"Recently, I argued that SUVs will become collectible in the coming decades as today's youth start to become nostalgic for the cars their parents drove ..."

You mean just like the Chrysler K-Car, the Plymouth Voyager, and Buick Regal?

Some times the most unlikely become collectible.

The Chevrolet Corvair was pillared by Ralph Nader, (Unsafe at any speed).

GM dumped the design and today they are very collectible with may car fans.

They were an anomaly in North America, as they were a domestic with a rear mounted engine.

There is more to that story than that, but being ostracized has created a cult following.

I never said that the Corvair was safe or good. The steering and handling was much to be desired, if not lethal. It is just that a car with all those problems, is still considered a collectible. The Edsel; other wise known as "an Oldsmobile sucking a lemon" is also a collectors item. In their day they were a total disaster for the manufactures.

Today they are desired, not for their engineering prowess, but for the rarity and the fact that they were ostracized.

Many cars are considered collectible. some for their outstanding design or engineering of the day. Some are just, very rare. Some are just different. Think of Tucker, DeLorean, Bricklen.

As for the SUV: History shall be the judge.

The vehicles my parents drove represented the bottom end of the automotive industry. Basically they where crap on wheels and I for one certainly do not long for owning one of them from the good old days of the Pinto Wagon or the Mercury Bobcat hatchbacks and most definitely not the underpowered Ford F100 with the inline six with 150K miles and near zero maintenance in that distance.

As far as the new stuff the days of the home garage hot rodders are nearly gone and those who are still around have little to no interest in working on vehicles that more wiring and computers than an apartment complex and need expensive hard if not impossible to find software to make even the slightest changes, modifications or more than just a basic repair job feasible.

The pre 70's stuff will stay collectible for a long time but I have serious doubts that the stuff after that will get a fraction of the following that the previous generation of vehicles grandpa and great grandpa drove do.

However I for one would be tempted to take a newer style vehicle and strip most of the modern electronics and emission crap related stuff out of it and refit it with and engine and drive train based more on that of the vehicles of the 60's and 70's! Modern comfort and ride with the old school power plant that had power and fuel mileage.

Thats my opinion anyway.

When enough of them pile up so as to make it economical?

I would argue that they will never be collectible in the sence of popular activity.

Who in the future will have the garage space, the necessary technology and spares to think of keeping one? They change models faster than usoft change operating systems and there is no long term support.

The occasional one might find a niche in some playboy garage, but would you regard any of them as "classic" in anything other than a static display?

You've got to look at today's collector cars and what makes them popular. If they were good way back when then they will be good today as well as in the future. Good products sell well in the marketplace and their increased numbers makes parts availability for maintaining and restoring them in their old age a more likely proposition.

What do I mean by good? Well in my time "good" was fast, in sync with current styles, cheap and easy to maintain, repair and modify to fit my tastes. A V-8 Ford. I was a few years before the Baby Boomer generation. It became Chevy V-8's for them.

Looking back on what marques became serious collector stuff and what ones didn't I see two categories. One is the truly high quality (and high priced) vehicles that were both expensive and reliable. Porsche Cayenne is one of the type. They always will be expensive to own, operate and maintain. But there will be people who can afford them and keep them well maintained and in limited use in order to preserve their condition.

Then there are the types that are low cost, reliable, abundant, economical and perform well. And most importantly easy and cheap to fix and restore. These criteria pretty much ace out the SUV's of the last 20 years or so with all their trick and unrepairable electronics and control systems as well as plush creature comfort features for which replacement parts will soon be completely gone. Not to mention high operating costs.

What's left? The smaller popular makes of the 70's and 80's. Jeeps, early Broncos, small 4wd pickup types from Toyota and the Big 3 US companies. Maybe the Nissans also. Aftermarket parts availability will leave out most of the other foreign makes, even a few Japanese makes that would otherwise be ideal candidates.

For all their huge size the Chevy suburbans will probably remain popular because of their simplicity and cult following in the USA. These guys would be ideal candidates for diesel engine conversions when suitable advanced powerplants become easily available.

Just my two cents born of 55 years of observing this stuff. .........Ed Weldon

And increased numbers also devalues the item. It's the low numbers that make something collectable or valuable, not how many repair parts are available.

Even items that did not sell well may turn out to be desirable years later, As a general rule, exclusivity drives collectivity.

You see, this is an example of just how a question "When Will SUVs Become Collectible?" can be misinterpreted. As an Idiot, I thought: When will they become economical to collect. Using my twisted logic, I thought: when enough of them accumulate to be efficiently gathered up by a large forklift.

Please disregard my post #3 as being a weak attempt.

As far as spare parts are concerned, when there existed both Indian and Harley Davidson brand motorcycles, It was heard of an Indian owner to remark "Harley parts are easy to get, you just walk alongside route 1 with a rake"...

AH -- You're off the mark on this one. Check out the current selling prices for 32-34 Fords and 55-57 Chevrolets. With respect to 1932 Fords you can build an entire V-8 roadster from brand new parts with the exception of the engine block, transmission case and the 3 major rear axle housings all of which are in abundant supply too great to be worth reproducing. These Fords and Chevies were cheap and abundant cars. But they were also fine quality products that delivered high value to their owners.

And note that the value of these models is also related to their ability to operate on modern highways. Model T and even Model A Fords have all the same characteristics as the above mentioned vehicles save one, their impracticality for travel on modern highways. And sure enough the actual prices of these early cars have actually dropped substantially in recent years. This is especially the case with Model T's whose maximum speed in the 40mph range essentially keeps them off major traffic corridors.

My point here is that collectibility is not so much a function or rarity as it is a function of popular demand born of high innate quality. Take the case of complex mechanisms whose quality can only be realized if they can be kept in operable condition. Maintainability and availability of necessary parts and operational material become an ever more important component of quality as the object ages. Lower cost of these operational factors is as much a driver of collectibility as rarity.

Static pieces of art or decorative objects obviously do not fit this model. But automobiles, boats, airplanes, machine tools, steam locomotives, clocks and watches, early day computers and other similar functional devices must be fully operable in the current day to retain their maximum value and demand by collectors.

Another lesser factor in collectibility has to do with physical size. The larger something is the harder it is to collect. The physical strength of a human collector is a factor here. So too is the available space for storage or display. Many factors in our world are pushing us in the direction of having less space available to keep and display "stuff". Especially big stuff like a 2plus ton SUV. How many of you see a 3 car garage in your kids' future?

Back to our SUV question. Once they become too impractical to maintain and operate they too will be gone from the practical list of collectibles. Personally I think the BMW mini and the Honda S2000 roadster have a much better chance of being collectible .......... and maybe Suburbans with turbo diesel or CNG conversions.

Ed Weldon

"How many of you see a 3 car garage in your kids' future?"

I am having trouble just seeing the kid being able to move out of our house, let alone buying a house right now.

A little "fixing up" and even a one car garage can be quite livable.

AH -- I know where you're coming from. My youngest age 36, a pretty decent salesman, lost everything in the crash and was stranded in Asia on an extended business trip without even enough money to buy a ticket home. He decided to stay there and make a new life for himself rather than come back and put up with Mom and Dad or go live under a bridge. His collectible, a rough 71 Ford 4wd Bronco, is sitting in our driveway under a tarp while I try to figure out how to put a roof over it. I absolutely refuse to sell it unless he asks me to after reading sad stories of how people sent their kid's hot rods to the scrap drives while they were off fighting in WWII.

My oldest age 41 has a real good mechanical engineering career; but 10 years out of a nasty divorce still isn't anywhere near close enough to a down payment on his own home. His rental place has a one car garage absulutely stuffed with his workshop and a 59 Bugeye Sprite. (If it were a Suburban or a Tahoe he wouldn't even have room for a drill press.)

Ed Weldon

Well said.