Eric you put things good in perspective.Well,
Two days gone by at Essen so far. I've seen a few cars sold here from the major exhibitors roll out at the end of the day, to be replenished by fresh "stock".
It's quite an exhibition, and should be on the "to do" list for any car junkie.
Prices are up "of course", but Essen is in it's own league sometimes in that regard. The biggest surprise I think I see is the value of the G cars and later (74 and up). These prices are rising very fast and the offering prices here are quite staggering, but you have to take it all with a grain of salt as it is "Essen", and there's other factors as well.
There's a thread over on Pelican regarding the prices that people are seeing and hearing about cars being offered by some of the major exhibitors over here, and I posted this over on Pelican, and thought I would offer it here as well:
I am at the show right now, spending some time with some accounts I have over here.
There's a few things you need to realize about the pricing that you see and hear about the market over here, particularly at Essen.
The prices here by the dealers include a 19% VAT tax. So a price of 25,000 euro's is suddenly 20,000 euro's.
The car has to get to Europe... prices on shipping have gone up dramatically. I was speaking to a vintage Mercedes dealer friend yesterday and the cost for getting 2 cars out of the Detroit area to his shop in Belgium was 6,000 eu, roughly 3,000 euro's per car.
A dealer here has to offer a warranty by law from my understanding, I was told that this is about 6 months, but it covers only certain items (maybe the engine block, but not the cylinder heads as an example). So, you have to cover this somehow.
The booths here at Essen are horribly expensive. One major exhibitor here has a roughly $80,000 bill for just his floor space, then he has to get his cars here by transporter from his shops in Hamburg and Berlin (and back again). He has a dozen employees here to feed and house at hotels that are incredibly expensive.
And then there's the fact that this is "Essen", so the pricing has a certain amount of expectation of being higher here as well. You think the sticker price is what is being paid? Not so....
So, yes the prices are going up, but you need to factor in a lot of the above to what you hear about the pricing.
cheers,
Eric
BTW the floor price, board and room is why some vendor's from early days are not having a booth any more.
Richard