There's a version of the collector car story that gets told every year: the market's up, the market's down, insert obligatory Ferrari headline. Classic Driver's latest Market Insights episode makes a rather better case that in 2026, the market isn't moving in one direction at all. It's splitting.
At one end sit the truly extraordinary cars, F50s, F40s, Enzos, McLaren F1s, doing things that would have seemed absurd even five years ago. At the other, a lot of very good, very lovable $100–200k enthusiast cars are simply sitting there, unloved by comparison. Monterey's headline number this year, north of $750 million, tells that story neatly: modern supercars were expected to account for 58% of sales and ended up closer to 69%. Everyone predicted the shift; nobody predicted quite how much.
What's genuinely striking is how fast the definition of "classic" is moving. The F50s and Enzos on today's bedroom-poster generation's walls are already blue-chip, not decades-old curiosities. A 2003 Enzo made $17.8 million at Mecum in January, nearly triple what it fetched a couple of years back, despite being, in relative terms, a car of the CD and flip-phone era. The takeaway, though, is refreshingly unfashionable: buy the car you can't stop thinking about, not the one you think someone else will overpay for later.
Watch the full episode on the Classic Driver YouTube channel.
