A strange thing happens to cars when they reach 40 years of age, in the UK at least. They instantly become more valuable, due to a combination of official recognition of their status, along with an end of the requirement to tax and MOT them.
The rolling 40-year rule for tax-exempt “historic” vehicles means if your post-January 1 1984 car was built before January 1 1985, or registered before January 8 1985, you can look forward to applying to have its taxation class changed to “historic” on the V5 registration document. That means you will no longer need to pay vehicle excise duty (VED, or road tax) from April 1 2025. (Full details at gov.uk/historic-vehicles)
Several standout cars released in 1984 are already acknowledged as bona fide classics, the official recognition merely being the icing on the cake for owners. But not all have enjoyed buoyant values, so if you’d bought one of the cars featured here and hung onto it, you could now be looking at a significant profit.
For younger readers, the mid-1980s were the height of the “yuppie” (short for young, upwardly-mobile professional) years. If the thrusting youngsters working in London’s financial centre could afford it – and sometimes if they couldn’t – they would buy an ostentatious Ferrari, Porsche or Aston Martin. Tier-below thrusters bought a fast Ford – an Escort XR3i or RS Turbo – or anything with a GTI badge. It was all about status, a “look at me, I’m loaded” era exemplified by Harry Enfield’s “Loadsamoney” comedy character.
High-end cars were recognised by some as being investments, fastidiously cared for to this day; but some became liabilities when third or fourth owners liked the prestige badge but not the service bills that came with it. Values crashed.
Those “fast Fords”, such as the aforementioned Escorts, in original condition are now rare considering the volumes in which they were built: but back in the day they were cheap, thrashed, modified, stolen and generally abused – and then scrapped.
Richard Stafford is the head of research for cars at auctioneer Bonhams. Prime 1984 value comeback cars he’d like to find in garages and storage include the Toyota Corolla GT AE86 and BMW E30, which were, he says, “dirt cheap for years”. Not any longer.
Some high-end cars, he says, saw spectacular falls into the doldrums: Ferrari’s 400i plummeted from a new price of £50,000 to as low as £5,000 in the late 1990s, while the Jaguar XJS dropped to £2,000 or less (new, about £20,000), but they have recently been regaining value.
Meanwhile, Paul Cheetham of H&H Classic Auctions says yuppie-era 1984 Porsche 944s are about to come into their own; £13,000 new in 1984, but living in the shadow of the more famous 911, prices fell to less than half that for several years. “But they’re on the start of the curve up,” he says.
A left-field car gaining official “historic” status would be the DeLorean DMC-12, star of the Back to the Future series of films. A 1984 left-hand-drive example costing £30,000 could barely be given away 10 years later, but by 2012 values had hit £20,000. “Now they are north of £50,000,” says Cheetham.
These are some of the maybe-lucky buys during their doldrums, or cars with which owners persisted – and are now fast-appreciating assets.
Aston Martin V8
With Aston Martins, the 1980s are back. Cars lusted after by 15-year-old schoolboys in the mid-1980s are being bought by those same boys now they’ve reached 55-65 years.
Britain was booming. A 1984 V8 Volante, which cost about £80,000 new, often sold on at a premium to somebody less patient – and, helpfully, wealthy.
By 1994, values had more than halved. But by 2016, a Volante like the one shown here had hit £225,000. Today it’s £179,950 – largely as a result of caution in the classic car industry.
Even in 1984 the Volante was a somewhat old-fashioned “analogue” car, simple to service or repair, if expensive.
Neal Garrard of London Aston Martin specialist Nicholas Mee says people starting their Aston Martin adventure gravitate towards the 1950s and 1960s cars, find them a bit of challenge, and so try a mid-1980s V8 – and realise that’s what they actually wanted.
Service costs? Based on an annual mileage of 1,500, about £2,500 annually.
BMW E30 (316, 318i, 320i, 323i)
From the base 316 to the six-cylinder 323i, the last of the small “three-box” BMWs became the aspiring 1984 executive’s must-have. This model was among the pioneers of “de-badging” in snobbish Britain; removing the engine-size identifiers left all but car geeks wondering whether it was a 323i wolf in sheep’s clothing, or a lowly four-cylinder sheep playing wolf.
As today, BMWs were premium, often company-owned for their first few years, and then moved on to private ownership – before being either cherished or abused.
Twenty years ago, most models were under £3,000 (four-cylinder base models as low as £500-600) compared with an original list price of £7,300-8,500. Today, a good 318i can be 10 times what it was worth at its nadir, with the rare 323i nudging £10,000 – matching its before-options 1984 price.
BMW M635CSi
If you bought a new BMW M635CSi in 1984 and kept it through doldrums, economic downturns and out-of-fashion years, you would soon be giving “historic” status to one of the finest and most understated of grand tourers.
You would also be looking at doubling your money, from about £37,000 new to £70,000 as a top-condition modern classic. A non-M 635CSi cost £24,995.
If you use an M635CSi regularly, it would sell today for the same as its original price. In the early 2000s they bottomed out at about £25,000.
The key is the M ahead of the numbers, meaning it was powered by the 286bhp M88 straight-six-cylinder engine. The same powerplant was fitted to the hyper-rare BMW M1 supercar, giving it performance to match Ferraris of the day, according to Dan Norris of BMW specialist Munich Legends.
Ferrari 400i
Never mind prancing horse, this is the black sheep. It didn’t resemble any other Ferrari in 1984, despite sharing showrooms with the likes of the legendary Testarossa. It didn’t go like one, either, thanks to a slushy three-speed automatic fitted to most examples, with the engine tuned for touring rather than performance.
You would have been an oddball spending £50,000 on one of these in 1984 (a price few would yield today, and then only manual versions), but taking one off somebody’s hands in the 1990s for about £5,000 could have proved profitable today, assuming previous owners had paid the bank-account-busting service bills. Key numbers: 4.8 litres, 340bhp, 150mph. Only 152 came to the UK.
Despite its non-racy pedigree, this car possesses an understated elegance. “The 400i is undervalued. It’s a lot of car for the money and is a very useable modern classic,” says Paul Cheetham of H&H Classic Auctions.
Ford Sierra XR4i
Among the frenzy for fast Escorts in 1984 and the explosion in values for so-called “fast Fords” that peaked during the pandemic but remain steep, the Sierra XR4i was a bit overlooked.
The introduction of the considerably more expensive Sierra RS Cosworth in 1986 pushed it further into the shadows, but made it desirable as the next-best thing for enthusiasts on a budget.
New, with 150bhp from a lusty 2.8-litre V6 engine, it cost about £11,000; after three years, values halved. A good one in 2004 was £4,000. That “good” value is now about £7,000-10,000. During lockdown, it would have been £15,000.
Then there are those super-rare Fords that have Holy Grail status among aficionados: low mileage, one owner, original paint, history folder. The price on a 10,425-mile XR4i at classic Ford specialist Bryn Ilsley’s JF Classics in Lincolnshire is £39,995.
Toyota Corolla GT AE86
It was so good they made it twice – the original 1980s car’s spirit revived in the form of Toyota’s GT86 coupé of 2012.
The original, 1983-launched Corolla AE86 was exciting, it was fun. However, those that didn’t rot and get scrapped often ended up embedded in hedges when drivers with more bravado than talent discovered that “fun” didn’t always mean “grip”.
It was a simple formula: front engine, rear-wheel drive, revvy 128bhp 1.6-litre twin-cam engine – and a weight of only 900kg (2,000lb).
If you have a 1980s AE86 stashed away, its original £8,800 list price (after collapsing to perhaps a few hundred pounds due to varying-quality modifications and repairs) could now be worth anything between £15,000 and £30,000 as historic status beckons.
But despite being a product of one of the world’s largest car makers, because of the abuse they endured, these cars are now extremely rare.
If you find a garage at the end of a rainbow, then an AE86 may well be hiding in it.
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