It’s that time of the year again—the end— when we take a moment to look back on all the cars, price tags, as well as your comments and votes that made up Nice Price or No Dice for 2023. As they say, “Wrap it up, I’ll take it!”
While a bit of a Goldilocks year—not too bad and not too great—2023 offered up lots when it came to buying other people’s old cars. That’s because many of the factors—supply chain issues, GM substituting a Temu-sourced infotainment system for CarPlay, etc.—have continued to drive down sales of new cars.
In contrast, the used car market, even for classic cars and trucks, seems to have stabilized this year. And while prices continued to be higher than many of us might like, we didn’t see quite the batshitcrazpants prices that befouled the market during the height of the pandemic.
Of course, all of us spent the last year smugly sitting back, passing judgment on the hopes and dreams of car sellers and seekers alike. Not only did we kibbitz, but we voted. And we commented. All of that work went into a spreadsheet. Out of that spreadsheet, a bunch of factoids, charts, and not-so-stray observations were compiled.
It should be noted that were rules applied. It’s not all willy-nilly here. When I calculated things like country of origin, I did so based on the manufacturer’s country, not the car’s. That means a Volkswagen built in Mexico would still be classified as a German car. Also, this takes me a while to compile, so while it’s data from most of the year, I’ve had to exclude the last two weeks.
All in all, though, this should be a pretty good snapshot of the most salient (and a few less salient) data points. So, without further ado, let’s get all statistical on the year that just was.
Round 1: The Nations
This year, the compilation of the contender’s nation of origin is perhaps most notable for the countries not represented. Korea, makers of excellent cars, didn’t get a slot this year. Nor did Canada, despite one car on our list (the Bricklin SV1) having been built there. Ooh, so close, Canada.
The U.S.A. and Germany took the top spots for the nations that did make the cut, with Japan coming in hot for third place. England, Sweden, and Italy all had respectable representation, while France, Australia—and even Spain, of all places—showed us that, when cool used cars are concerned, each of those countries has got game.
Round 2: How Did Each Country Fair?
Just as at the Olympics, there’s a sense of national pride at stake with our contest. Interestingly, out of all our participating countries, only Italy and Sweden had wins that exceeded their losses. The biggest losers—if you will—were Germany and the U.S., each of which suffered more than twice as many No Dice losses as Nice Price wins. Perhaps due to it being our largest contributing country and hence offering the greatest opportunity, the U.S. additionally ended up with two ties.
What does all this mean? I don’t know, but I think it is interesting how closely balanced our contest was this past year.
Round 3: The Decades
The term decade has been around for, well… centuries. Deriving from the Latin decādum it means a set of ten. Quite startlingly, we looked at a full nine sets of ten worth of cars, trucks, and other vehicles. That’s our broadest span ever.
Out of those, the ’90s proved the biggest draw, with the early aughts coming in a close second. The ’80s showed a strong third, with the ’70s breathing down its neck. Somewhat surprisingly, the ’50s outperformed the ’60s this year.
Probably the greatest takeaway out of this for the majority of us is now when someone asks how large a slice of tasty pie we’d like, we can answer that we’d very much like a ’90s slice, please.
Round 4: Baller’s Dollars
The cars aren’t the only reason we’re here. We’re also here for the prices of those cars. I mean, that’s pretty much the meat to the cars’ potatoes on our communal plate. Every day, we have a roll of the dice (see what I did there?) as to whether we will be communally excited, appalled, or simply nonplussed about the price tags presented to us.
At $250,000, the most expensive car we looked at last year was the 1995 Chevy Camaro Z28 that the seller claimed to have once been owned by astronaut Alan B. Shepard. As nice as it looked, and with that out-of-this-world provenance, few of you were having any of that. A 95 percent No Dice loss ensued.
Yet another Chevy stands at the extreme other end of the tallywacker. The 1984 Chevy C4 Corvette project car we judged back in August had a buy-in price of just $2,200. A lot of sweat equity and probably a ton of parts and paint would be required to bring that ’Vette up to snuff, but enough of you found it a sufficiently solid starting point for it to earn a 55 percent Nice Price win.
Overall, we looked at an amazing $4,849,124 worth of hardware last year. That’s not too big a jump from the $4,159,838 we saw in 2022 and works out to an average amount of $19,396.49. That number is well below the $27,077 average reported for the general used car market last year. I guess our communal taste for below-average prices could be considered above-average.
Round 5: Body Style Breakout
Every year, I pop my head out of my hidey hole, ala Punxsutawney Phil, to see if we’re going to have six more years of crossovers. And every year, I’m saddened a bit to see little to no change in the movement of the market.
We, however, are cut from different cloth than the general populace. We’re Automotive Enthusiasts, and hence we have far broader tastes than those expressed by the great unwashed. As such, we didn’t see an overabundance of Crossovers and SUVs in our candidate collective. Instead, we leaned heavily into the cool stuff.
As is the every year, most of our candidates come from your suggestions, and again, this year, your recommendations went deep into sports car territory. Not only that, but the number of wagons outpaced SUVs in our candidate clique by more than 50%. The only really odd thing to note about the breakout is that only one motorcycle made the cut this year, while, remarkably, there were three trikes. I’m sensing a trend.
Round 6: The Company We Kept
In 2023, we looked at vehicles from an astounding 61 different makers. That’s almost double the number from last year and, hence, a pretty big flex. Thanks for that goes to the ads you all found and shared, many of which brought some really weird minor brands out of the woodwork. Let’s take a gander at the long, long list.
Yeah, sorry about all that scrolling, Fam.
Round 7: Your Votes
Nice Price or No Dice wouldn’t be as much fun as it is without the daily poll. This past year, that resulted in a total of 577,381 votes, both thumbs up and thumbs down. Of those, you all went for Nice Price 87 times, tied the vote twice, and No Diced the remaining 160.
Our biggest winner, coming in with a 91.8 percent upvote, was the 2003 Saturn SW300 we looked at in August. Its $3,995 asking would probably prove a winner no matter what the car, but the Saturn did present as especially nice
The other end of the spectrum was occupied by the weirdo 2021 Electramechanica Solo electric trike that showed up on these pages back in March. That was privately offered and notable for being singularly unique, seeing as all other editions had undergone a buy-back by the manufacturer due to an unrepairable driveability issue. At its $25,000 asking, almost all of you took issue with the car’s troubling status, sending the Solo spiraling in a 97 percent No Dice loss.
Round 8: Winnah, Winnah, Chicken Dinner
This year’s most popular candidate, as indicated by the number of votes, was the 2005 Honda S2000 that we considered all the way back in March. At 4,256 total votes, it just edged out the 2011 BMW 750iL Alpina B7 that came our way in May. A $19,800 asking price helped with that and earned the Honda a narrow but solid 57.5 percent Nice Price win.
Well, there we go. Another year in the can, and even more cars, votes, and shenanigans than last year.
Before we bid each other and this year adieu, however, I’d like to take the opportunity to thank each and every one of you for coming here and hanging out with me for a while each weekday throughout the year. I know I say this every year, but it’s true—I greatly appreciate all of you and the contributions you make to the fun we have together. I hope it’s just as rewarding to you.
Okay, now we can put a fork in 2023. I hope you all keep out of trouble celebrating New Year’s so you can join us back here for more fun in 2024. Be safe, and cheers to you Jalops, one and all!