The LEAF a cult or collectible car?

[EVDRIVER]

The first car of any kind always has collectible potential but the real factor is how many examples survive in the coming decades. I guess you could look at the original Honda Insight and first gen Prius for a clue. How many of those are surviving to become rare?

If someone has an EV1 squirreled away......

Yes some do have EV1s as well as some other rare EVs. The LEAF is no collectors item. Perhaps a Gen1 Think or Pivco, LEAFs will be collected at $2k for solar backup parts likely.

 

[DaveinOlyWA]

Watched the bidding on an original Apple Macintosh box last week. Someone saved the box with all the original packing material inside and forgot about it in their attic. Sold for $545! Just because it's original, rare and from a product with an interesting story. They made a fair number of these boxes I bet.

Who knew?

the buyer scored. i saw an auction of a Xmas sale catalog packed with an old IBM AT. basically an ad packaged with the owner's manual.
listed were things like

128 K RAM; $2995
5 MB hard drive and controller; $4995
external 5.25" floppy drive; $2495

it sold for $150 and once again, it just an owners manual with flyer

 

[eHelmholtz]

Yes some do have EV1s as well as some other rare EVs. The LEAF is no collectors item. Perhaps a Gen1 Think or Pivco, LEAFs will be collected at $2k for solar backup parts likely.

Hmm, you think that a Think is more collectible?

 

[Ogi]

Well to be fair the Leaf is a product that has taken on a lot in trying to go mainstream and will be iterated and improved repeatedly and frequently. Unless Nissan really screws up, we should expect that many people with the current Leaf will see then next Leaf model as a much better execution of the idea. So why collect this one?

The Think was an earlier step, more of an early adopter product, never aimed at the mainstream buyer really. And its form factor is not where EVs are going to go forward. So as a kind of early dead end it makes more sense as a collectible.

 

[eHelmholtz]

The Think was an earlier step, more of an early adopter product, never aimed at the mainstream buyer really. And its form factor is not where EVs are going to go forward. So as a kind of early dead end it makes more sense as a collectible.

Good point - the LEAF ought to be the Prius of the BEVs ;-)

 

[bowthom]

Hello,
Some of these musings are precious. In 1948 you could buy an operational P51D Mustang for $1500 (sans guns). It wasn't worth much because they were obsolete. Jets were a so much better iteration of the idea. There were literally thousands of them at different boneyards around the south west, some were brand new that had never flown. My dad considered purchasing one when he got out of the service. He decided against it when he found out he could only fly straight and level, civilian style, which took all the fun out of it he said. Since they are now worth $1.5 mil maybe just a couple in a barn somewhere would have been a good investment.........who knew.

 

[Jay]

Old computers are useless. And zillions were made. And a good bulk of them are still operational, but sitting in boxes in basements...so unless vehicular transportation goes away, we are talking about different things.

I personally have a C64, Apple II+, Atari, Coleco, and 2-3 ancient PCs and a half dozen 'antique' laptops and cell phones in my basement that I was just to lazy to trash, or thought at the time might have some use the moment I replaced them, so I didn't. (Although thinking about it now, my first gen Motorola DynaTAC might be worth something...I could talk on that bad boy for like 20 mins before she died)
---
Not that I am an authority on what is a collectible in the automotive world, but if I was wagering a guess, I would say any of the first generation of mass produced EVs that (legally) don't emit any forced sounds/pedestrian warnings will be collectible after a few decades.

The few thousand first EVs will always be able to do what the millions of EVs (hopefully) that came after can't, be silent. And relatively speaking, there are very few of them now, and will only be a fraction of that in 20 years time.

 

[eHelmholtz]

For a few months now, I thought that the LEAF would become a collector's car prematurely. Perhaps the LEAF advisory board chaired by Chelsea Sexton will change this.