Fox-body Mustang values in 2024
My annual insurance renewal is in May of each year. As one should when owning a classic car, I have a collector car policy with an agreed value. The last time I reevaluated my agreed value was back in 2021. That was a fairly simple process – I called and said I wanted to increase the value, they asked how much, I gave a value and they checked a few things and agreed on the same call.
This time it was a little different. Again, I called and asked for an increase and they asked how much. This time, I asked if they had a value at which they would insure my car. They did not so I provided a value and they said “maybe we can do that. We’ll send you a link to upload photos of your car and you do some research on your end for sold prices of similar vehicles to validate the number that you just gave.”
Finding value for my feature car
So, I set out on this and the result was an increase to the value that I had asked for. But, the process was a pain. For a long time I had tracked on this site eBay auction results for feature cars. But, I stopped doing that long ago as my process to do that ceased working after some eBay updates. For this effort, I had to manually browse and gather information from various online auction sites to find sold cars like mine. For sale ads didn’t work for this. I needed concrete values at which cars were sold.
I checked Mecum, Barrett Jackson, Bring a Trailer, Cars & Bids and eBay for auctions which had completed in approximately the last 18 months for cars similar to mine. Time frame was important here. We recently had a period of crazy inflation of value in all cars in 2021-22 and that settled back down a bit in early 2023. I considered not just LX convertibles but also some GT convertibles with similar miles to mine. And, not just 1993 cars; also some 1992s.
This got me thinking that I should share that research and that is what I am doing here. I am posting my spreadsheet with the hopes of keeping it updated. I took the spreadsheet that I did for my own value research and have modified it a bit for sharing. The spreadsheet has 1992 and 1993 feature cars from the above mentioned sources for as long as they had history.
Here is my spreadsheet on Google Sheets
In doing your own value research you can use this as a starting point but you also should consider non-feature car convertibles including both LX’s and GT’s. I feel like the differences between feature and non-feature convertibles is not significant enough that you should rule any of those out. Also, I feel like GT’s and LX’s should be similar in value for similar cars with similar mileage and options.
Bring a Trailer auction results
I found that Bring a Trailer has a nice function which allows you to drill down and get a graph of sold and not sold cars with some decent filtering options. I created such a graph for all 1992 and 1993 Mustangs sold or bid to under 100k. It’s kind of a nice way to see what cars are commanding the most, although, the results are not that surprising.
Hagerty Valuation Tools
I checked out Hagerty’s Valuation Tools. This kind of seemed too general to me. In my mind, there is a huge gap between ‘good’ and ‘excellent’ condition. Maybe they need a ‘great’ condition. I think my car is very close to excellent condition but might be best described as great. Also, an excellent condition 60k mile car will not have the same value as an excellent condition 15k mile car. $38,600 seems way too high for my car.
Obviously, you have to drill down a bit more into the details of what is behind these numbers. On Hagerty’s site, this requires you to be a member of their Driver’s Club. I am not so I could not take this next step. It is $70/year which is a bit much for me to subscribe to see what they have to offer for valuation details as part of writing this post.
Conclusion
The good news is that I got this done and got my car to a value where I feel more comfortable with it.
I am going to make a point to review my coverage and value every 3 years. That seems appropriate. I’d love to hear your feedback and experiences in the comments.