THEODOREW.^
PIEPER/RMSOTHEBY’Swould fetch roughly $1.4 million today,
an annualized return of about 8%, not
accounting for inflation, storage, and
maintenance. You’d have been much
better off in the Dow Jones index, which
requires zero oil filters.
Making a killing on high-end, exotic
sports cars is about as easy as winning a
race in them: You have to be extremely
skillful and more than fortunate. “There
are very few supercars which will be a
solid investment when purchased over
the medium term,” says Clive Wilson,
who tracks the market as the valuations
editor at Cap Hpi in London.
The only time that Stephen Serio,
who hunts down rare cars for wealthy
individuals, has been able to predict
a spike was from talking to a range of
collectors and noticing a tiny trend in
their tastes. He likens it to insider trad-
ing, albeit a legal version. “Honestly,
everyone’s guessing,” he says. “You’ve
got to get lucky.”
For every Lamborghini Countach,The Means to a Dividend
Everyone notices the doors, but few pay
much attention to the sills.
In 1954, Mercedes-Benz unveiled its
sinuous 300SL coupe with “gull-wing”
doors that hinged vertically from the
vehicle’s roof into the sky. They were
unlike anything the car world had seen.
They were also a bit of an afterthought.
Equally vanguard was the chassis,
a bundle of thin, hollow steel tubes
welded into an intricate lattice of trian-
gles. It was airplane stuff, years ahead
of the heavy boxed beams that Detroit
and Stuttgart had long relied on.
That futuristic chassis required
higher sills, which meant a traditional
door wouldn’t work. Thus, the gull-
wings; thus, the legend. Today the
300SL is among the world’s most expen-
sive and collectible vehicles.
But as an investment, well, it’s kind
of meh. If you were prescient enough
to buy a seminal 300SL new for its
$7,000 sticker price, lock it in a garage,
and take good care of it, the machineSUPERCAR SPECIAL Bloomberg Pursuits March 8, 2021Pump the brakes if you’re thinking of buying a supercar
as an investment. Here’s what the experts say. By Kyle Stockthe definitive poster supercar, there’s a
Lamborghini Urraco, which was made
in the same era and today goes for about
as much as a well-appointed new Volvo.
If you bought a 300SL in late 2014, you’d
be sitting on a 20% loss right now.
Historical precedent offers a few
clues to a good investment. Usually, a
vehicle needs to introduce a change in
technology or performance. Mercedes
did this with its winglike doors and its
airplane chassis. Lamborghini did it in
the ’60s when it put the engine behind
the driver in its Miura.
The vehicle also needs to be
striking —objectively beautiful—
in a shocking, atypical way. Again,
Lamborghini is the paragon here with
its Countach, an exercise in geometry
and the first of many so-called wedge
cars when it made its debut in 1974.
Scarcity is clutch as well. Valuations
tend to stay high for models that aren’t
replaced by any particular product.
Ferrari’s LaFerrari, for example, was66
The 2017 Ford GT is a rarity
with a 33% annualized rate of return