Why weren't some vehicles made more/longer and are now collectors items?

[CharlesInCharge]

The vast majority of people buy a automobile to take them from point A to point B and that’s that. They look for reliability, safety, and a vehicle that meets their needs. Very very few buy a car to hold onto for appreciation, whether financial or sentimental.

While true, there's also a large market for performance cars. That's always been the case. It was the case in the 50s, the 60s, the 70s until they started being choked off into the early 90s, and a small resurgence, and now in the post 2008 era a big resurgence.

I would say, with fewer competitors in the 80s and 90s, the few "performance" cars that were available should have been absolutely KILLING IT in sales.

Your mid-80s options were a anemic Corvette, extremely anemic Mustangs and Camaros, a few foreign options like the Porsche 911, a 3 series BMW, Saab 900T, and not much else. Along comes cars like the GNX which was better than everything and as fast as the Porshe. Nobody here is going to convince me there was not a pent up demand for a car like the GNX and ending it was a big blunder. The 87 GNX is faster/quicker than the 87 Vette, and I think also anything else other than far more expensive supercars. Similar can be said for the Nissan 300Z - in 1984 the turbo put out 200hp. There wasn't much on the streets pushing 200 hp in 1984 that looked this good, and the 85 Corvette was *barely* more powerful and faster with a V8. Yet, it was killed off for many years, in spite of winning mountains of "best" awards. I don't understand it. The 300z was better than probably most/all of that genre of cars on the road mid-1980s.

If you wanted a cool car with some stones, your choices in the 90s was basically very limited. So, similar stories with the quality and performance of the Supra and the Prelude (while not amazing performance, not far off from some of the cars like a V6 Mustang, but higher build quality). They had Japanese engineering which was better than anything on the market.

What is puzzling is that in the 80s and 90s, turds like the Impala, Mustang, Vette, and Camaro survived and were still produced with very low quality and anemic performance numbers, cars that looked a lot faster than they had power. There were few gems, and it's just puzzling that the gems that existed were killed off.

 

[vavavroom]

Interest in some vehicles gains often traction only years after production has seized and after the vehicle has achieved cult status among a niche group. In the meantime, technology and regulations move on and reviving the exact same vehicle would become near impossible. How many customers would even want a carbon copy of the old model? More likely they want something that evokes memories of the old product but with modern features. With high enough demand you get a New Beetle, a new Mini, or a new Charger.

 

[wemay]

Supra:
"In 1998, Toyota ultimately discontinued the Supra in North America because of low sales. In 2002, Toyota stopped producing the Supra because it didn't align with Japan's updated fuel-efficiency guidelines."

Is the 1994 Toyota Supra Banned in the U.S.?

Some have claimed that the 1994 Toyota Supra was banned in the U.S. But is that really true?

www.motorbiscuit.com

 

[SEMI_287]

Another car that GM should have continued was the Fiero. By 1988 they had improved the suspension and were just starting to have access to other powerplants that would have made the car a true competitor to other Euro sports cars of the time. But GM had had enough and decided to discontinue production.

Here is what could have been if they wouldn't have killed it. https://www.curbsideclassic.com/blog/forgotten-future/forgotten-future-1990-pontiac-fiero-prototype/

As EV platforms continue to proliferate, I am afraid automakers are going to adhere even more into the "cookie cutter" practice of using a single platform to produce various models and configurations with little drive train differences between them, and this will make many everyday car choices become less exciting.

Man, I would buy one of those now. That's sexy.

 

[eljefino]

Jeez, you keep going on and on about the GNX. It's not the same (excellent) Grand National that outsold it by an order of magnitude but a custom built halo car involving McLaren. If GM partnered with someone to make 500 super special Vettes people would be talking about them instead. It's getting tribalistic, trying to make a car make your identity or personality.

And it's often not the first owners that make a car a classic. They're yuppies and useful for subsidizing the R&D, but they as a group won't push the cars to their limits and will sell them well depreciated to the enthusiast second and third owners who unlock their full potential. And automotive evolution isn't set up for the used car market. The other end of the coin is the question why don't they make stick shift plain jane cars with crank windows anymore? Who cares, they don't sell new!

That all said GM was ridiculously political internally with allowing or not allowing various divisions and makes to be "nicer" than some other division to enforce their caste system. Saturn got to skip all this when they made nicely loaded SL2s with leather, sunroofs etc that didn't feel like a parts-bin Cavalier. The Cavalier, IMO, was made frumpy on purpose to shame the buyer into, IDK, a Pontiac, the next step up. People thought that was dumb so they bought Hondas instead. End rant.

 

[CharlesInCharge]

Jeez, you keep going on and on about the GNX. It's not the same (excellent) Grand National that outsold it by an order of magnitude but a custom built halo car involving McLaren. If GM partnered with someone to make 500 super special Vettes people would be talking about them instead. It's getting tribalistic, trying to make a car make your identity or personality.

And it's often not the first owners that make a car a classic. They're yuppies and useful for subsidizing the R&D, but they as a group won't push the cars to their limits and will sell them well depreciated to the enthusiast second and third owners who unlock their full potential. And automotive evolution isn't set up for the used car market. The other end of the coin is the question why don't they make stick shift plain jane cars with crank windows anymore? Who cares, they don't sell new!

That all said GM was ridiculously political internally with allowing or not allowing various divisions and makes to be "nicer" than some other division to enforce their caste system. Saturn got to skip all this when they made nicely loaded SL2s with leather, sunroofs etc that didn't feel like a parts-bin Cavalier. The Cavalier, IMO, was made frumpy on purpose to shame the buyer into, IDK, a Pontiac, the next step up. People thought that was dumb so they bought Hondas instead. End rant.

For the record, I've mentioned probably 10-15 examples. I cannot comprehensively discuss each and every example in history, but picked the GN, Supra, Integra, and 300z as a few examples. The Cavalier/Beretta is another example of a car that was excellent in the 80s and early 90s and had real potential, especially when they put a competent V6 in them and gave them a really attractive look, but later was made "frumpy" with small motors, as you correctly mentioned.

 

[2strokeNorthstar]

I see a lot of the “collectible” cars now were cars that were low in value for a while making people not take care of them. They became rare because the majority didn’t care to keep them nice. Look at 80s and now 90s BMW 3 series. They sold tons of them but nice manual trans cars with lowish miles are crazy expensive. Same with 90s Hondas/Acuras. Most drove them into the ground. Even though they made insane amounts, nice ones are hard to come by.

I was never a Buick fan, even the GN is a hard pass. I always wanted and never could afford the GMC Syclone or Typhoon

 

[OppositeLocK]

Sorry but I have a business degree so I'm plenty dialed in on economics. Some of the issue was the cost per unit, which had they made more could have brought down costs given economies of scale. They could have also incorporated more like-parts for simple things, which would further reduce costs to make them more mass-affordable. One problem car companies have is the pointless redesigns of functional parts for unknown reasons, and that drives up costs. For instance, why redesign the reservoir for wiper fluid? Or interior knobs or door handles or foot pedals, or a million other parts nobody cares about? Then you have to have two lines for different manufacturing designs. It's pointlessly wasteful of money/resources. The more you make, the cheaper per-unit each part is.

It seems you're purposefully being obtuse to miss the points being made. Car makers would not literally need to stop producing something else profitable so as to turn out more Grand Nationals, or Vipers, or Supras, for instance. They could drop something else that's junk. Both companies made junk vehicles of their respective eras. Or just build another production line entirely to produce the hot cars.

In the mid-1980s, GM produced a lot of unmemorable junk cars including the Chevette, Grand Prix, the Diesel Cutlass, and yes the 80s Corvette was unremarkable. Dodge had plenty of cars they could have scrapped making room for more Vipers. Toyota didn't produce much junk, but they absolutely should have poured out more Supras.

Right, because nothing like buying a $150K GTR and getting Sentra parts.

 

[CharlesInCharge]

Right, because nothing like buying a $150K GTR and getting Sentra parts.

So, you're postulating the GTR has special technology in the windshield wiper fluid resevoir or in the O2 sensors or in the brake pedal?

 

[OppositeLocK]

So, you're postulating the GTR has special technology in the windshield wiper fluid resevoir or in the O2 sensors or in the brake pedal?

No, I'm saying focusing on standardization removes a lot of the character a vehicle has.

Also, a car where every part for it was designed with the total package in mind will always be better than sticking in it a bunch of generics.

 

[wemay]

The Buick Grand National and GNX's History, Told by its Creators

The back story of how Buick's landmark 1980s muscle cars happened, straight from the horsepower makers' mouths.

www.caranddriver.com