Just been looking though ebay at impreza wrx and sti's they seam to be rising the margin between a good and ropey one is growing. The classic has been on the rise for a while but the bug and blobeye seam to be slowly following. I can see why they are a legendary shape and sound and getting few and far between on the road now.
Nice bonus to owned one with minimum depreciation.

What do you think regarding there value or future value?

 

I’m in the market for a wrx or classic preferably in silver. I’m in Scotland so proving difficult.

 

Lots of ridiculous asking prices, especially with traders who seem to be prepared to leave them sat for years unsold, but I suppose they assume that as long as the cheap n easy credit is available there will always be some feckless idiot debt junkie willing to eventually come along and pay these prices.

 

Haha mines silver WRX blobeye. Yeah I here is alot of high priced cars at dealers but even the good private cars are asking £3500-4000 for them I just assume its because they are getting harder to find in good condition, or people believe they will carry on rising in value.

 

Yeah I see that! I messaged about another. Asked if the rust issues from the previous failed MOTs had been sorted. No reply and car is no longer for sale!

 

I'm sure you'll find one, what price range do you have in mind?

 

No more than £4000. Looking probably for a bug for less than that. I’ve exhausted eBay, faceboook and gumtree.

 

You don’t half speak a load of bollocks.

Rust and mileage are reducing the numbers and demand is as strong as ever. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out what that means. Go check prices of them in Japan and report back - not much change from £8-10k for any classic once taxes are paid. That has a knock on effect here, as it’s too expensive to import good examples now, unless you’re really keen.

I’ve noticed the numbers of people watching the cars on eBay has really gone up of late.

 

The classics are demanding good money and are still rising, seams the bug and blob are following I suppose if the desirable editions and models etc go up in value the rest follow, be interesting to see prices for all the generations in 5 years time.

 

not sure that much has changed uk car wise... a blob wrx very vgc very low miles has been for years 5/6k,,,,, sti 9/10k .....think the higher miles ones have gone slightly up becoming rarer etc

 

So you're saying there are no overpriced Imprezas out there and there are no examples that are being left sat unsold for 6,9,12 months or more?

 

Well I had a look on eBay today at imprezas today and thought the classics were flying, then I realised most of them were on there the last time I looked months ago!

I do think that’s more that they’re probably crap and over priced rather than just over priced. There will always be a market for the decent examples at strong money.

The classic car market is cooling right off on the higher end stuff, I look after a collectors car collection and the prices people were asking for some of the cars he has were about £100k more a year ago.

The only real price increase is coming from the US market 25 year rule. IMO one of the best investment cars to buy a year air so ago would have been an Evo 5. The yanks love an Evo and there’s a couple of high profile you tubers that have bought them into the US.

Wont take long before they move on to the classic imprezas so that could drive the price up.

main issue is they buy direct from Japan and we in the uk can no longer get decent prices. Generally the ones here go flying up in value but there’s really not the demand/money here to sustain that for us (as they’re not usually going from here to the US) so you see these over inflated cars sat about. The Japanese price drives ours up because importers can’t get them cheaper and by proxy means the ones here are ‘worth’ more. In reality if you really want to sell a classic STI here it needs to be cheaper than the price of them in japan.

Look at the R32 GTR prices in the last few years, the US love them.

 

I've been talking about this for years. I've seen loads of cheap Impreza's sell and relisted sometimes using same pictures for double the price. It happens a lot.

I'm looking for another classic wrx myself. And won't be paying over £2800. What I sold my old one for 9 years ago. And seen plenty at that price.

Seen some bargains in Scotland, but wasn't willing to travel that far.

 

I think the ones you are referring to are imports? I wouldn't say the prices are high, just that they reflect what they cost the dealers to import them. Obviously they don't want to sell the cars at a loss, so if people want a fresh import from a dealer that's the price they have to pay.

 

I wouldn't buy a cheap Impreza from up here - they'll be even more rusty than the ones local to you.

 

suppose they will be rising as the rarity increases but at what rate is anyone's guess, iv had so many cars 40 plus but right now iv got got a clio 182 FF and a blobeye impreza they are the best all round cars iv ever had both are good standard examples,Im renovating my house at the moment so bought a van. So I should sell them for room and some cash but my issue is if I do that and come to replace them in 4-5 years time I'll be paying through the **** for them.

 

The Clio’s are great little cars. I have one that I took it as payment to sell on... 2 1/2 years later I still have it!

I also have a bugeye WRX wagon I bought off here (must be 4-5 years ago) for £500 with a busted 3rd gear. I built a gbox up for it out of sti v5 spares and it’s such a great car. It’s done over 130k now but it’s been serviced regularly and the engine is so sweet on the car, even if I leave it a couple of months it fires up instantly and is quiet as a mouse.

I can’t bring myself to sell either as they’re both pretty much worthless and such great cars.

 

No not necessarily just fresh imports that are sitting around unsold for silly asking prices for months and months and months.

You seem to be suggesting that any rise in perceived 'value' of Imprezas is an isolated phenomenon and purely down to their increasing rarity and desirability.

The point I'm making is it's just as much down to the fact that we're (still) in the midst of the biggest credit fuelled asset price bubble the world has ever seen, and if it wasn't for cheap n easy credit then these imprezas wouldn't be selling (or not selling as is often the case) for anything like the current asking prices.


On a side note, the noise for opposing all things fossil fuelled and the move towards EV is becoming deafening now... I'd be extremely wary about paying top dollar for an Impreza or pretty much any other ICE vehicle, especially high emission performance cars, in the hopes that it's going to remain being an ''appreciating asset'' for many years to come, I doubt even ultra low mileage garage queens are going to hold their value if they become taxed to the hilt and rendered virtually impossible to drive due to lack of petrol availability.

 

Whilst I agree that we are at/near the peak of classic performance car prices there is no way petrol is going anywhere in our lifetime. If anything prices will remain strong for classic and performance cars as they become harder to find and newer cars being aimed at reduced emissions and economy. A lot of people may move to an economic car for daily use and keep their Impreza/skyline/evo etc for weekend and track days but hey wont suddenly disappear. Outside of the major developed countries electric cars are not viable and with many of the 90s/2000s performance cars reaching the age in which USA foreign imports are viable its only increasing demand.

 

Electric cars aren’t currently a realistic proposition for most of the US either, due to the lack of range vs huge average mileages. Saw very few electric cars on a holiday this year and plenty of the usual gas guzzling SUVs and Pick Ups.

 

I hope your right, seen a few pop up around my area. But so dangerous with no noise. Carbon capture has to be the future.

 

I see a lot of Tesla's on the freeways here in Dallas but I work Downtown and I think a lot of people are just travelling from nearby. When I go 100 miles out of the city I never ever see electric vehicles, unsurprisingly.

 

Whilst I agree that EV generally isn't a viable proposition just yet governments can still very quickly and easily adjust and increase tax bands on certain ICE vehicles in order to appease the anti fossil fuels-pro carbon neutral lobby (which I imagine would involve gaining favour with a far greater number of voters than a few enthusiasts of older performance cars)

Older, high performance ICE cars with high emissions would be a prime target for swingeing tax increases in order to appease the greens and encourage people to go EV or at least go to more modern low emission ICE vehicles, with the govt showing everyone ''just how seriously it's tackling climate change blah blah blah''.

For hundreds of years governments have used tax as the most effective way of adjusting the behaviour of the masses, overnight they could adjust the tax bands so that your 10-20 year old performance car suddenly costs treble or more to tax.

What impact do you think there would be on Impreza values if it were to suddenly start costing £800? £1,000? £2,000? a year to get it taxed?

 

The tax issue is one of the main reasons I think the 2.0 impreza's is continue to rise. They have never back dated tax to older cars the tax bracket sticks from there date of production. There's no point in trying to tax things off the road when they make up a very small number of cars currant on the road. Even the high tax band cars ( 06 on) are 13years old now.

 

Can't see this happening. They stopped the free tax thing for cars over 35 years old, so i think it was only cars after 1970 something that qualified. Then they started it again, so now any car over 35 years old is free tax. And now they don't need mot's either.

Not a clue why seems a odd thing to do, the only thing i can think of is they have alot of high up people who have classic cars. And i think there free of any city taxes like London. And this has been very resent. can't see them doing a massive U turn.

They have even reduced tax on all never cars regardless of engine size so everyone pays the same amount. Instead of smaller engine cars paying less. lol another odd decision if your trying to make everyone go electric.

 

Here you go, I sold my WRX over 10 years ago, with same miles and not as good spec for same price.

https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?m...2F274046682823

 

Mileage looks low considering state of the wheel (similar to my mileage) & differing shades of silver though.

The bonnet scoop and CAPITAL LETTER advert is enough to make me close that ad rather than consider buying it. There will always be cheap crap about but a lot of us are old and wouldn’t even look twice at that ad. That’s where the difference in price between good examples and rubbish extends a lot more IMO. Stuff like that just gets passed around at the bottom of the market between kids who don’t service them and px them for fiestas and the like. It wouldn’t even be on my radar if I was buying.

 

All i'm saying is i bought mine for same price over 10 years ago. It wasn't mint. Guy had bought a load of mods for it and fitted some ugly 17" alloys. Fitted dump valve etc. Just saying dealers are pushing the prices up. 75% off the classic's are being sold by dealers and high end prices. When i know most will be getting them cheap. Just because its a fancy add and high price, doesn't mean its a good car.

 

Looks nice.... and seems cheap at first glance. However, a closer look at the dodgy driver side arch, bubbling passenger side and this year's MOT fail suggests this one is on the verge of big rust repair bills.

Also, I find it hard to believe that thing has been clocking up in kilometres for the last 13+ years it's been over here (MOT history back to 2006). Seems suspicious to me.

 

I understand that and I’m not saying it’s all in the advert, the fancy dealer ads mean nothing to me if the car is a turd. It’s just that ad and the mods on it go hand in hand with ‘that’ type of car.

I’ve no issue saying there’s cheap cars out there still but you get what you pay for with old cars. The cars in the dealer that are not selling should be cheap cars but they’re just sat in the dealer at crazy mark up.

Good cars will sell at big money, crap cars will sell at small money and crap cars will also sit at big money.

There will always be someone willing to buy the right car out there. I know if I won the lottery, among other exotica I’d have a collection of Imprezas and be willing to pay for the good ones. There’s also people like me that still have imprezas and still love them (and I don’t think I’d ever want to be without one) that will be willing to spend as much as they can afford for an honest car.

Car’s like that ad are not really cheap, if I believed it was a clean car and had genuine mileage it would be cheap.