K500.com is a brand-new website combining unrivalled classic car expertise, insider market knowledge, decades of verifiable auction data and more than 250,000 words of fun but informative content to create the most accurate and intuitive guide yet to appreciating the world of classic cars, written by motoring gurus for collectors and enthusiasts.
Launched by Geneva-based classic car expert Simon Kidston and his team, K500 allows subscribers 24/7 access to Kidston’s lifetime of experience – advising top collectors how to best enhance and refine their garages – tracking auction values on easy-to-read and constantly updated graphs for specific marques and models over the past 20 years. Users can track the dizzying world of 1950s Ferraris or find out if now is the time to own that Austin Mini Cooper S or Fiat 500.
Every car in the K500 has been carefully chosen by Kidston and a panel of experts for its intrinsic desirability and significance as a collectible car. Whether it’s a ‘blue chip’ classic eligible for Pebble Beach, or just a fun addition to the holiday home garage suitable for a few days’ depreciation-proof motoring, the K500 team has analysed, valued and rated it, providing subscribers with two decades of verifiable auction data to track its price. Bringing together all this information, each car is given a rating of between one and 100, dictating its place in the K500 hierarchy.
Using City-standard charting, trends in the main market sectors — such as ‘Ferrari (Pre-1958)’ and ‘Affordable Classics’ — are identified and represented as an Index, where 1994 = 100. These are averaged out to produce the overall K500 Index, which stood at 449.9 yesterday.
Some cars, such as the Aston Martin DB5 (rated a ‘65’) have an individual index value of over 3000 – in other words, they have appreciated more than 30-fold in 20 years. A McLaren F1, the 241mph hypercar that struggled to find buyers for £650,000 when new in 1994, is now worth 10 times its launch price on the open market. Compare that to a Surrey ‘des-res’ priced at the same level in 1994, now on the market for £2.75m.
By using the Index and the Guide, K500 subscribers can easily find out how cars are really performing in the market, their technical specifications and their backstory. K500 also gives the possibility to create ‘My Collection’ – virtual, or in the metal – and see how it compares to the market.
