Financing a Collector Car

Have your heart set on a car to buy… but your wallet’s telling a different story?

It’s true, most collector car owners pay cash for their vehicles. After all, if this is truly our hobby (as most of us claim), one could argue that we should use disposable income to satisfy our dreams of classic car ownership. In fact, of the million or so cars insured by Hagerty, fewer than 3% have been purchased through loans.

If cash isn’t an option, however, there are opportunities available to finance classic cars–or even take loans against existing collections.

Why would you ever want to finance your car purchase? Here are a few good reasons:

Unless you’re a dealer, few people buy classic cars as investments because the returns can be rather unpredictable. Hagerty always recommends buying a car for enjoyment, and if it happens to gain in value while you own it, all the better. But it’s fair to say that collector cars, by definition, are past the bottom of the depreciation curve. Many of us buy them because we can have fun, try something new, live out a dream and so on, but we’re still likely able to sell the car without much of a loss, if any. Meanwhile, nearly everyone finances their new cars and that’s a depreciating asset, so they pay interest on top of depreciation. So really, which car makes more sense to finance?