It’s a Friday, once again, and that means a new issue of the Bring A Trailer Suckers Slideshow. After last week’s dip into total Americana, this installment is focused around enthusiast vehicles of all shapes and sizes. Two wheels, four wheels, coupes and cabrios and SUVs. Come hop in!
Value: Definitely not this
The Honda Motocompo is, inarguably, one of the coolest vehicles ever designed. It folds into the trunk of another vehicle, something that no Rolls-Royce or Bentley has ever pulled off. It was built for the last mile, or the last few hundred feet from whatever Tokyo parking spot you can manage to find to your office.
It is not, however, worth ten and a half thousand United States dollars. Until recently, that money would buy you a Motocompo and the Honda City it fits within. Even on Bring A Trailer, in the City’s top Turbo II trim, the combo went for just $16,000 back in late 2020. Please, I beg you, stop driving prices up on these. They’re too cool.
Kelley Blue Book value: $17,456
The genre of fast American SUVs long predates Hellcat-powered Jeeps and the Escalade V. Back in the halcyon mid aughts, you could haul your HitClips around in a Trailblazer with a six-liter V8 under the hood. 395 horsepower may not be earth-shattering now, but in the 2000s that was Corvette Z06-tier grunt.
This Blazer’s outrageously inflated price seems to be based on its low mileage. Normally that would mean a vehicle is in pristine condition, but this particular example seems to have a solid amount of corrosion starting to show up in its undercarriage. If it isn’t an immaculate collector piece, it’s just A Fast SUV From Fifteen Years Ago — certainly not something worth nearly forty thousand dollars.
Kelley Blue Book value: $32,871 in stock condition
The E9x-generation M3 is one of the more divisive entries in the line. It’s not only the first, but the only M3 to be powered by a V8 engine. It was heavier than outgoing models, but it still got out of its own way. Or, if the tires on the M you test drove from CarMax were in rough shape, it stayed perfectly still as you lit up the rear end trying to merge into traffic uphill from a stop. Not that I would know.
Because of their divisive nature, and their penchant for eating rod bearings and throttle actuators, these M3s can often be found for dirt cheap — well under $20,000 depending on the condition. Some price premium is often worth it for these cars if the major maintenance items have been touched, but the BaT listing gives no indication of new throttle actuators, let alone the harder-to-access issues.
Kelley Blue Book value: $15,710
I’ll be honest, I had entirely forgotten that Pontiac made the Solstice in a coupe. The Corvette’s brief baby brother came in both Pontiac and Saturn flavors, and both were optionally available with the turbocharged two-liter that this particular listing sports. I’ve been told that, with a big turbo and some E85, these engines can make absurd power for their size.
Unfortunately, this particular engine reaches the ground through a five-speed automatic gearbox. Sure, plenty of Solstices and Skies were sold as automatic cruisers, for people who wanted the wind in their hair without paying Corvette prices, but this targa model would certainly be less convenient for that use case than the ragtop.
Hagerty value: $20,000
We all know that Integra prices, both Type R and otherwise, are certified bonkers. Any Integra sale for a sum like this is absurd, no matter how impeccable an example trades hands. This one is particularly egregious, however, because the underlying car is far from pristine.
This Type R has been crashed, stolen, and questionably repaired. The dash no longer sports a VIN, and in fact the only factory VIN stickers that remain on the Teggy are on the front and rear bumpers. There’s very little to prove that this is a real Type R at all — let alone that it can still provide the driving experience that made these cars famous.
Hagerty value: $47,800
Bring A Trailer sure loves highly modified Blazers, doesn’t it? I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for this generation of Blazer and even more of a sucker for a good set of KC lights. In fact, just about the only thing I can think of that beats that combo is seventy thousand dollars. Yeah, that would be better to have.
Admittedly, this is an in-depth build. There’s the lift, the lights, the bumpers and brakes; even the engine has been torn down and reworked. Does that mean this Blazer is worth as much as, say, a five-bedroom home in Rochester, NY? My vote would say no.
Hagerty value: $36,500
When I was a young boy, my father always had an issue with the Mondial. His reaction probably stemmed from models earlier than this Mondial T, which was heavily reworked from prior incarnations of the car, but the name has always stuck out in my memory as The Bad Ferrari.
If you had to buy a Mondial, you could do a lot worse than this one. Period reviews say the updated engineering of the T vastly improved the driving experience, and Rosso Corsa over tan is the generally accepted Singular Ferrari Color Combination. For $74,000, though, you can do a lot better than a 300-horsepower exotic that’s been out of production for decades. Love yourself.
Hagerty value: $72,100
Oh, you thought Type R pricing was bad? Allow me to introduce you to the S2000 Club Racer. Less weight, unique seats, and upgraded suspension and aero tuning over the base S2000. Even the soft top was sacrificed at the altar of lightness to convert the already-fantastic S2000 into this track day special.
God help you if you take one of these to the track, though, because a single scratch will bankrupt you. No, these CRs are the domain of collectors now — you can’t use the car, you have to preserve it, lest our investment fail to see intended returns. Please, rich people, just buy art instead. Leave the cars to be driven.
NADA value: $143,995
You remember the Boots Theory of Economic Unfairness? It states that the richer someone is, the higher quality things they can own, so their goods outlast those purchased by the poor. A person who can afford a $50 pair of boots will have dry feet for a decade, while someone who can only afford to replace their $10 boots with another identical pair will spend more in the long run and still have wet socks.
I think that theory is a little out of date. Now, it seems, those who can afford an M5 CS with a sticker price of $149,560 will see an immediate return on their investment. Someone bought this car, drove it for 1,300 miles, and will be handed nearly 30 grand for their service.
NADA value: $143,725
Speaking of nearly-new expensive cars that have skyrocketed in value, we have this Corvette ZR1. This car remains the fastest, most powerful Corvette ever offered by Chevrolet, though rumors abound about a successor that will ride on the C8 platform. But the Corvette’s core competency has always been affordable performance, knocking on the door of German and Italian supercars for a fraction of the cost. This one makes that fraction improper.
The original sticker price for this Corvette was $139,770. Even NADA suggests its value has gone up, into the mid-$140,000. I’ll just whip out my calculator, and— huh. It seems that $215,000 is higher than $143,725, not equal. By about the price of one highly-modified Blazer. I won’t pretend to understand the thought processes that go into most of these purchases, but paying seventy thousand dollars over what a car is worth just seems like bad financial planning.