I realize we all have to make a living. Food has gone up, gas costs more and the rent is too damn high. Look, I have nothing against businessmen, as long as they play it straight and don’t scam customers. Go for it. Make all the money you can; see if I care. No, this story is about how all of us grease monkey types have forsaken the cool and the funky to become a bunch of soulless stock fluffers: a nation of pump-and-dump Hobby-Hawkers concerned only with what they can extract from the other, equally soulless fluffers.
Take Jeep YJ’s for instance. The square-headlight YJ has been the entry-level vehicle for 4-wheel drive buffs for the last 30 years. Shunned by other Jeep owners, despised for the simple crime of having headlights that actually align with their bodywork, Jeep YJ’s were the bottom rung. You could pick up a running YJ for a couple thousand dollars and hit the trails later that day. Light weight and simple suspension made the YJ very capable off-road and easy to fix when it broke down.
I bought my ’92 YJ for $2800 about ten years ago and the thing has been running good-ish ever since. If you believe the YJ groups I habituate, YJ’s are $20,000 rigs now. I see people posting up rusty old YJ’s for $6000/$8000 dollars. The users of YJ groups love it. Just sitting on their hands their investment (note: It’s no longer a Jeep or something they enjoy; it’s just an investment, like oil futures) goes up several thousand dollars a day. When someone online asks what their YJ is worth, which is every second question after which oil to use, the shills pipe in with ridiculous amounts of money that they themselves would never pay. All in service of bumping up the YJ’s stock price.
I could understand it better if Jeep YJ’s were sort of rare, but Jeep made 685,000 of the things over a nearly 10-year production run. They are everywhere, in fields, rusting in driveways, stacked in Jeep specific junkyards. That doesn’t stop the flippers from trying to run up the price. Everyday the imagined value of a Jeep YJ goes up another few hundred dollars. We may have missed out on Bitcoin but we’re darn sure not going to sell our clapped out old Jeeps for less than the price of a 2022 model. This money grab turns a fun hobby into just another IPO stock offering, something to own for its upside potential, not because you enjoyed it.
It’s the same with old motorcycles. The prices people are asking for any minor part that fits a vintage Japanese bike are just silly. I’m not immune to fluffer-fever. Prices for old Z1 Kawasaki’s have gotten so high I’m thinking of selling mine to cash in before the bubble bursts. My funky old motorcycle has turned into a savings account. And that’s the truly sad part: I enjoyed building the Z1 but now have to worry about where I park it due to its inflated value. I was going to ride it to Mexico with Berk but what if it gets stolen? The bike is no longer fun. In my mind’s eye it has become a stack of dollar bills waiting to be blown away by the slightest wind.
I know I’m ranting here but just once I’d like to log into a vintage motorcycle forum and not be bombarded with Internet shills asking for valuations or offering Jeeps and motorcycles for sale at stratospheric numbers. Old Jeeps, motorcycles and for that matter, vintage cars should mean more to us than how much return on the investment we can get from them. They should reach back into our memories and emotions; they should recall hot-metal smells and loves lost or found; they should be valued and not commoditized.
I guess what I really want is to remember the fun we had with our old cars and bikes before it all became a race to the top. I know the air will rarify and these old clunkers will become like casino chips: traded but never loved except for their monetary properties. You know, I used to hate the way people chopped up vintage Japanese motorcycles and turned them into goofy looking Brat style bikes but now I’m having second thoughts. Maybe by so thoroughly destroying the value of their motorcycles the Brat Butchers are actually saving the old bike’s true value as a motorcycle.
Never miss an ExNotes blog:
Read more about the Z1 and other projects here.
Turning junk into gold is Capitalism’s dream.
Since no one is forced to participate, it’s fun to watch!
Little tiny Honda 50cc mini bikes are now selling for 20x their original selling price.
It’s a wonderful world!
Ps. I’ve totally chosen to disregard what is happening to the value of the dollars we make or spend.
I watch the auto auctions and when someone comments on the HEMI, or 427, or some other “big block” a vehicle has, I find it sad. Here’s a high performance car or truck that was designed to go fast and provide thrills, and here it sits with little chance of ever really being used for it’s true purpose again. It’s sorta like caged tigers or lions in a zoo. My old El Camino has a weezy 307 and a power glide, and I can go drive it and never worry about decreasing its value. Which is more fun to own, something to look at, or something you can use?
My goal is to be wealthy enough to drive the “very pretty “ restored 1965 Dodge Charger , Hemi, 4 speed and just drive the hell out of it like I’m 16 again!
It’s the early Bronco fever now infecting all brands. Early Bronco with rust and dings from an honest life , $30,000 if running , if we are to believe the nuts on BAT. Scouts are not far behind. So , Jeeps ? Why not ? This too shall pass.
In the last few years of his life, my Dad used to say he was glad he was almost done because the world was getting so screwed up he couldn’t handle it. Yup. I get it now.
In a moment of temporary insanity, I recently decided that the purchase of an old VW is exactly what I needed to get in touch with my long departed youth. Until, that is, I made the mistake of picking up a copy of Hemmings Motor News and saw Super Beetle convertibles listed for $35K, a Thing being offered for $65K and an old Type 2 bus up for grabs at a staggering $97K. Since I paid $600 for my first clapped out bug, these prices just don’t compute. It’s all a pump and dump game that I will sit out.
It’s also somewhat age related. As we Boomers drag our sorry asses through the demographic landscape like a glacier we tend to cause price disruptions.
See the RD350 I paid $4000 for…
Very true ….. but there are plenty of hucksters trying to leverage every opportunity to ring the cash register as well. Ten+ years ago, I had a semi-friend in California who was involved in the preowned exotic car game. I say “game” because it played out like this: Three or four of these operators would sell cars to each other to drive the price up. Player A sells it to Player B for $50K then Player B sells it to Player C for $100K who flips it to Player D for $150K. No real money changes hands until some recently divorced orthodontist decides that he would be far more successful with the ladies if he just had a red Ferrari and look at what a swell investment it will be — the value has jumped from $50K two years ago to $200K today. The sale takes place and Players A, B and C laugh all the way to the bank.
This doesn’t mean that every used car is being sold by a creep looking to put you together but it is yet another reminder that there are “Vultures! Vultures everywhere!”, as goes the line in Casablanca.
I’ll say it because nobody else will. Here goes… I can’t understand one iota why people buy Jeeps? Not adults anyways.
Jeeps are fun!
My brother bought a CJ5 for practically nothing when we were young(er). The body was rotten so he put a fiberglass body on it and a roll cage. It had the Dauntless V6 and ran like a top. We live in a major city. Nowhere with a hill to climb was off limits. It was indeed fun.
Excellent blog Joe, I couldn’t agree with you more strongly. I too own numerous ’60s-’70s vintage motorcycles, including a ’75 Z1 similar to yours, and find it rather disheartening that they’ve all become too “valuable” to go out and ride like they were meant to be ridden. The whole idea of acquiring these old toys has been to relive the years of my youth, not to hedge against inflation, but watching the selling prices climb by 50% each year at the specialty auctions, Ebay, and Bring a Trailer has indeed changed the way I treat them today. What a shame. All those Blazers, Broncos, 911s, and “muscle cars” from that era are now forever lost to the average enthusiast who had one or always wanted one in high school but only recently finally has the time, money, and inclination to collect such unnecessary but nostalgic memory items.
Bitcoin indeed, when will it all come back down to Earth? Perhaps only after we’re all long gone.
I was into vintage cars in the early 80s. Then the speculators took over and drove us middle class hobbyists out. Couldn’t afford the stupid prices for the cars or the parts anymore.
I’ve gone back to motorcycle riding and will never look back.
Right on my man!