Why Hagerty’s Index Shows Classic Car Values at Their Lowest Since 2018

• Hagerty UK’s Best of British index, the benchmark for how British classics are tracking, has fallen to its lowest reading in the index’s history, which dates to 2018, sitting at just over 80 per cent of that starting baseline.
• Jaguar values are down 21.4 per cent as a marque, and pre-war British cars have softened by mid-double digits, while 1990s Japanese performance cars and hot hatches are among the only categories still rising.
• Auction sell-through rates stayed strong through the first half of 2026, meaning classic cars are still selling, just increasingly at the bottom of their estimate range rather than the top.

Your Classic Might Be Worth Less Than You Think, Even When It Still Sells

If you own a British classic and have not had it valued this year, the number in your head is probably out of date. Hagerty UK’s Best of British index, the broadest single measure of how British-built classics are tracking, is sitting at its lowest point in the index’s history, which began in 2018, worth just over 80 per cent of where it started. Data covering the twelve months to December 2025 shows nearly 80 per cent of UK classic car values either fell or held flat over that period. For anyone insuring, selling, or leaving a classic to family, that is not a small technical dip. It is an eight-year low on the number that most owners instinctively check.

The figures come from a market report drawing on sale results from Bonhams Cars, Iconic Auctioneers, H&H Classics, Brightwells, Manor Park Classics and Mathewsons, cross-referenced against the Hagerty UK Price Guide, covering January through May 2026. It is the most complete read available on where actual money changed hands this year, rather than what a car might be listed for.

Which Cars Are Losing Value and Which Are Still Climbing

Jaguar is the worst-performing marque in the data, down 21.4 per cent, a figure heavily dragged by a £3.6 million fall in the average value of the rare XKSS. That single-model effect filters down through the rest of the range: XK150s, Series 3 E-Types and even later XJS values have all softened. A Series 3 E-Type 2+2 Coupe, once reliably a £40,000-plus car, is now trading as low as £31,500, a price that would have been considered an anomaly five years ago and is now unremarkable at auction. Pre-war British cars have fared little better. Riley, Lagonda, early Bentley and pre-war Rolls-Royce have all dropped by mid-double digit percentages, with only truly significant, well-documented cars holding firm.

Set against that, a handful of categories are moving the other way. Nineteen-nineties and early-2000s Japanese performance cars are among the strongest performers in the entire market: a 1998 Subaru Impreza 22B-STi sold for £187,875, a quarter above its high estimate and believed to be a UK record for a non-works example, while a manual Honda NSX-T made £73,125, a third above its high estimate. Hot hatches and homologation specials are the only two Hagerty indices showing meaningful year-on-year growth, driven by results such as a Renault 5 Turbo that set a live-auction world record of £331,895. Late air-cooled Porsche models, especially the 993 Carrera 2, continue to clear £60,000 with regularity, and manual-gated modern supercars, including a Lamborghini Murciélago that made £264,500, are running well above their estimates.

Why Cars Are Still Selling Even as Values Fall

The apparent contradiction, a falling index alongside busy salerooms, comes down to where within the estimate range cars are actually changing hands. Volume auction houses with realistic estimates cleared their rooms comfortably: Mathewsons sold 98 per cent of lots at its March sale, and Iconic Auctioneers cleared 93 per cent of 150 lots at its February Race Retro sale. Premium sales had to work harder. Bonhams’ Goodwood Members’ Meeting in April totalled just over £3 million at a 71 per cent sell-through rate, with a third of the catalogue selling below the low estimate and only a fifth above the high one. A Porsche 911 GT3 RSR estimated at £190,000 to £250,000 failed to meet reserve entirely, and eight separate competition cars worth more than £100,000 each passed in unsold at the same event.

Three factors explain why the headline data feels worse than the mood in the auction rooms. A small number of very high-value cars softening sharply, such as the XKSS, drags marque-level figures well below what a typical owner of the same brand has actually experienced. Sell-through has held up better than price realisation, meaning cars are finding buyers but increasingly at the lower end of their estimate. And UK-to-US export volumes are down 14 per cent to a six-year low, removing some of the strongest bidding pressure that used to push prices at the top of the market. Land Rover remains the exception, holding almost a quarter of all export volume and keeping Defender and Range Rover Classic values firm.

What Hagerty’s 2026 Bull Market List Says About Where Values Are Heading

Hagerty UK’s annual Bull Market List, published in January, names ten cars its valuation team expects to rise over a five-year window, and the pattern matches the wider data closely. A Toyota Supra A80 has climbed 41.8 per cent over five years to an excellent-condition value of £40,000, and a Ferrari F430 Spider is up 19 per cent to £95,400. Set against that, a Vauxhall Viva HC 1300 has fallen 23.2 per cent to just £4,300, and a Riley Nine Imp is down 20 per cent to £60,100. The Porsche 996 C2 3.4 Coupe, listed at £17,800, has the highest collectability score on the entire list even with a small five-year decline, which Hagerty’s own analysts are reading as a sign the model is close to bottoming out rather than continuing to fall.

What to Check Before You Insure, Sell or Inherit a Classic

An agreed-value classic car insurance policy is only as good as the valuation behind it, and a figure set two or three years ago in a rising market could now be well above what the car would actually fetch. That gap affects a claim payout less than most owners assume: an over-valued policy still only pays what the car is actually worth in a total loss. Getting a fresh valuation from a specialist classic insurer or an auction house before a renewal, rather than accepting an automatic uplift, is the simplest way to avoid overpaying for cover on a value that no longer exists. Anyone planning to sell should also look past the marque-level headline figure to how their specific model, year and condition are actually trading right now. A Jaguar E-Type and a Land Rover Defender are living through entirely different markets under the same falling index, and provenance, paperwork and honest condition reporting are doing more to determine the final price than at almost any point in the last decade.

The Sales to Watch for the Rest of 2026

The second half of the year carries the heaviest UK auction calendar of the cycle, and the results will show whether H1’s selectivity is a temporary correction or a longer trend. H&H’s Kelham Hall sale on 17 June offered a 1965 Ferrari 330 GT 2+2 estimated at £180,000 to £220,000, a real test of where upper-middle Italian classics actually settle when the estimate is realistic. Bonhams’ Goodwood Revival sale in September carries particular significance after its 2025 edition reportedly recorded its lowest total in nearly a decade, and RM Sotheby’s London Auction at The Peninsula on 31 October, timed to the London to Brighton Veteran Run weekend, is typically the year’s flagship UK boutique sale. For an owner deciding whether to sell this year or wait, watching how these specific results land against their estimates will say more about the direction of the market than any single index reading.

Sources:

• The UK classic car market in H1 2026: a selectivity year, Classic Car Clubs UK
• The UK Collector Car Market Is Down but Not Out, Hagerty Media
• Hagerty UK names classic cars to watch in 2026, Motor Trade News