Healey Prices on Cruise Control

Many cars sell for $60,000 to $75,000—about the cost to restore a solid original car, if you know what you’re doing

by Gary Anderson

With only one “Gee whiz, what-was-he-thinking? over-six-figures” Austin-Healey sale price in Scottsdale in January and one fairly respectable car that sold for less than $25,000, some folks are asking whether the recent run-up in big Healey prices resembles the Jaguar and Ferrari bubbles of the late 1980s.

To gain perspective on where they might be going, let’s look at where Healey prices have been. As readers of this magazine, we can study the auction sales chronologically over the past ten years in the SCM Platinum Database. The system even shows us a graph of average sale prices by year.

Historical perspective is a wonderful thing. Based on SCM data, my conclusion is that there hasn’t been a bubble in prices, and we’re not in for a meltdown.

In the late 1990s, a very nice Healey could be had for about $25,000; auction prices were pretty much the same as private market prices. At those levels, auction prices didn’t pay for the cost of...