Graph of the Week: The Ford GT Market

08 January 2016

If you went to a collector car auction at any point during 2015, chances are you saw a 2005-06 Ford GT, probably with less than 1,000 miles on the clock and looking like it rolled out of the factory yesterday. Just over 4,000 examples were built, but a total of 43 were offered at North American collector car auctions in 2015, up from 37 in 2014, and they regularly bring prices that are higher than what they cost new. In a word, the GT market continues to be hot.

Ford’s original MSRP for the GT was around $150,000, and although demand was high enough that most buyers paid a significant premium, these used supercars, barely 10 years old, have already been commanding prices significantly higher than the original purchase price, especially during the last two years. Since 2013, average Hagerty Price Guide values for the GT have increased by about $100,000 and for the blue and orange Heritage Edition they’ve practically doubled. It’s usually not wise to look at a car as an investment, but if you bought a 2006 model new and sold it today the annual rate of return could be 9.5 percent. Not bad at all.

Most collector cars depreciate for several years, and then don’t become collectible until at least a quarter century after they were built. Not so with the GT, as most seem to have been treated as collector cars from new judging by their mileage and condition. And as increasingly expensive auction results are achieved, they have encouraged more owners to bring their GTs out for sale.

In 2013, the world record sale for a GT was $403,925 for a Heritage Edition model at Mecum Monterey. Mecum sold a similar car at the same sale 2014 for a record $550,000, and last year the record was raised further still by Barrett-Jackson with the sale of an early production example from the Ron Pratt collection for $605,000. Over the same period, the average sale price at auction for Ford GTs went from $254,835 in 2013 to $352,674 in 2015. In fact, last year the very lowest price paid for a GT at auction was $237,600. The market for later collector cars in general has been stronger than the overall market over the past year, and the Ford GT is one of the clearest examples of this.

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