Real Estate Investor Magazine South Africa REIM February 2018 | Page 60
CARS
Just browsing
A brace of potentially lucrative automotive
investment opportunities.
BY RUSSELL BENNETT
S
58
o, you’re sitting with a pile of funds unallocated to any
other investment class, and a portfolio bulging with
blue‒chip properties, shares, and alternate investment
vehicles. And you’re keen on using the additional resources
to get involved in motoring from an investment perspective?
Your most likely starting point, at this stage, will be the
high‒end car dealerships in your area. Yes, shopping in the personal ads and online options does provide you with a lot
more scope, as well as a potentially more reasonable purchase
price meaning greater returns. But there are daunting risks
involved, which we’ll unpack in a subsequent feature. For
now, let’s head out to the showrooms, because we’ve tracked
down some gems that you just might want to consider.
Alpina E30 C2 2.7 (1986)
Found on: Social Media
Available for: R899 500
www.roadnrace.com
This Alpina C2 shares many
similarities with the SA‒
only 325iS of similar vintage.
But while the legendary
Shadowline was a BMW SA
special and forged a cult local following in SA circuit racing,
the Alpina (which is actually where BMW got the engine
found in the iS) is a product of an internationally‒recognised
and revered tuner specialising in perfectly tweaking BMW
road cars for the ideal combination of performance and
driveability. With stock E30 M3 prices soaring in the markets in
which it was sold, even rarer examples of this generation
of car can command even higher premiums today. Across
three iterations less than 500 examples of C2 were ever built,
making this a speculative investment with the potential to
pay big returns. Even if the local market might always prefer
the more recognised iS for this kind of money, the beauty of
this Alpina is that international car fanatics are likely to be
interested when you do put it up for resale.
However, the asking price is a steep starting point, and by
the look of international prices for this car currently, there’s
quite a bit of appreciation still needed before you would be
able to take any profit from the transaction, and it isn’t yet
clear what the ceiling for E30s is going to be. So it is a gam-
ble from an investment perspective, and not a sure thing.
FEBRUARY 2018 SA Real Estate Investor Magazine