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History / OriginalityGot a question about 1982-1992 Camaro or Firebird history? Have a question about original parts, options, RPO codes, when something was available, or how to document your car? Those questions, answers, and much more!
A lot of time is spent here on what are cars are worth and if prices are rising. Without any base line to go with, we argue endlessly about what we remember or what we think we see. I was curious about the market is right now. I looked at CL in 8 cities that usually have more than a few Firebirds for sale at any given time. I know this is a slow time for our cars and prices will be low, but it does give some idea what is available and at what price.
If you were looking for a car today, this is what you would have to choose from. Not all listings listed all the info, so numbers will very.
The cities I chose were Kansas City, Des Moines, Minneapolis, Denver, Chicago, St. Louis, Oklahoma City and Dallas. I tallied all the listings for the last 30 days and broke it down by car, year, engine, tranny, miles, price. I also broke down condition of the cars in 3 groups.
Turnkey - Car requires nothing to get in and drive. May have a few minor flaws but enjoyable from the first day you drive it.
Driver with Flaws - Drive train is good but had 1 or more major flaws that will need to be fixed to get inspected or to enjoy.
Non Running - Major drive train problems.
All in all I found 158 Firebirds of all types.
Base Firebirds 45
S/E 3
Formula 17
Trans Am 61
GTA 25
Convertible 3
Turbo TA 3
Bandit II 1
6 Cyl 19
5.0L 64
5.7L 49
Turbo 6 3
Other 4
Automatic 127
Manual 23
Turnkey 75
Driver Flaws 43
Non Running 37
I'm still sifting through the Price data, and will present it latter.
As time go's on here I will be editing and adding new numbers. There is a lot of data and subsets that will be compiled and listed. Several listings were bare of info. Junk cars tended to just list model, year and price. Mileage was listed about 70% of the time, and several cars were missing one piece of data or another.
Here is the number of cars of each year I found. The number following the average price.
The results confirmed a lot of what I already thought. Some things I found interesting such as...
It looks like Formula's are rare in any version but especially 5.7L cars.
Firebird base cars are disappearing. They were sold 6 - 1 to all the specialty birds but now show up less than them for sale.
I didn't expect to see so many Turnkey cars. It's nice to see so many people at least taking care of the cars.
This was a lot of work. I may try again in the spring. Between this data and then, it will give a good snapshot of the overall market. Of coarse the very nicest cars rarely are listed on CL, so average prices are probably higher than I show for them. However we do a pretty good job of listing them here in other theads and they are well represented.
Nice analysis. I sold my 1982 base V6 last month and it fell somewhere in between turnkey and driver flaws. It was mechanically sound but had paint issues. The price I got for it is right in the ballpark for your figures for turnkey. I have to agree with you that the Formy 5.7 is one of the most rare and there are not many 1982 cars period.
Did you factor in any dealer optioned cars like MSE's? I havent seen one for sale for a while.
[QUOTE=kymmee Did you factor in any dealer optioned cars like MSE's? I havent seen one for sale for a while.[/QUOTE]
Didn't see any. What I found, I put in the data. I did put cars in Turnkey that had light paint problems, if it was nice looking I included it. Turnkey came down for me as, "if I bought it today, can I drive it without hiding my face." It is hard to judge a car you don't see in person. That's why I kept it simple. Most cars I put in Driver flaws really needed multiple things and or at least one major item to be fixed. A bad exhaust, complete paint job, big dents or damage that needed repaired. As long as it could still be driven and had no known drivetrain issues.
One thing I noticed is the mileage range listed is post 9. You may want to add additional breakdowns. There is a huge price gap between cars with 10k miles and 50k miles. Today, the mileage may vary slightly from 10k-20k or even 25k. Then 25k - 50k. Less than 75k miles seems to be a winner also. I know it's more work, but it may show a better breakdown.
It's not that much extra work for the 10 - 50 breakdown. With only 6 (Found 1 more edited corrected data above) vehicles in this category, I can just list the cars.
Two are listed above in pictures
1987 TA 5.7L29K $30
1983 Recardo 5.0L 12K $21
1987 TA 5.7L 29K $15
1983 TA 5.0L 46K $7
1987 TA 5.0L 48K $5
1992 Firebird 2.8L 47K $1600
With so few examples it just doesn't work very well to break it down more.
Since this was collected just from adds in local CL listings, I did not expect to find many in this category here. The best mint low mileage cars are listed elsewhere in Autotrader, auctions, and other places where they will be seen by a better paying audience. I did not include them because I was afraid of duplicating information.
Scott, this is where you and I have had our biggest misunderstandings in what is a high price. I don't look at the other sites very often, which you seem to watch quite a bit. You see many more higher priced cars than I see on CL. You certainly have educated me on what constitutes the higher end of the scale. However there is value in knowing what the going prices are for the average buyer in the market for a 3rd Gen. Ten years ago buying a 1st gen for 5k bought you a complete car that could be restored. Today, you would have to settle for a rust bucket missing many important parts. Our cars are moving in that direction. There are already plenty of examples where they are starting to leap frog over many of the 2nd Gen's. Only the early ones and the Bandit cars get good 3rd gen money.
I'm interested to see what spring brings. I think the time of year also effects what cars are being offered now. If I want the best price, I'm going to wait until spring when buyers are more present. I noticed this year early on how many nice low mileage cars showed up for sale.
The information above I think we can safely say is the bottom of the market at the worst time of year to sell. If I decide to do this again in the spring, I suspect there will be a change not only in price but also the proportion of more Turnkey cars.
Sample size means everything to statistics. In some of the categories above there just wasn't enough samples to say anything definitive. That's why I included that info. You can judge for yourself how reliable it is.
