Written by Faryal Raza Bhatti, Marketing Manager, Heritage Car Insurance. Last Updated: 21th Sept, 2026
Most classic car owners do not buy their cars to make money, and the owners who spend the most are the least convinced there is money in it. That is the clearest finding in Heritage’s 2026 Classic Car Report, which surveyed 841 UK classic vehicle owners. It is worth stating at the top, because almost every other article on this subject starts from the opposite assumption and works backwards.
What do owners actually believe about the investment case?
Asked directly whether classic cars are a good investment, 43% agreed and 25% disagreed. A plurality, not a consensus, and down from 53% in our 2025 report. It sits awkwardly beside a second finding. When owners listed what they most enjoy about ownership, investment potential came last, at 8%.
Driving the car scored 70%. Treating it as a hobby scored 61%. Pride of ownership scored 59%. Almost nobody is in this for the returns.
The pattern sharpens with spend. Owners putting more than £5,000 a year into their cars were less likely to call classics a good investment, at 37%, than owners spending under £500, at 48%. The people with the deepest financial commitment hold the dimmest view of the financial case. They have watched the invoices arrive.
If classics were an investment, why is nobody selling?
Because owners do not behave like investors.
47% said they would not sell even if the car doubled in value inside a year, against 33% who would consider it. That has barely shifted from the 49% who said the same in 2025, through a year in which values fell. Among the 52 owners running five or more classics, only 34% would take the money at double. The deeper the collection, the weaker the pull of a doubled price.
That behaviour shapes the market. The Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs counts 1,934,178 historic vehicles on the DVLA database in its 2025 National Historic Vehicle Survey, and a large share of that stock sits with people for whom price is not the deciding variable. That chokes supply and makes classics behave differently from assets people genuinely tr/ade. Illiquidity cuts both ways. It steadies values on the way down, and it means you cannot count on finding a buyer at the figure you carry in your head.
What has the market actually done?
Nothing that flatters the investment framing. Only 23% of owners had noticed their car gain value over the previous 12 months and 33% said it had not moved, with 39% unable to say either way. Asked about the year ahead, 22% expected a rise, 22% expected none and 51% simply did not know. Confidence in near-term growth has fallen from 31% in 2025 to 22% now.
Investment sentiment has cooled harder than the cars have. The share of owners calling classics a good investment fell ten points in twelve months, which is a sharper move than anything the values themselves did, and it tells you the confidence went before the money did.
We set out the direction of travel in our analysis of the UK classic car market, and data from The Classic Valuer showed falling prices across most popular models. That is bad news for speculators and good news for anyone who wants to get in.
So are classic cars a good investment?
On the evidence, they are a poor financial investment for most people and a very good one in every other sense.
The financial case is weak because values move unpredictably, running costs are real, and the people who understand it best hold the lowest confidence in it. The FBHVC’s 2025 National Historic Vehicle Survey puts average annual spend per historic vehicle owner at £4,567, which is the drag any appreciation has to clear before it becomes a return. Buying purely for appreciation means competing with specialists in a thin market where condition, history and provenance decide the price, and none of those are visible from an online listing.
The case for buying one anyway is that owners report enjoyment, community and satisfaction at rates the financial question never touches, and that getting in costs less now than it has for years.
Most owners have already reached the sensible position. Buy the car you want to own, look after it properly, and treat appreciation as a bonus rather than a plan.
