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the following answers:
•98% of LMC clients, buyers and sell-
ers are completely up front and honest
when negotiating a deal
•LMC owns outright approximately
95% of the cars it sells
•5% of cars sold by LMC are consign-
ments and are done mostly as a favor
for long time, repeat customers
•95% of the time, prospective con-
signors will take LMC’s dollar offer for
a car, because they have enjoyed the
car, and are just ready to sell it and
move on to another car
•50% of LMC customers are “repeat”
clientele
•50% of the time an LMC customer,
from all over the world, will buy a car
sight-unseen
•20% of cars sold by LMC are shipped
outside of North America, with ship-
ping across the Atlantic or Pacific cost-
ing about $20,000 by air and $3,000 by
boat
•LMC usually carries a current inven-
tory of approximately 150 classic, ex-
otic, and muscle cars
The stats above prove one, very
important aspect of Legendary Motor-
cars Company: Peter Klutt and the
folks at LMC know their “shtuff”!
Still focusing on the numbers fac-
tor, this time the kind that have a dol-
lar sign in front and at times include
two commas in between a bunch of ze-
roes, we begin discussing the true
value of collector cars in today’s ever
changing marketplace. Peter is defi-
nitely the expert, so I, the amateur of
all amateurs in this area of expertise,
sat and listened most of the time,
which for me is almost impossible.
He starts off by saying in terms of
the true “value” of cars, there are
“good” cars and “great” cars in the col-
lector car world, divided only by the
rarity of the vehicles. Simply put, the
rarer the car, the more expensive the
car, as shown in this list:
•1962 Ferrari 250 GTE
$350,000 356 made Good
•1957 Ferrari Testa Rossa
$39,000,000 21 made Great
•1967 427 Corvette
$100,000 9703 made Good
•1967 L88 Corvette
$3,000,000 20 made Great
•1971 Cuda V8 Convertible
$50,000 285 made Good
•1971 Hemi Cuda Convertible
$3,000,000 7 made Great
Over the decades, good cars will
always sell with more price fluctua-
tion, and great cars will always sell
with less price fluctuation. An extreme
example is the ‘57 Ferrari Testa Rossa,
which jumped from $16,000,000 in
2011 to $39,000,000 in 2014. So much
for investing in real estate or the stock
market!
Because of what some people are
beginning to call the emerging “stupid
rare” car market, car collector guys
are now getting involved in what is
being called “centerpiece” car collect-
ing. This is when you purchase one
ultra-expensive, stupid rare col-
lectible, and then surround it with less
expensive collectibles, possibly of the
same marque. Using Shelby vehicles
as an example, you might have in your
car barn a ‘65 Shelby 427 S/C Compe-
tition Cobra ($2,000,000), surrounded
by a ‘65 289 Street Cobra ($850,000),
a ‘65 Shelby GT350 ($285,000) and a
‘68 Shelby GT500KR ($175,000).
Sounds good to me. It’s Saturday, so I
gotta’ buy a lottery ticket!
Now, there is always the “$” factor
versus the “fun” factor when it comes
to car collecting, as in one of those fa-
mous, “I-have-always-wanted-one-of-
those” moments, at which time the $
factor goes hasta-la-bye-bye (I’m bilin-
gual). You just stare, eyes wide open,
slack jawed, drooling shamelessly at
them thar’ sleek, curvaceous lines,
adorned in the shiniest, tight-bodied
paint job you ever saw, and you just
can’t wait to jump in’er fer the ride of
yer life! It’s kinda’ like…nah, we’re not
goin’ there.
Well, Mr. Collectible Expert, Ulti-
mate Knowledge Car Guy Klutt, his
own bad self, had one of those mo-
ments many moons ago, involving a
certain Corso Red, bodacious Italian
on stiletto wheels, with an interior as
black as her cheatin’ heart (sounds
like a country western tune). He could
just see himself cruisn’ along those
rollin’ hills surrounding LMC, taking
in the sunshine, the lush green grass,
and eyeballing the ever present birds
and butterflies during the summer, of
course, ‘cuz ya’ don’t want to drive
your Italian prancing horse in the
white Canadian snow.
Anyway, he buys a Ferrari
Berlinetta Boxer for somewhere
around “GREAT BIG BUCKIES,” then
while waiting around for it to consid-
erably increase in value, this lovely
break-your-heart beast decreases to
“itsy-bitsy, teensy-weensie…” You get
the idea. What’s great about Peter
when he’s telling this story, is that he
is laughing the whole time, going on to
say he parked that heart-breaker,
dream-maker of a car right outside his
office door. This way he had no choice
but to climb over, under, or around the
eyetalian’s beautiful bod in order to
enter/exit his office, and thus remind-
ing him of a couple of the most impor-
tant investing rules of all: “what goes
up, must go down,” and, “the higher
they climb, the harder they fall.” He
actually said the Ferrari provided him
with a humbling, learning experience.
Ya’ gotta’ love it!
We also discussed a couple of the-
ories about collecting cars which have
developed over the years, like the idea
a person’s collector car is basically
rolling art; a fun, tangible, hard asset
he or she can actually interact with by
washing, waxing, driving it to their
heart’s content. Granted, you can in-
vest in other hard assets, like art, but
it just hangs on a wall; or coins, but
they just sit in an album waiting to be
dragged out and looked at once in a
while. What fun is that – not!
Our great discussion about cars,
cars, and more cars, concluded with a
tour around the Legendary Motorcars
facility, where I saw and met some re-
ally cool folks working in four main
areas: 1) inspection and routine main-
tenance, 2) restoration, 3) fabrication,
and 4) detail. The first area is where
incoming inventory cars and customer
cars are inspected and serviced to
make sure they are in reliable, de-
pendable condition, fit enough to be
sold and driven safely in the real
world, either on the street or on the
track. When you walk into the second
area, it’s pretty obvious restoration is
the happenin’ thing, because there are
The SHELBY AMERICAN
Summer 2017 74