worth, what, a cool grand now? 😉

    The Dodge is Ugly, capital U. I don’t know how much of that is stock badness, but it looks like a lot of crappy aftermarket work was done on it.

  2. Prediction: April 2024, The Autopian reports that on BAT a 1983 Cadillac Cimarron with 167,000 miles on the odometer and a smokin’ 1.8L 4-banger goes for $7,288.27. Which is just under $83 per horsie.

  3. I actually dig that Explorer, it looks super clean, and the lift looks great.

    I graduated HS in ’96, so I remember when these things were EVERYWHERE. I don’t have any particular nostalgia for them, but they’re a solid platform to build a budget offroad/overlander. BOF, 8.8 rear (some with disks and ltd slip), good interior space, simple and fairly reliable.

  4. “forget about any short-term gains, or even being able to drive a car for free by having appreciation cover maintenance and insurance costs. ”

    Bah. Deals are still out there, you just need to invest the time to find them.

    On the other hand, telling everyone that deals don’t exist will only make my hobby easier…

  5. talk about shock, and aging, and “unexpectations”: the park i used to walk my previous dog (so my 30s) once hosted a Studebaker Collectors outing. Apparently there weren’t enough Studebakers or Avanti’s to fill out a decent exhibit, so they opened the show to anything registered as historic. i was dismayed to see a not-particularly-nice Fiero on display, having had a couple uncles who built them. it was only mildly relieving to learn that historical plates are available at 20 years in this state.

  6. My parents are buying hybrid crossovers. Wondering why I insist on a hybrid sedan for my next car. I don’t WANT to look like an SUV! I don’t WANT to lug around extra weight and inferior aerodynamics.
    (Granted, my knees are better than theirs.)

  7. We have a purple 99 Cherokee I bought for $1200 around 5 years ago. Came from VA so very little rust but had 250k on the clock. Had to fix up a few things and it’s now at my Mom’s place on Cape Cod for dump runs and trips to the beach. She has gotten SO many comments on it, offers to buy it etc… It gets maybe 500 miles a year now and I hope it lasts forever because I can’t afford to replace it anymore

  8. I’ve read more than one article about how so and so played a big role in making the XJ a collectors car and it always gives me a chuckle.

    The XJ is so loved because so many people had a good experience with it when they were common, not because they read about it after the fact. People that know very little about cars will know it has that legendary 4.0, and they knew it long before we were all chronically online.

    Take a mass produced car that everyone loves, end production, wait 20-25 years. You’ve got a collector car. And better still, it meshes well with the current zeitgeist of off road and outdoorsy lifestyle that has made trucks, SUVs, and crossovers completely take over our roads and dealership lots.

  9. K-cars not withstanding, I’m not seeing the problem here. And I don’t think my parents would either. Unless you pay more attention to the curmudgeons…. who are – admittedly – the loudest voices. These are the cars our parents drove when we were kids. (Except maybe the Cadillac)

    The first generation Explorer Sport would be the one to have on this list, except that they all got crushed during Cash for Clunkers. It’s the spiritual sibling to those XJs, except that the XJ body style stayed in production for ever.

  10. So many fantastic Jeep Cherokees were killed in that last cash-for-clunkers program. I was in a junkyard, looking for Cherokee parts, and there were long rows of them freshly killed.

  11. Our parent’s generation doesn’t like anything, so no surprise there.

    That said, there’s an inherent beauty in loving the unloved cars. I’ve noticed that a lot of the “underdog classic” community has become a safe haven of sorts for the LGBTQ community. The tri-5 Chevy or 67 Camaro forums are, unfortunately, not likely to be a very welcoming place to those individuals, but being passionate about K-Cars or LTDs has allowed a community to form in an otherwise unoccupied space. I hate that this is necessary, but I think it’s a testament to resilience that it occurred.

  13. Having basically gone from childhood into adulthood in an 89 XJ Laredo, I’m shocked by that price. But with an open mind, can understand how someone would draw more attention pulling up to a trendy restaurant in that than the latest Escalade. Same for the Caddy. The K car was also part of my childhood and was utter crap then, and still is crap. Some turds cannot be polished, the corn kernels show through.

  15. People are interested in Cadillacs that are actually Cadillacs? Colour me surprised.

    My Grandpa had olds school Caddies growing up, that brand of comfort luxury doesn’t even exist anymore. I don’t know the exact model when in my mind Cadillac stopped being Cadillac, but it’s a ways back, when you couldn’t compare it with any BMW model, because there was zero crossover in use case.

  16. I got my Mom’s Red LeBaron convert. Non-turbo. Really, Really Red with a white top and searing hot red interior. It was fun on a hot summer nights in NYC. Then I took it to LA. It was fine basic transpo because convert. Then I put in a state of the art Polk audio system. The 8.5 woofers in the door and small mids and tweeters that I mounted on the dash facing the drive and passenger next to the vents after much experimentation. This was best because convert. and wind. Had a friend with a big time studio who would listen to his mixes on it parked. He said it was an excellent low-fi system. I like this turbo and but I love convert anything. Had a 72 Delta 88 Rocket that was my land yacht. I would be a buyer for the Dodge Turbo. Converts make everything better.

  17. I took my 1990 Jeep Comanche Eliminator to the big local classic car show last year. The traffic cop directing me where to park asked me, are you seriously putting this truck in the show? Like why? And simultaneously I head a bystander absolutely feeling out that there was a Jeep Comanche at the show! It’s definitely a generation thing. I don’t particularly pay attention to the classic American muscle cars at the shows as there are just so many and the really aren’t that unique.

    1. What a truck! I really miss mine, it was a 90 Eliminator too, sold it almost 10 years ago when the rust was getting bad and it didn’t seem worth keeping it going much longer. One of my few regrets.

  18. I daily drive a second gen explorer, I could never imagine paying that much for one, but I do love it dearly, and honestly don’t intend to get rid of it until it meets it’s demise. my transmission is just doing ford transmission things, so i need to drop that to fix those.

    1. I had a ’95 Explorer for a daily for years until I traded it in, for more than I paid for it, on another Explorer. I’ve owned five Explorers at this point, so I obviously appreciate them, but even I struggle to see why anyone would pay that much for a ’96.

      Then again, I can see overpaying for an Explorer rather than paying more than $50 for a K-car. Having lived through prime K-car, and owned one of the Shelby K-cars, I still have no nostalgia for those crapboxes. Sure, they may have been better than some of the other domestic crapbof offerings, but they were still junk.

  19. “This 1998 model with 109,000 miles on the clock just hammered for new Hyundai Tucson money: $27,500. My jaw is on the floor”

    You can pick it back up again. A search of much of the western US puts clean titled, 4WD 2001 and older “Jeep Cherokee”s -grand at an average price of $5,344 with a high of $17k. That’s higher than I think is warranted but not as insanely high as BaT.

    1. Those XJs will also be gone by the time you copy the number and call the guy. At least that’s the case in the front range. I had to settle for a non Grail zj.

      1. Try this guy. He may be the unicorn that don’t know what he’s got:

        https://quadcities.craigslist.org/cto/d/davenport-2001-jeep-cherokee-xj/7680386248.html

        This one looks good:

        https://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/cto/d/chicago-2001-jeep-cherokee-classic/7678262364.html

        Maybe a good winter beater (I dunno, we don’t have those kinds of winters here):

        https://wyoming.craigslist.org/cto/d/jackson-2000-jeep-cherokee-limited-4wd/7680446430.html

        Some rust on this one. Nowhere near a DT special though:

        https://chambana.craigslist.org/ctd/d/urbana-2000-jeep-cherokee/7676426030.html

        Here’s one near me. It probably doesn’t have any rust:

        https://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/cto/d/fremont-1996-jeep-cherokee-classic/7683062258.html

        My search got 153 hits across most of the western half of the US. At least a few of those should be live.

    2. There’s a lot of them listed out here in the low-sodium section, but most are high mileage and/or trail modded. The clean, lower mileage examples get snapped up by flippers who do a general cleaning/maintenance pass and then ask (and get) decent money on the resale.

      1. Then look in states with higher sales taxes and fees. Profit seeking flippers hate that one weird trick. Our high gas prices can’t help resale value either.

      1. In a world of abundance sure. If 2001 XJ in otherwise great condition for a great price were to be the best option a 2000 or earlier 4.0 used Jeep head should be cheap and easy to find.

  20. My Mom daily drove a Dodge 600 when I was a kid. It was underpowered, unreliable, and ugly. But her ’65 Stingray couldn’t fit two kids in it and her E150 got single digit gas mileage.

    1. “her ’65 Stingray couldn’t fit two kids in it.”

      Sure it could have! Just ask your mom for the keys and tell her when you’ll be back.

      Our TR-3 didn’t fit three kids yet that didn’t stop my mom from carting us around in it. As a bonus we sat on the rear deck waving to passers by like we were in a parade. We even got to careen off the side, holding onto the roll bar when she took a corner too fast.

      Of course this was the 70s. Kids were a lot cheaper then and parenting standards much more lax (and I’ve got the scar to prove it).

      1. Ah, the 70s, when safety meant putting a jute mat in the bed of an early 50s Ford pickup so the kids didn’t get massive splinters.
        historical note: said pickup had both a flathead Mercury engine and a bumper sticker proclaiming that ‘This Vehicle Will Self-Destruct At 55mph’.

    2. My mom daily-ed an Econoline with a 351W for many years. It got double digit mileage, as long as both digits were ones. OTOH, I can speak from experience when I get the guitar out and play Nanci Griffith’s Ford Econoline.

  21. I owned a 92 Fleetwood Brougham about 15 years ago reliving nostalgia. It was fine for around town, but freeway driving manners were terrible. Also the wheezy, choked V8 and seatbelts attached to the door were 2 of the three reasons I sold the car. It also attracted tons of law enforcement attention in Thousand Oaks, CA. Reason 4?

  22. “the Dodge 600 ES Turbo Convertible isn’t the most desirable K-Car” – that’s because there is *no* desirable K-Car. I have driven several when they were new, and I can’t imagine they got any better with age.

      1. The “fun” part is so spot on. I miss the days of big single turbos that would spool up and then suddenly push you into the seatback as the front end jumped back and forth.

        It felt like you were at the controls of a wild, raw beast. It was quite visceral, a sorta low-end inverse of how old Porsches drove….different wheels, same feeling of something demanding your focused attention.

      2. Dear God, that’s like a horror movie!
        A friend of mine had the wagon version of that in HS and absolutely loved it.
        Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder…

      3. Turbocharged K-car *derivatives* can be fun, as long as they are only platform mates and do not have actual K-car sheet metal.

        I’d rock a Dodge Shadow with a 2.2 turbo, no problem. But every actual K-car, every Aries, every 600, every Lebaron, etc. can go die in a fire. They looked stupid then, they look stupid now, and if you’re nostalgic for them, your nostalgia is stupid and you should pick a better 80s car to miss.

      1. But his Voyager got 40 mpg, towed 12 tons, went 400k miles with nothing but oil changes, and won a couple of autocrosses. What more can you say about such a legendary vehicle?! (My family had an ’85. Engine blew up at 85k miles and the paint and fake wood were peeling off.)

    3. Never understood k car hate. Smart designs for the time, just as comfortable or reliable as anything else back then; plus could get them in manual, turbo, convertible, or a combination of all three!

    4. Same. I thought the Daytonas and the like weren’t bad for their time, but those were technically G platform (OK, derived from the K, but I’m using that to carve out the exception). Sister and some friends had sedans, family had a Voyager, someone had a LeBaron, cousin had the larger E platform (drunk in one also almost killed me driving the wrong way on the highway). The Caravan/Voyager invented popularized a new soon-to-be-huge segment of utility vehicle that’s sadly under appreciated today. The things were everywhere and saved their parent company which is the ultimate mark of success for a consumer product. However, while they weren’t necessarily terrible cars, like one might say of a Hyundai Excel or something, there was nothing desirable about them. They weren’t great to drive, they were nothing to look at (maybe the LeBaron was kind of decent for its time?), they weren’t especially well made, or luxurious. Important to automotive history for sure, but I don’t see why anyone outside of a museum would pay actual money for one and they’re too old to be counted on by someone needing basic transport.

  23. Realizing the the $500 entry level vehicles of my youth (‘70s) are now $400-5000 vehicles. If a vehicle is not. Complete shitbox, no matters the make / model, $5000 is not out of line today. Overpriced? Yes.

      1. Maybe is just where I am, but up until last year, my friends and I were still getting fairly decent cars for less than $1k. like they almost all have a little rust or rather high milage (mines the only exception but ford transmission problems, no first gear), but they are all still running at this point, and all still quite reliable

          1. it was eastern Colorado, but I really don’t know what they’re like these days. I haven’t seen any deals like that this year, not really sure what all happened. prices were not too bad on used cars until recent they were all fairly old cars, 90’s early 2000s. I also haven’t looked in a while in the area because I’m in college in another state

  24. Those are my absolute favorite malaise-era Chrysler wheels!

    A friend’s family had a Dodge Lancer (yeah, lost to the mists of time, but it was a thing) with ’em, best part of the car by far.

  25. As a gen-Xer with older parents (dad was *just* old enough to have been in basic training when WW2 ended), a lot of his contemporaries would’ve loved that Caddy when it was new. In fact, they were pretty much the ones who bought them. Not my actual dad, way too much “geedunk” (unneeded frills) on it for him, but some of the guys he hung out with.

    1. Same. I can remember riding in the early ’80’s black-on-black Fleetwood owned by my dad’s best friend. He calmly freaked out on my when I tried to be helpful and close the trunk for him. I used the force needed to close the trunk on our ’72 Ambassador not knowing about fancy “self-closing” trunk mechanisms like he had.

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