How many skylines are left?

[Guilt-Toy]

How many skylines are left?

I been around the skyline scene since pretty much the start.

 

We had alot of respect for our cars back then,  we kept them so clean and in great condition!  

But now that time has gone on...  all i see is wrecked skylines being parted out.

Yeah sure I understand when some kid writes of his R33 skyline and it was too expensive for him to insure so he is trying to make some money back to get a car to get around in.

I am seeing cars being destroyed that are in good road worthy condition just so the guy can make a quick buck,  it is hard to sell a registered r33 series 1 manual for 4k these days but once you sell the engine and manual conversion and any juicy mods the car has had there is your 4k plus change,  then a perfectly good shell goes to sims metal to be crushed.

This pisses me off,  I have bought a few cars and any car that could be put back on the road has been put back on the road and sold,  not stripped and scraped,  except for the couple of written off ones i have got in the past.

So anyone got any idea what kinda numbers were imported and how many are actually left?

At this rate a r33 skyline is going to be rare by 2020.

*end of rant*

Pic is of my R32 Skyline at Yas Island F1 track Abu Dhabi

[GH05T]

i still got mine

[LaurelPWR]

There's a lad on facebook who buys and wrecks a genuinely decent if not perfect running r33 or r32 gtr nearly couple of weeks.. Recently Including the one off Top Secret time attack r33 gtr. Man it does my head in!

[Birds]

I have two R33 and I'm not letting them go anytime soon, because they are mixing with the magic formula for rarity, which is a popular vehicle for which many once existed...but are quickly getting wiped out of existence as people write them off. A good sign of this is that even my GTS-T is drawing looks in traffic these days just because you don't see them anymore and there was a time when, like VL Commodores, they were one of the most popular sports cars on the road. Now if I see one it's usually clapped out looking. Both of my Skylines are in pristine condition body wise and that's the most important thing for any classic / kept vehicle.

The GTR has already increased significantly in value since I purchased it. The GTS-T will always be the slower riser, given it's a "lesser" vehicle and there were significantly more of them produced and imported here, so may never be worth what a GTR will, but I predict will still rise one day as they become rare. Consider the ridiculous prices people are paying for VLs, R31s (these were $1000 when I was 18 lol), RX3s etc.

Also, in a couple years the floodgates will open up for Americans to import the R33, so will be interesting to see the momentum that gives to the second hand market here as Japan gets swamped with orders from the states.

[No Crust Racing]

They're still around but the market as split. There's not much "in the middle" these days. 

My first R33 GTS-T was 15k and it was dead stock. I sold it for 18k a few years later modded and bought a 33R. Highly modded GTS-Ts were worth that back then. 

What you see mainly now is the GTS-Ts/GTTs are being used as thrash cars either for track/drift, and still daily duties but still being thrashed, and then GT-Rs becoming more expensive, rarer, and more desirable even though we all know there are many cars for the same or lesser money that are better in many ways. 

Silvia's are very similar. Quite a decent S15 is no worth 15-20k. An s13, almost no matter it's mod list or condition has a hard time going for more than 5k, although some P Plate legal examples are now climbing in value (CA18DET). Same thing though, there are heaps more options that are comparable/better for the same/less money. 

So whilst my 34 has gone up in value considerably, my S13 is still worth the same 5k I bought it for 5yrs ago stock despite having 10k worth of stuff in it easily now (track car). 

This might upset some people when I say this, but I feel that the resource boom, rise of the upper middle bogan, and the drifting community have a had a lot to do with gutting the prices of the cars and the parts all round. "Just bought this 15k car last week, but it blew a head gasket, YOLO sell for 5k or swap or something cool"

 

 

 

[DJBarnstar]

I just did a massive letter box drop throughout Tuggeranong (15,000 boxes)  in the ACT on the Postie. The amount of R33 GTST's parked up in yards with grass growing through the wheels was out of control. I counted 13! No Joke! Another popular one to be 'parked up' was the 180sx.

What I see on the roads are either pristine cars (rare) or complete shit heaps with F and F mods or paint faded and dings all over tailgating some poor sap.

It's so sad considering they were $70K cars when new.

[DJBarnstar]

10 hours ago, Birds said:

I have two R33 and I'm not letting them go anytime soon, because they are mixing with the magic formula for rarity, which is a popular vehicle for which many once existed...but are quickly getting wiped out of existence as people write them off. A good sign of this is that even my GTS-T is drawing looks in traffic these days just because you don't see them anymore and there was a time when, like VL Commodores, they were one of the most popular sports cars on the road. Now if I see one it's usually clapped out looking. Both of my Skylines are in pristine condition body wise and that's the most important thing for any classic / kept vehicle.

The GTR has already increased significantly in value since I purchased it. The GTS-T will always be the slower riser, given it's a "lesser" vehicle and there were significantly more of them produced and imported here, so may never be worth what a GTR will, but I predict will still rise one day as they become rare. Consider the ridiculous prices people are paying for VLs, R31s (these were $1000 when I was 18 lol), RX3s etc.

Also, in a couple years the floodgates will open up for Americans to import the R33, so will be interesting to see the momentum that gives to the second hand market here as Japan gets swamped with orders from the states.

 

 

@BirdsJust had a holiday down in Victoria and I was surprised to see so few Skylines! I was expecting to see heaps. Looooots of Euro cars though.

Also, on a side note, WTF is the go with Victorians sitting in the RHLane all the time on Dual carriage ways? It was even worse than ACT which even here does my head in.

[Birds]

22 minutes ago, DJBarnstar said:

 

 

@BirdsJust had a holiday down in Victoria and I was surprised to see so few Skylines! I was expecting to see heaps. Looooots of Euro cars though.

Also, on a side note, WTF is the go with Victorians sitting in the RHLane all the time on Dual carriage ways? It was even worse than ACT which even here does my head in.

Yeah our younger drivers are all about Volkswagens these days.

We have some shocking drivers, and I feel like only 5% of the driving population are aware of "keep left unless overtaking". They don't even look in their rear vision mirrors to see you stuck behind them, and if they do, they will sit there arrogantly trying to play citizen cop and control the speed of the highway. It's to the point where I actually give drivers a thumbs up if they do the courteous thing and move over for me

[Trex]

Skylines are slower than most new n/a cars. If you look at cars in the same price bracket of 4k-8k you'll see that a skyline isn't a good choice. With fuel prices rising, new cars getting cheaper, more reliable, faster, more creature comforts etc. It's a no brainer that skylines are being stripped and sold for more than you can sell them as a whole. 

Yes it can be frustrating seeing a perfect car being stripped because no one want's to buy it. Every make and model goes through the same fate, until they reach a time that everyone want's one again.

It's a classic example of supply and demand. No one needs or want's a complete 33, but a lot need a spare engine for their conversion, or a gearbox for another conversion, or the brakes.... and so on.

[dyl33]

There's still nice ones around probably not used as dailys or parked on the street.

Sometime parting out is a better option even more so for heavily modded cars, unless the buyer understands and appreciates the time and money it costs to have a car a certain way. stuff giving them it for free because they only expect to pay 10k because there is a stocker for sale around the corner.

It's more about the whole performance layout of skylines that will keep them desirable into the future, rather then straight out speed or idoodle connectivity or other homo creature comforts. So the new Camry can stay the daily.

there will always be a market for the RWD skyline as GTR prices potentially go bananas some people might find it hard paying 2-3+ times the price for essentially the same car.

Luckily joe blows don't really buy them these days, same with a lot of JDM goodies. So either they are brought by enthusiasts wanting to have large amounts of fun or for nostalgia purposes now. 

[niZmO_Man]

Times are changing, driver skill and wanting to drive instead of InstaFaceSwap is diminishing fast. What we're left with are enthusiasts and commuters (and eventually autonomous cars). The amount of complaining we do about bad drivers on the road is a testament to my theory .

Like all old cars, most of them disappear.

[GTR-32U]

Bought myself a 34 gtt recently. Spent thousands getting the bodywork right, next will be freshening up the driveline. I went without one for 10 yrs and now I'm back in one. Eventually Skylines will be bought up by the collectors and enthusiasts. Go fast boys will just move on to the next trend car

[Guilt-Toy]

I paid 29,000$ for my first R33 series 1.5 auto car.  Price included insurance.  

Sure that brings the purchase price back down to 25k.  

This car can be purchased now for 2000- 4000$.

It is just a shame that our cars have good good parts that other lesser cars need to be reliable which makes the demand for parts skyrocket.

Suggestion,  anyone got a spare 100k?  buy as many r33 gtst's as you can and store them for 10 years....  bet you walk away with over a mill....

[r32-25t]

cars seem to be really popular when they hit about the 10 year old mark, hence why the r33 was so big in the early noughties and the evo is such a big deal now. 

[KiwiRS4T]

There seems to be an undiminished supply of Skylines in NZ. In general Kiwis keep their cars on the road for more years than other countries partly because of poverty and partly because many people learn to fix their own cars. Skylines are still being imported privately and by dealers.

On the other hand there are reports that many young people do not aspire to owning a car and don't even learn to drive preferring to live their lives on electronic media.

[Birds]

Here's a simplified version of how I think the the demand and increase in value works and *should* proceed for Skylines in the future. I base this on what I think happened to muscle cars of the 70s about 10 years ago during their massive boom. Granted, they did have a broader appeal to all people than imports do.

So we can agree Skylines were immensely popular at one point, circa late 90s and early-mid 00s; their numbers are now dwindling and they've depreciated about as much as they are going to because we're starting to see turnaround / an increase in value, starting with the GTRs...however the gentrification should bring the lower spec models up with it eventually.

The teenagers of the late 90s and 00s who loved Skylines and bought them, eventually got out of them and moved on to newer and more practical vehicles, raising families etc. The cars became older and problematic too, so they decreased in value as the generation of enthusiasts outgrew them. These enthusiasts who used to work part time jobs to get through uni or graduate positions were the key demographic for this kind of second hand car and represented the buyers market here in Aus, hence the pricing of the vehicles was probably a lot cheaper than it deserved to be, given the quality and performance of the vehicles and compared to local offerings. I argue that you still cannot get a faster or more fun (or better looking, but that's subjective) sports car than a Japanese import for less than $7-8k than the old faithful GTS-T.

Anyway, back then, hardly anyone over 45 with a lot of money could give a shit about owning a Skyline in the late 90s and 00s, it was a young man's sports car and they attracted an image of irresponsible goon, so there were really no affable buyers who wanted to splash out on anything Skyline, save for the boutique models (34 GTR included; these were arguably still a new car, so deserved a high price, but they too eventually fell from grace, with low end models fetching high 30s low 40s before the recent resurgence in pricing).

However! Now those teenagers who outgrew the Skylines have young families and some even have teenagers. When those kids move out of home and they have a mid life crisis + room for toys, opportunity to relive one's youth etc., what cars are they going to turn to? These people include the execs, directors, managers and even CEOs of the next decade or two, and they will have money to fight over the remaining examples of Skylines. There will be a pecking order and it will of course start with the GTRs...but the same thing happened with 70s muscled, where even if SLR5000/A9X were the top pics, a clean LJ Torana is still worth a decent penny on its own.

Popularity + scarcity = sought after rarity = $$$$

The big question for me is...when you get older and still have your Skyline...will you sell your youth for the premium prices or hang on to it and try to relive

[Gymkhana]

There's no middle ground basically. You either see pristine quality skylines or absolute wrecks. 

[No Crust Racing]

Here's a simplified version of how I think the the demand and increase in value works and *should* proceed for Skylines in the future. I base this on what I think happened to muscle cars of the 70s about 10 years ago during their massive boom. Granted, they did have a broader appeal to all people than imports do.
So we can agree Skylines were immensely popular at one point, circa late 90s and early-mid 00s; their numbers are now dwindling and they've depreciated about as much as they are going to because we're starting to see turnaround / an increase in value, starting with the GTRs...however the gentrification should bring the lower spec models up with it eventually.
The teenagers of the late 90s and 00s who loved Skylines and bought them, eventually got out of them and moved on to newer and more practical vehicles, raising families etc. The cars became older and problematic too, so they decreased in value as the generation of enthusiasts outgrew them. These enthusiasts who used to work part time jobs to get through uni or graduate positions were the key demographic for this kind of second hand car and represented the buyers market here in Aus, hence the pricing of the vehicles was probably a lot cheaper than it deserved to be, given the quality and performance of the vehicles and compared to local offerings. I argue that you still cannot get a faster or more fun (or better looking, but that's subjective) sports car than a Japanese import for less than $7-8k than the old faithful GTS-T.
Anyway, back then, hardly anyone over 45 with a lot of money could give a shit about owning a Skyline in the late 90s and 00s, it was a young man's sports car and they attracted an image of irresponsible goon, so there were really no affable buyers who wanted to splash out on anything Skyline, save for the boutique models (34 GTR included; these were arguably still a new car, so deserved a high price, but they too eventually fell from grace, with low end models fetching high 30s low 40s before the recent resurgence in pricing).
However! Now those teenagers who outgrew the Skylines have young families and some even have teenagers. When those kids move out of home and they have a mid life crisis + room for toys, opportunity to relive one's youth etc., what cars are they going to turn to? These people include the execs, directors, managers and even CEOs of the next decade or two, and they will have money to fight over the remaining examples of Skylines. There will be a pecking order and it will of course start with the GTRs...but the same thing happened with 70s muscled, where even if SLR5000/A9X were the top pics, a clean LJ Torana is still worth a decent penny on its own.
Popularity + scarcity = sought after rarity = $$$$
The big question for me is...when you get older and still have your Skyline...will you sell your youth for the premium prices or hang on to it and try to relive [emoji6]

Agreed.

[sneakey pete]

I disagree, sort of. I think it's already happened, case in point, the comments here seem to all agree that there's still lots of really pristine ones, that are garaged away and not dailyed. This points to the idea that people already have gone and bought that dream car, that they can afford as a second car that's tucked away. The recent boom certainly would have helped with that also. Sure people will still want more and prices may slightly increase but I don't think we'll get the 70's muscle car thing happening.

[21PC]

Although idd like to add that the comparison of Aussie muscle cars and Skylines isn't as close as youd think. This is because of the much larger international market Skylines have. Toranas etc really only have extreme popularity in Australia which is limited to 23-24 milion people. Similarly the representation of Skylines in popular culture plays a large role. If you also compare muscle cars, the numbers produced in for example Mustangs was much greater and I can tell you that there are heaps of restorations and mint cars sitting in garages that nobody knows about. The fact that mint '89 model GTR's are going for big dollars at Sotherbys for example with another coming up in February in Arizona should point to future value prospects. Who knows, exporting might be the go when the car outvalues itself domestically.