Why do some cars obtain classic status when similar ones don’t?
This isn’t a position I ever thought I’d find myself in, but after reading details of the new Vauxhall Frontera, I’ve opened the classifieds to browse for originals. If you remember, the Frontera was a 4x4 of the early 1990s, when ‘SUV’ meant something more than just having a taller driving position and bigger boot.
It was considered a relatively road-biased car at the time, slightly maligned as not being a serious off-roader, even though it had considerable hardware by today’s standards: a separate chassis, low-ratio gears and selectable four-wheel drive system so crude that it couldn’t be used at road speeds.
So help me, I liked the look of it (I was young). And I think it has been through its naff phase and popped out the other side. You might say it’s a bona fide classic car. Or maybe you wouldn’t.
How to put it? Even at over 30 years old, the Frontera is more of an eBay Motors or Facebook Marketplace car than a Car and Classic one. While you can find plenty of other 4x4s on specialist classic websites, they seem to have no Fronteras, partly because few still exist but also, I suspect, because it isn’t perceived the right way.
There’s one for sale on eBay, and a good one, in the more desirable (these things are relative) three-door, removable-roof Sport form, with one owner from new, just 34,000 miles, routine servicing, a fresh MOT and a genuinely believable “you will not find another in this condition” description.
How much do you think a Frontera like this is worth? I think it will be less than that. It’s up for £2300, and I think if one promised the current owner an easy sale and that it were going to a good home, it could be yours for a little less.
I’m not going to buy it, although I will admit that I’m tempted. Had Steve Cropley not recently bought a nearly new Ford Ranger Raptor, I wonder if I’d have been able to convince him to take a look, because at one stage he was considering getting a vehicle (perhaps a Suzuki X90) to take to the Festival of the Unexceptional.
A Frontera strikes me as just the sort of car for that task. This year, an unmolested Toyota Hilux won the overall FotU prize, which raised a few eyebrows, because the model has become a bit too notable to be truly unexceptional.
This isn’t the Hilux’s fault: it was sold as a humdrum and dependable commercial pick-up at the time. But since Marty McFly had a terrific one, Top Gear couldn’t destroy one and guerrilla fighters the world over found they make durable machine-gun platforms, the Hilux has obtained a classic status denied to cars like the Frontera.
It’s not like the Frontera was considered a bad car in its time. “In most respects, the Frontera has the [Land Rover] Discovery licked – and that’s a considerable achievement,” Autocar’s road testers reckoned on 30 October 1991, scoring it 7/10 overall and 8/10 for value.
Yet Discoverys and Hiluxes of the same era command several multiples the price of a Frontera, even at the scruffier ends, and there are sky-high limits on good ones. A dealer wants £20,000 for a 67,000-mile 1997 Discovery (“a very rare opportunity”, of course) and there’s a beach-ready 1983 Hilux with KC spotlights and brown-on-beige graphics up for a gulpsome £38,000.
Question is, which is the fairer price: £2300 for a Frontera or 10 times that for an alternative that’s objectively no better and almost certainly more common? I’m still not going to buy one, but I think it’s the Vauxhall.
