Drift Capital, a New York-based company launched in September, is offering “fractional investments” in a portfolio of collectible automobiles with a track record of increasing in value.
Collector car sales brought in US$4.3 billion internationally in 2022, according to Classic.com, which helps buyers find collectible and exotic automobiles from vendors worldwide. Cars that could be part of the portfolio, Cooper says, include the Mercedes-Benz 300SL “Gullwing” and Roadster, the Porsche Carrera GT, the Aston Martin One-77 , the Ferrari F40 and F50, the Maserati 3500 GT and the Duesenberg Model J.
Rabold characterizes the collector market as “tapping the brakes a little bit now. But it’s a calming rather than a big pullback.” He adds that he expects to see a return to pre-Covid levels of enthusiasm relatively soon, and Hagerty has said that optimism among industry experts is steady. Gioel Molinari, the former president of Butterfly Network, a medical device company, and before that a senior technologist at Bridgewater Associates, opened Autostrada in early 2022 with his wife, Ronni. “We perceived a lack of available high-quality storage for collectible cars,” Gioel Molinari tells Penta. Autostrada currently houses 28 cars whose owners pay US$400 a month, plus a $1,000 initiation fee. The facility is almost fully subscribed, he says.