2.8: Careful Consideration versus Impulse Buying
Speaking of that Lamborghini Gallardo E-gear that I ended up hating, let’s revisit the conversation about impulse buying. I am guilty of having done it, several times in fact, and while I don’t necessarily regret any of those cars, my main goal for writing The Car Collector’s Handbook is to help readers avoid some of the mistakes I have made along the way.
With respect to this entire part of the book, when you’re thinking about buying a car to add to your collection, you’ll be happier if you can avoid impulse purchases and instead focus on finding cars you’d really like to own and drive. Even if you have phenomenal wealth, unless you plan on paying people to drive, maintain, and enjoy your cars for you — which almost completely defeats the purpose of car collecting in my opinion — you will be far better off having a plan when it comes to your acquisitions. Here is how I think about the differences between these two ways of buying a car:
- Careful consideration is figuring out what kind of cars you really like to own and drive. Do you like old cars or new ones? Do you prefer a manual or automatic transmission? If you like old cars, do you like really old cars or do you prefer that they have some creature comforts like modern seats, air bags, and anti-lock brakes? Do you prefer FWD, RWD, or AWD cars? Are you looking for a car that has the potential to hold or appreciate in value, or are you okay buying a car you that will depreciate normally? Do you want to modify the cars you buy, or will you try and keep them pristine or at least period correct? If you’re thinking about buying a car to fill a “hole” in your collection, what hole is that and is the car you’re looking at the best car to fill it? Once you’ve answered questions like these you should have a good perspective on the type or types of cars you’d like to add to your collection and can begin to research options.
- Impulse buying is, more or less, just deciding you want a car and buying it without most of the consideration I just described. It could be the latest model released by a brand you like, or it could be something that popped up in your email that you’d always had your eye on. The fundamental difference between consideration and impulse is a longer-term plan that allows you to articulate why you’re making a purchase; the difference between “I have always wanted a ’73 RS because it’s an iconic Porsche 911, widely considered one of the purest Porsche road and race cars ever made” and “dude, chicks dig Lamborghini, buy one.”
Now, of course, being able to make an impulse purchase of a collectable car requires a level of financial stability that most people don’t have, but keep in mind this is a book about car collecting. I know and have interviewed enough folks in my time as a collector to know that impulse buying is very much a real thing, and at least where folks I talked to were being honest, something that every car collector regrets having done from time to time.
Another personal example for me is my relationship with Ferrari. While I have owned a Porsche for a long time, I had always wanted a Ferrari. I’m not particularly sure why I did, possibly because of what Ferrari represented, and more likely because I had a chance to drive one in 2007 and realized that they are really, truly amazing machines. When I finally had the means to buy one I did a ton of research to figure out which Ferrari I should buy, passing on older and less expensive cars like the Ferrari 360 and earlier models and settling on the F430. The F430 had a reputation for being less costly to maintain while still providing a uniquely Ferrari driving experience, and by the gods man, they are beautiful. I quickly determined that the Ferrari F430 Spider was the car to own, primarily because it was clear that there were few experiences in life as glorious as blasting down the highway, wind in your hair, with that naturally aspirated V8 pushing behind you as the pulled the flappy paddles to run up to the 8,500 RPM redline over and over in the relentless pursuit of adrenaline and speed.
And trust me, it is glorious.
So my first Ferrari was a resale red over black with red stitching F430 Spider, purchased locally from Ferrari of Seattle for slightly more than I should have paid but still a reasonable price. I had done a lot of research and was deeply invested in the purchase process for that F430, and I kept the car for years, only parting with it because I had the opportunity to purchase an even greater naturally aspirated Ferrari. It’s not to say that I hadn’t had the opportunity to buy other Ferrari over the years I owned the F430, I definitely did. The 488 had come out, Ferrari’s entry into turbocharging, and at the time I could have easily purchased one new from the factory, but after driving the 488 I realized that the thing I loved most about Ferrari was their naturally aspirated engines. Not that there is anything wrong with their approach towards forced air induction, or hybridization for that matter with the launch of the LaFerrari and now the SP90, but I had fallen in love with the sound and experience that the naturally aspirated mid-engine cars provided, so I made a plan to trade out of my F430 and the 599 GTO that I had later purchased to buy the last naturally aspirated Ferrari V8, the 2015 Ferrari 458 Speciale.
Then, one day in 2013, I bought a Lamborghini Gallardo Spider because it seemed like a good idea to have a Lamborghini. I have already explained how I ended up feeling about the Gallardo, a few times I think. You can probably see the difference there so I won’t belabor the point; suffice to say, careful consideration has always paid off for me with wonderful cars that I have truly enjoyed owning and hesitated as long as possible before selling. Impulse buying? Not so much.
There Will Always Be Another Car
Perhaps the most important piece of advice I can give you with respect to careful consideration versus impulse buying is this: there will always be another car. Unless you have your sights set on something so rare and so incredible that it is truly “one of one”, you will always be able to find another example whatever you’re looking at in the event that you need to walk away from the deal. Yes, it may not be in the same condition, and yes, it may be more expensive the next time around … but then again, it may be in better condition and less expensive. The important thing is to not let yourself get so enamored with one specific car that you’ll force a bad deal to happen. Sometimes when you walk away you’ll get lucky and you’ll find another car pretty quickly. This is the best-case scenario, and it isn’t uncommon since when you have enough feelers out it’s not surprising that leads will continue to come your way. Other times, however, you can spend years looking for that one perfect car for your collection which, to be honest, can be frustrating but it’s still better than buying a car that will create more headaches than joy.
While I have clearly made some impulse purchases during my time as a collector, I have also been patient and willing to wait for the right car. My Ferrari 458 Speciale is a good example of the latter: as I described previously, the Speciale was a car that I had carefully considered and knew I wanted in my collection. I was hunting for the Speciale because it truly is an amazing car, because it’s the last naturally aspirated mid-engine V8 that Ferrari will likely ever build, because I was lucky enough to be at the car’s North American unveiling in Austin in 2015, and because another collector in Portland had purchased an absolutely beautiful example in black that I saw as it was being delivered to him and I fell in love. Maybe none of these individually are particularly good reasons to want the car, but such is the madness of a collector I suppose, and so I added the 458 Speciale to my “must acquire” list.
For several years the Speciale didn’t come up for sale very often and when they did the asking price was well over MSRP. Given that, and my personal disdain for paying more for a modern car than the original owner did, I saw but passed on a handful of examples. I got close a few times — I found sellers who were more motivated than others for whatever reason — but in each instance there was either something about the car or something about the seller that just wasn’t right and so I walked away from several deals.
I ended up being glad I did, because in 2019 that exact black car that was delivered in Portland showed up at our local Ferrari dealership. Despite the original owner saying he had no intent to ever sell the car, apparently another collector had made him the proverbial “offer he could not refuse” and so the car changed hands … only to have the second owner drive it for a few months and drop it back off at the Ferrari dealership to sell to make way for an incoming Ferrari 488 Pista. What’s more, the current owner was somewhat more motivated to sell and despite my disdain for paying more than sticker for the car I was able to negotiate the price to a reasonable amount and I had the exact Speciale I had been hunting for since 2015.
It was worth the wait.
There are a lot of collectable cars out there in the world and, as they say, everything is for sale for the right price. If you’re patient and thoughtful about your search using the tools I have described in The Car Collector’s Handbook I have no doubt that you’ll find the right car. It may not be the first car you look at or even the fifth, but it’s out there.
The Danger of that Amazing Sounding Review
One of the biggest things that contribute to impulsive buying behavior is, unsurprisingly, car reviews and reviewers. While supposedly objective, new car reviews usually read like extensions of each manufacturers PR department, extolling the virtues of each new model that rolls off the line in a way that can’t help but make you wonder why you’re not heading to the dealership already, checkbook in hand. At least with modern sports cars, reviews usually focus on the increase in horsepower, improvements made in the transmission to make shifting “even faster”, and the resulting increase in total achievable velocity and the speed with which you’ll get there …
Which doesn’t really matter when you think about it.
As I outlined in the chapter “More Horsepower is Better, Right?” the reality for nearly all collectors is that you don’t actually need more horsepower or the fastest possible car. Yes, you likely think you want it, but you should ask yourself “do I want more power because I need to drive faster? Or do I want more power because I keep reading more marketing materials that make me think I need more power?” If it’s the former then I hope you have a good place to drive faster and that you have the skills to do that safely, but if it’s the latter you may want to give that some more consideration.
Car reviewers are, by definition, car people. They love cars and driving and communicate their passion in nearly every review they publish, especially when they are writing about sports, performance, and collectable cars. Most new car reviews are positively gushing about the power and capability of whatever vehicle they have been given to explore, each paragraph more hyperbolic than the last, all planned to convince the reader that they need this machine. There isn’t really anything wrong with this, unless of course you’re hoping the reviewer would be providing an objective assessment of the pros and cons of the car to help you make a thoughtful decision. Don’t believe me? Here’s a single paragraph from a 2020 review of the Porsche 718 Cayman GT4 in Car and Driver:
“But the GT4 is otherwise something you’ll want to binge. That steering is just the beginning. Every primary control is a lesson in perfection. If there’s an automotive engineer active today developing anything — anything, any model, any type of vehicle — who hasn’t driven a 718, then that person doesn’t really understand what good is. That’s how perfect this car is. The clutch pedal alone is an experience richer than you’ll get from most vehicles in their totality. The sole of your foot detects the graining on the disc as you let the pedal out. And there are few, if any, better shift levers on the market. The weight, the certainty of its movements, the spacing of the throws — it’s the pinnacle of automotive evolution. As far as manual transmissions are concerned, it’s time now for a rapture — or a meteor strike.”
“… the pinnacle of automotive evolution. As far as manual transmissions are concerned, it’s time now for a rapture — or a meteor strike.” What does this even mean? That somehow Porsche has created the single most perfect three-pedal car in the history of time and, more importantly, every other manufacturer should just give up and go home? I am really not sure, to be honest, but if you go read the entire review you’ll get my point; the author, who I am sure is a wonderful person and is no doubt a passionate aficionado of sports and performance cars, is perhaps more of a poet than an objective reviewer of the 2020 Cayman GT4. Reading statements like “the GT4 moves like a predator, too. All the lowering and stiffening results in a car with reflexes so quick, it might as well be part of your central nervous system” and “clinging to the road like an alligator to its prey in a death roll“ you sort of can’t help but want to drive the Cayman, can you?
But here’s the thing: every car cannot be the best car ever built.
In the case of the 718 Cayman GT4, while the reviews were near universally positive, buyers who pulled the trigger on the purchase sight unseen and sound unheard were likely to comment that the engine and exhaust sounded muffled, especially when compared to the previous generation. Due to European regulations, Porsche was required to add exhaust controls to the car — namely the Otto Particulate Filters (OPF) — that is no doubt a good thing in terms of emissions and air quality but has a dampening effect on the sound of the car. Given that the 718 is a Porsche GT car there is some expectation about how the car will sound, right or wrong, and the early reviews from owners was that the stock car sounded uninspiring and would need to be fixed. The good news is that there are several “fixes” for the OPF issue; the bad news is that owners who cared about the sound would need to spend thousands of additional dollars on the car upon delivery to make the car sound “proper.”
I emphasized “owners” in the last paragraph for a reason: automotive journalists largely don’t actually buy the cars they review, and amazingly, some of them don’t even own cars. Of course there are exceptions — Chris Harris, the Top Gear guys, Matt Farah, and a few others who are both automotive journalists and avid collectors — but it’s as likely as not that the journalist or blogger writing statements like “The clutch pedal alone is an experience richer than you’ll get from most vehicles in their totality” drives a Volvo sedan or worse, a Prius. And I’m not saying that these folks don’t know what they are talking about, clearly they do, but rather that they don’t actually have any skin in the game and so you should be wary of putting too much emphasis on reviews when making a buying decision. The reviewer may have loved the car, or they may have just loved the opportunity to drive the car for a few days, but either way the car goes back to the manufacturer and not into their garage. You, the collector, on the other hand will have the car in your garage for some amount of time and, if you come to find that the car wasn’t quite as good as the review made it sound … you don’t get to send the car back.
You might ask yourself why this happens, why sports and collectable car reviews are sometimes so hyperbolically positive as to sound like the manufacturers themselves write them? Why they start with horsepower gains that seem numerically significant but, in reality, aren’t additive in any way that you’ll be able to appreciate without risking life, limb, and freedom? And why they seem to gloss over obvious issues which, even if said issues are conferred by regulation not design, are still worthy of exploration and consideration?
In a word, it’s complicated.
At least for the best cars — those cars you’d be considering for your collection as a reader of The Car Collector’s Handbook — it’s not like you just call down to the local Ferrari dealership and ask for a loaner so that you can write a review. The process of getting an exotic, sports, or collectable car is involved and, especially for new cars that aren’t actually in dealerships yet, tightly controlled. Reviewers are basically beholden to the manufacturers for access, and if you were about to launch a car that you’d spent hundreds of millions to develop … would you want it reviewed by someone who was likely to objectively detail the pros and cons of the car or someone who was more or less guaranteed to write a hyperbolically positive review?
It’s a rhetorical question.
Manufacturers are absolutely right to want to control access to their cars, especially their most rare, most expensive, and most exclusive examples. And it makes perfect sense that they would give preferential access to reviewers who are more likely to focus on the same things the builder believes to be important about the car and downplay any shortcomings. It also makes perfect sense that the automobile reviewers should want to stay in the good graces of the manufacturers so that they can continue to have access to new cars, which in this modern age translates into articles, eyeballs, and advertising dollars.
It all makes sense, and it’s an ugly game.
The game of access control leads to unabashedly positive reviews that gloss over real issues that become the owner’s problem. It leads to car collectors having to make a buying decision based on limited information provided by writers who are trying to balance their desire to be objective with the mandate from their publication to stay in the good graces of the manufacturer. And sadly it leads to the manufacturers trying to control every aspect of the review process to the point of looking ridiculous.
None of this would be a problem except for the challenge some car collectors face when it comes to buying new cars. Even if you’re not trying to buy your way to the top, the best collectable cars have a tendency to sell out well ahead of examples making their way to dealerships, so new car buyers have to rely on reviews more than they do when buying used. The right thing to do would be to just wait for the cars to come out and ask for a test drive, and you can do that with some cars, but sometimes it’s just not possible. Allocations are limited, hype is palpable, and as they say “if you snooze, you lose.”
The best advice I can give you when it comes to that amazing sounding review is as follows:
- Read all the reviews and look for “cons” no matter how small they seem. In my experience the problems a car has have a tendency to make it into the best reviews but are often minimized. It will be statements like “there’s no escaping the sound and character that’s been lost as it’s bent to meet ever-stringent emissions regulations” or “the steering is now electrically, not hydraulically, assisted, so some feel has been lost” which are subsequently soften, caveated, and otherwise downplayed to stay in the good graces of the manufacturer. If you see a complaint in one review it might be an issue; if it appears in all of the reviews it’s definitely a problem worthy of consideration;
- Read owner forums and look for reviews there. Often cars will start to arrive in different markets earlier than they will your own. In those cases there may be reviews published by actual owners, which have the potential to be more objective. You’d want to be similarly cautious with these reviews because despite the owners not being particularly beholden to the manufacturer, most folks don’t like being wrong or admitting their mistakes, and so sometimes these owner-written reviews gloss over the problems with the car and just brag about how great they are;
- Find and follow good reviewers on social media. Not all car reviewers are beholden to the manufacturers. Some have been at this for so long and are so respected they are able to rise above the fray and speak their mind, seemingly without fear of repercussion. One example is Chris Harris, British race car driver, automotive journalist, and car collector, perhaps best known for his YouTube channel “Chris Harris on Cars” and his recurring segments on Top Gear. Chris is well known for speaking his mind about the cars he reviews — something that saw him blacklisted by both Ferrari and Lamborghini over his years in the industry — although he doesn’t always say it in proper reviews versus in his social media.
Case in point: Mr. Harris didn’t do a proper review of McLaren’s 765LT, a limited edition, top-of-the-line sports car built in limited numbers and invariably sold out before production even began. But he did get his hands on one and commented on it on both his Twitter and Instagram social media accounts. His verdict? Not as good as the “basic” McLaren 720S, a summary that no doubt stressed out the powers that be in Woking and gave some buyers heart palpitations since now they either have to purchase a car deemed “less good” by one of the most respected drivers in the world … or disagree with Chris Harris. Neither is a great option; - Wait. The best advice I can give you when it comes to amazing sounding reviews … is to ignore them and wait until you can drive the car yourself. With very few exceptions, new cars have a tendency to hit the used market quickly after they are released, at which point you have a far better chance of taking one for a test drive and determining for yourself just how good the car actually is. Even in cases where the reviews were correct and the car is brilliant, since you’re the one spending thousands of dollars on the car, storage, insurance, etc., you really owe it to yourself to confirm that the car will meet your needs in terms of comfort, collectability, and so on.
Yes, there will be cars that will still be harder to find and test drive, and there will be some rare cases where the car will be more expensive used than it was new. Still, the vast majority of modern collectable and sports cars depreciate somewhat normally and, despite the dramatic markup that some buyers will pay to own the first example of a car when it’s released, end up on the market at a reasonable discount over new within twelve to eighteen months. What’s more, after enough cars are put in service, the chances that owners will begin to discuss these cars in online forums increases, as does the likelihood of reading truly objective reviews. And no disrespect to automotive journalists, but I always prefer to read about cars from people who have owned them, driven them, and dealt with them from a maintenance and service perspective.
Don’t get me wrong: reading car reviews can be fun. There are some amazing reviewers out there today reviewing cars and sharing their passion for automobiles. The explosion in car-related social media in the past decade has created more opportunities than ever to allow you to evaluate a potential purchase, and especially for modern sports cars, YouTube and Instagram are increasingly likely to be your go-to source for reviews than any of the traditional magazines. Still, social media personalities are every bit as human as automobile journalists, and they are just as likely to provide or withhold information in an effort to remain in the good graces of the brands as anyone else who is being given preferential access, treatment, or pricing.
At the end of the day, when it comes to amazing sounding reviews, sometimes if it sounds too good to be true … it probably is … but since that generally doesn’t stop folks who have the car collecting bug let’s talk about pricing!
