Ten Classic Cars Tipped to Rise in Value This Year, One Costs Under £22,000

• Hagerty UK’s 2026 Bull Market List names ten classic cars its analysts expect to hold or gain value this year, spanning from a pre-war Riley at £60,100 to a Ferrari F430 Spider at £95,400.
• The cheapest entry on the list, a mid-1980s Alfa Romeo Spider Veloce, is valued at £21,200 for a good example, showing the list is not built only for six-figure buyers.
• The Volkswagen Golf GTI Mk2 makes the cut in the year the GTI badge turns 50, a milestone Hagerty says is already pulling buyers toward earlier, unmodified cars.

Your Garage Could Be Sitting on More Than You Think

Hagerty UK revealed its 2026 Bull Market List at Bicester Motion’s season-opening Scramble, an event that has become a fixture on the UK classic calendar for owners and dealers alike, and the cars named on it range across nearly a century of motoring, from a 1930s pre-war special to a 2000s Italian supercar. What links them is not badge or era. It is Hagerty’s read on where genuine buyer demand is building faster than supply, based on the auction results, dealer sales and insurance valuations that pass through its own database every week.

What the Bull Market List Actually Measures

Hagerty’s analysts are not simply picking cars they like. The list combines three inputs: the volume of cars actually changing hands, the direction those prices have moved over the past twelve months, and a judgement on driveability and ownership appeal that separates cars people will actually use from cars bought purely to sit under a cover. A car with rising auction prices but almost no transaction volume gets left off. A car with strong demand and a healthy, active market for parts and specialist servicing tends to make the cut.

That combination counts for anyone thinking about classic ownership rather than pure investment. A car nobody can get parts for or insure affordably is a poor buy whatever the headline valuation says, and Hagerty’s inclusion criteria are built to filter those cars out before they reach the published list.

The Affordable End: Alfa Romeo Spider and VW Golf GTI Mk2

The Alfa Romeo Spider, built between 1966 and 1986, tops the list for accessibility. A good 2000 Veloce example is valued at £21,200, a figure that puts a truly usable open-top classic within reach of buyers who might otherwise assume the whole category starts at £50,000 and climbs from there. Alfa specialists have reported steady, unspectacular demand for the Spider across several years of flat trading. Hagerty’s data now points to that demand translating into firmer prices, breaking a pattern owners had grown used to.

The Volkswagen Golf GTI Mk2 earns its place partly on timing. The GTI badge turns 50 this year, and anniversary years reliably pull buyer attention toward the earliest, most original examples of a nameplate rather than later, more common versions. Hagerty’s view is that Mk2 cars in unmodified, honest condition are already seeing more enquiries than equivalent cars saw twelve months ago, ahead of any anniversary events or magazine coverage that typically follows a round-number birthday.

The Specialist End: Porsche 996, Toyota Supra and Ferrari F430

Further up the list, the Porsche 911 996 generation, long treated as the unloved middle child of the 911 lineage over its shared headlight design with the Boxster, is finally attracting the recognition Hagerty says it deserves on its own mechanical merits. A UK-market Toyota Supra A80, with the rare 326bhp specification unique to the domestic market, is valued around £40,000, reflecting a wider trend of 1990s and early-2000s Japanese performance cars moving from enthusiast curiosity to established collector category, a shift that has already played out in the American market and is now reaching UK buyers with a slight delay.

At the top of the published range sits the Ferrari F430 Spider, valued at £95,400 for an excellent example, and a pre-war Riley Nine Imp from 1934 or 1935 at £60,100. The two cars sit at opposite ends of motoring history, but both represent what Hagerty’s analysts describe as achievable entry points into their respective categories, rather than the seven-figure cars that dominate headlines from major auction houses.

The F430 Spider’s inclusion says something about how quickly the modern Ferrari market has matured. Cars built in the mid-2000s were, until recently, viewed by collectors as depreciating used supercars rather than future classics. Their electronics and servicing costs frightened off buyers used to simpler older Ferraris. Values have firmed as the F430 generation ages into classic status and independent specialists build up the skills to service them for a fraction of main dealer rates, removing one of the biggest barriers to ownership.

What This Means If You Already Own One, or Want to Buy

An owner who already has one of the listed cars sitting in a garage has a clear reason to get a fresh valuation this year rather than relying on a figure from an old insurance schedule. Standard motor insurance policies value classics on a market-value basis that can lag well behind actual demand, and an owner who has not updated their agreed value in several years could be significantly underinsured against a genuine total loss.

Specialist classic insurers offer agreed-value policies that fix a car’s insured worth at a figure both sides accept in advance, avoiding a dispute over valuation at the exact moment a claim is being made. For an appreciating car, renewing that agreed value annually against current market data, rather than letting it roll over unchanged, is the difference between a payout that reflects reality and one that reflects a five-year-old guess.

Storage and use conditions attached to a classic policy also deserve a second look once a car’s value has moved. Many agreed-value policies set mileage limits, require off-street or garaged overnight storage, and specify security devices as a condition of cover. An owner whose circumstances have changed from when the policy was first taken out, a house move that lost a garage, or higher annual mileage from more frequent shows and drives, should update the insurer before a claim exposes a gap between the policy on paper and the way the car is actually kept and used. Photographing the car in detail and keeping receipts for any restoration or servicing work also builds a paper trail an insurer or a future buyer can rely on, and that record often does as much to support an agreed valuation as the underlying market data itself.

Buyers considering entering the market for the first time should treat the list as a starting point for research rather than a guarantee. Hagerty’s own methodology tracks demand that has already begun building, so a car’s appearance on the list can itself accelerate the price rise it describes, as dealers and private sellers take note and adjust asking prices upward. Anyone tempted by the Alfa Romeo Spider’s £21,200 entry point or the Golf GTI Mk2’s anniversary attention should budget for that effect and expect asking prices to move before a purchase is completed, not after.

A pre-purchase inspection from a marque specialist, not a general mechanic, remains the single best protection against buying a car whose price has run ahead of its actual condition. Rust, accident history and non-original parts all hit resale value hardest on exactly the cars a list like this puts in the spotlight. Buyers chasing a headline valuation figure are the ones most likely to skip the inspection step in a rush to secure a car before someone else does. A car bought quickly off the back of a list like this, without that check, can end up costing far more than the advertised price once the faults it was hiding come due.

Sources:

• Hagerty UK: 2026 Bull Market List
• Octane Magazine: 2026 Hagerty Bull Market List revealed at Bicester Scramble
• Motoring Chronicle: New data on 1.6 million repairs reveals which used cars cost the most to fix