Do You Need a Classic Car App?

Reports of a new smart phone application designed to help classic auto enthusiasts determine the “correct” price to pay for a vintage vehicle have been popping up around various news sites on the Internet lately. The new app is called “The Fuelist” and its parent company is identified as The Chancellor Group, described as a conglomerate that owns various oil, gas, technology and media properties.

The Fuelist app is aimed at individual auto enthusiasts as well as collectors and investors who have all discovered that investments in vintage cars have been appreciating faster than many other types of luxury asset investments today. The reasoning behind the app is that people can never have too much information when it comes to investing in classic cars. Proponents of the app say it employs extensive data collection to help determine what price should be paid for a specific classic vehicle by comparing the data from past sales and loading those results into a mobile-accessible database that includes location, price, vehicle specifications, and a few other available details.

The Fuelist app is described by the developers as a treasure trove of useful knowledge that is also user-friendly. Users can type in their vehicle search terms and the program will display the results in a colored graphic that displays past sales of the same vehicle in categories of average, median, high and low price estimates. Users can also search previous years’ sales to see how the prices may have changed over time.

While it is undeniably useful to know what other buyers have spent on similar classic vehicle purchases, there are also a lot of variables this app does not take into consideration. One very pertinent missing factor is obviously the condition of each vehicle. It is practically impossible to determine the right price for a classic car bid without knowing the exact condition of the car. Other factors are also absent, like known problems for a specific make/model/year of car, and whether those issues are present, and if so, how were they addressed? It would also be very useful to know the dates and extent of the last major repairs and what maintenance or restoration the vehicle has received over the years. Because there are so many important factors to consider, potential purchasers obviously need more info than just the past sale prices.

Buying and selling vintage vehicles can be a complex (and risky) activity if you don’t know what you’re doing. There are simply too many variables in the game to quantify effectively in aggregate on a simple smart phone application. Past sale prices are only one factor. Seasoned vintage auto enthusiasts know that if you want to purchase a classic car, you better know exactly what you want, what issues are common with that particular model and how to deal with them cost effectively. However, once you have learned all of the pertinent details about a specific car offered for sale, regardless of the past sale prices, you really wouldn’t need an app to tell you what a decent price point would be, would you?