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So in my fantasy garage there are vehicles I see released now that have a high premium and I can only hope that the value drops as fast as many of them will be wrapped around light poles by trust fund kids. In my list below I will also give reason why these cars are terrible as my opinion is likely to weigh heavily in how well these cars sustain value on the market.

2014 Alfa Romeo 4c

Several reviews have come back negative already so I am going to jump on this bandwagon and say that this car is miserable. So miserable in fact that I would despise sitting low in its lightweight chassis and taking it hard into corners on Los Angeles Crest highway. I would be embarrassed to be seen in its gorgeous Italian body with its beautiful Alfa grill that hearkens back to some of the most prestigious cars in automotive history. I would be openly upset if this car could find its way to my garage for under $40k in 5 years time.

2013 SRT Viper

After a short period without a venom-packed V10, the SRT Viper returned to form with the classic lines of the first Viper back in the 1990’s. This car is so menacing and brutal that surely it would be absurd to buy and any person in their right mind would be much happier in a C7 Corvette. The Viper is continually compared to the GM rival and with all the buzz surrounding the new Vette it is probably best to simply keep this SRT in a shed with climate control. Then some poor sap can pick it up for $60k years from now and grin like a fool as he opens up the V10 and careens off a mountain pass through a camp for underprivileged youth.

2008 Ferrari California

Currently known by many as the worst looking modern Ferrari in the prestigious stable, the California is likely to drop in price faster than the mechanically operated drop top stops functioning entirely. Such misery would it be to have to force down the convertible top and take off down PCH in a front-engine, Italian, V8 motorcar. I would have to wear a bag over my head while the wind rippled over my exposed skin and the sun danced across the high rear end and the pointy, shark-like, front fascia. I simply refuse to own one of these cars – in Azzurro California with light tan leather.

2014 Jeep Grand Cherokee Diesel

As far as 4WD SUVs go there is nothing we despise more than efficiency and power – it doesn’t make sense in the least. If I wanted better miles per gallon I would just simply purchase a hybrid and then also have a car for blazing the trail on occasion. So the new Diesel Grand Cherokee fills a hole for the non-customer that wants the best of both worlds. At $50k+ this car is sure to plummet and I hope to someday find this car in the price trench and be the man crazy enough to pilot the 400 ft lbs of torque up a mountain – all while getting over 25 MPG.

John Stonich 10 years ago

This little critique on the new Alfa 4c is quite off base on several counts. First, the writer is not in tune with the huge majority of the sports/racing car press, which has given consistently very high marks on this car based upon what it is, a seat of the pants, no compromise, powerful little sports car, with an Italian lineage and an “affordable” price, with little attention given to contemporary “comfort” oriented gee-gaws like power steering and “smooth” suspensions.

That’s not what this car is or meant to be. The sports car writers have most all said it’s a hard riding, super-fast, quick handling car, kinda like a race car with an extra seat, and certainly a “real” sports car, as in days of yore when people bought such cars not to show off to the neighbors, or to give the wife a fluffy ride to the mall, but to get the performance, as closely as possible, of a full-on track racing car that was street legal and just comfortable enough to use from one’s home to work etc. So the first broadside against this car quite backward, ill-informed and just entirely wrong!

The second comment about the car holding or losing value has some merit because many so called “exotic” cars have the repeated habit of depreciating precipitously in very short order. This because there often isn’t a market for used low production models, or, in the case of many BMWs, people have learned how unreliable they can be and how expensive to fix. Although such folks often still like the car for “personal” reasons (particularly as they are mostly “Status Wagons” for the automotively uniformed) people who like them for whatever reason don’t want to pick up anything that is out of factory warranty.

However, in the case of some of these cars, if there is some rare of very new feature about them, possible combined with some limited production, or they’re just too well performing to fade, such cars tend not only to hold their value, but often after 10 years or so actually appreciate. Unless one knows in advance that a model will be so mass produced that it can never be rare within a lifetime, even if it has great features, it is impossible to know at inception of an entirely new model whether its value will hold or fade.

This is particularly true with this new Alfa, which is a novel departure of sorts, just by bringing back anything of that marque to the U.S. In the past Alfas were iffy propositions based upon Italian design and manufacturing whims, so it it’s by no means certain that this car will be a keeper or hold its value. However, there are many routes to fame for a car like this. One will be if the car continues to be produced and sold here in sufficient numbers to be known AND (a big “and” for any new thing Italian) it is consistently the great little performer that it claims to be AND for some reason Alfa stops producing them in a few years making them rare. This would likely start to keep the price from declining.

On the other hand (keeping in mind that Alfa in now owned by FIAT), if the car is typically Italian, as these cars were in the past (That’s “FIAT” as in “Fix It Again Tony”) the car will die the quick merciless death it will deserve and it will be a loser in 2nd hand sales. So, fact is on the Alfa at least, that it is impossible at this point to put together any sensible prediction on deprecation considering that only a few cars have yet to sell in the U.S. and less than 400 in Europe.

So maybe tone down this premature, really silly, damnation of the smiling new Alfa, at least until it’s had a driving chance!

2 thoughts on “Cars That We Hope Depreciate Rapidly”

John Stonich says: 10 years ago

This little critique on the new Alfa 4c is quite off base on several counts. First, the writer is not in tune with the huge majority of the sports/racing car press, which has given consistently very high marks on this car based upon what it is, a seat of the pants, no compromise, powerful little sports car, with an Italian lineage and an “affordable” price, with little attention given to contemporary “comfort” oriented gee-gaws like power steering and “smooth” suspensions.

That’s not what this car is or meant to be. The sports car writers have most all said it’s a hard riding, super-fast, quick handling car, kinda like a race car with an extra seat, and certainly a “real” sports car, as in days of yore when people bought such cars not to show off to the neighbors, or to give the wife a fluffy ride to the mall, but to get the performance, as closely as possible, of a full-on track racing car that was street legal and just comfortable enough to use from one’s home to work etc. So the first broadside against this car quite backward, ill-informed and just entirely wrong!

The second comment about the car holding or losing value has some merit because many so called “exotic” cars have the repeated habit of depreciating precipitously in very short order. This because there often isn’t a market for used low production models, or, in the case of many BMWs, people have learned how unreliable they can be and how expensive to fix. Although such folks often still like the car for “personal” reasons (particularly as they are mostly “Status Wagons” for the automotively uniformed) people who like them for whatever reason don’t want to pick up anything that is out of factory warranty.

However, in the case of some of these cars, if there is some rare of very new feature about them, possible combined with some limited production, or they’re just too well performing to fade, such cars tend not only to hold their value, but often after 10 years or so actually appreciate. Unless one knows in advance that a model will be so mass produced that it can never be rare within a lifetime, even if it has great features, it is impossible to know at inception of an entirely new model whether its value will hold or fade.

This is particularly true with this new Alfa, which is a novel departure of sorts, just by bringing back anything of that marque to the U.S. In the past Alfas were iffy propositions based upon Italian design and manufacturing whims, so it it’s by no means certain that this car will be a keeper or hold its value. However, there are many routes to fame for a car like this. One will be if the car continues to be produced and sold here in sufficient numbers to be known AND (a big “and” for any new thing Italian) it is consistently the great little performer that it claims to be AND for some reason Alfa stops producing them in a few years making them rare. This would likely start to keep the price from declining.

On the other hand (keeping in mind that Alfa in now owned by FIAT), if the car is typically Italian, as these cars were in the past (That’s “FIAT” as in “Fix It Again Tony”) the car will die the quick merciless death it will deserve and it will be a loser in 2nd hand sales. So, fact is on the Alfa at least, that it is impossible at this point to put together any sensible prediction on deprecation considering that only a few cars have yet to sell in the U.S. and less than 400 in Europe.

So maybe tone down this premature, really silly, damnation of the smiling new Alfa, at least until it’s had a driving chance!

1. Nolan Browning says: 10 years ago
  
  John,
  This entire post is written dripping in sarcasm as the premise is that these are the cars that I absolutely lust after and jokingly “hope depreciate rapidly”. With almost certainty the Alfa will be one of the better modern “pure” driver’s cars in the same spirit as the Lotus Elise. I also agree that the 4C is more than likely to increase in value and also fetch a premium over it’s $54,000 MSRP here in the States. Mostly due to the low production numbers and the fact that most will combust at some point due to their Italian roots. But my Fiat 500 is still alive and intact after 74K miles so maybe Tony will be out of work soon.
  
  …please excuse my silly joke in that last sentence.
  
  -Nolan