Post-Classic Cars
As the auction buyers drop out at the top end because of age, new buyers come in at the bottom end and lust after the cars of their youth. They get to a point when they can afford to buy a quality car for leisure and the market heats up.

This era of cars built from 1965 to 1974 is predicted to be the hottest sector of the market in the next few years. It is already about a third of top 100 sales.

Modern Cars
The Modern Era from 1975 to 1999 will be the next to rise. What is good about the cars of this era is they are getting valued by a new generation of buyers. Time will tell which cars will emerge as the winners and which as the losers in this era of manufacturing and design.

Contemporary Cars
New cars are finding their way onto the auction stages. Cars such as McLarens are both valuable and rare even though comparatively new.

Owners of these cars see high prices, and they wonder what their cars will be worth. They are being placed at auction to see what price they will fetch. They are then legitimized as collector cars.

Looking to the future
The same principles will apply in the future for car collecting.

The traditional markets of the U.S. and Europe will be supplemented by emerging economies. The last decade saw collector car interest growing in Eastern Europe. The wealthiest strata of the post-Communist society looked to the same hobbies and investments as their western counterparts, joining buyers from the Middle East, too.

Along with the consistent rise in the market has been the emergence of classic car buying funds, particularly in Europe where interest rates are low. Promising 10 percent returns, these funds buy cars at auction, and keep them for maybe five years, show them at prestigious shows once in a while to keep them seen in the marketplace and then sell them at auction for modest but reliable price gains.

We have also seen cars being sent to restoration firms in places such as the Philippines to be brought up to concours condition then being placed in the major international auctions. These cars can be perfect in almost every way except sometimes their provenance may not be complete.

The two biggest emerging buyer markets will be China and India. Up to now, the Chinese and Indians have found it difficult to establish car collections at home by importing cars. The stock of great cars in China was almost nonexistent. There was little car ownership during the hardline communist era. Now, museums are popping up across the country as new car ownership and increasing wealth drives interest in older cars.

The market in India is slightly different. From the days of the Raj, India has had a wonderful stock of great cars. Up to the 1990s, there was leakage out of the country, but a number of collectors ensured many of the best cars stayed in the country and now it is difficult to export them. Under socialist governments, it was also difficult to import cars to India. The rules are now being relaxed as the economy is opened up and it should be possible for Indians to import classic cars.

I spoke at the Heritage Car Club of India in New Delhi last year, and seven collectors in the room owned 1,700 cars between them.

Last year, $808 million worth of collector cars were sold at auction in the U.S. and $224 million in the U.K. Between the two countries, they had 84 percent of the global auction market that covers seven countries where auctions were held.