How To Evaluate the Engine When Appraising Classic Cars

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m Lance Lambert hosting the Vintage Vehicle television show. Something else that I do is appraise special interest in collector automobiles. One of the most important maybe the most important part of the automobile makes the overall condition of the exterior and the body is the running gear, the motor, what’s powering this and what kind of condition is it in? This particular car this is a 58 Rambler American it has a 3.7 Chev motor in it, what kind of condition is the motor in? You assess that by having the owner of the car start the car up, you take a look at how it runs, you look for exhaust leaks, you look for oil leaks, you listen to the motor, you take a look at any documentation that the owner has as far as a rebuild on the motor, just checking anything you can that’ll help you assess the condition of the motor. The mileage on the car, there are lots of cars out there I’ve appraised cars with 2 and 3 hundred thousand miles on them that are still on the road that haven’t been rebuilt other than minor tune-ups here and there, that certainly reflects on the value because that many miles on a car you know it is going to need some engine work in a short time but you may have a car that the overall car has hundred and fifty thousand miles on it very common on an older car but the engine may have been rebuilt five thousand miles ago or five hundred miles ago so it’s been update. A big thing in cars these days and forever as far as collector cars are concerned is original equipment, is this the motor that came with this particular car? Of course it didn’t with this particular car but if you have a 57 Chevrolet and it has the motor that left the factory and that car is easily worth 50% more and maybe even more than that than a 57 Chev that’s come out of the factory and had the motor replaced at some time. You get into cars that’s an enormously important aspect of those cars, if you have a Dodge Charger that has all of the original equipment or the original motor, everything that is enormous value if that motors been changed some time there again you can affect the value enormously 50% easily, it’s reduced in the value of the car often just by the motor not being the original motor in the car. You establish whether or not it’s the original motor by the VIN number on the car, by the number on the engine block, they’re all labeled you can find whether the numbers match in cars, they’re the correct numbers they left the factory and still have the numbers that match what they were in the factory as far as the engine and body on the car."