Keith Adams picks four sure-fire future classics you can buy and enjoy now. They’re not perfect, but they are fun and great value for money – for now
Back in 2015 I helped to launch a new car magazine called Modern Classics, focusing on enthusiast cars built in the Eighties, Nineties and Noughties. It was something of a risk because we weren’t entirely sure how many people would read it. After all, to many, these cars were merely secondhand or future classics, and not the sort of thing you’d see gracing the pages of classic car magazines.
As it happened, it proved to be quite the success, in that it helped to dismantle the elitism that sometimes surrounds our hobby. So, although the mag is no longer with us, I like to think that its legacy is the fact that all of the mainstream classic titles now unapologetically include the cars that we celebrated.
Beyond that, I love these emerging classics. Compared with their older brethren, they tend to be cheaper, easier to get hold of, more usable and can be great fun to work on if you’re happy to roll your sleeves up and trawl the internet for help and expertise.
You’re also unlikely to need to resort to the welding gun. The quartet that we’re featuring here may still technically be secondhand cars, and numbers are still waning from week to week as the rougher examples disappear off the roads through natural attrition. But the point at which this trend reverses, and numbers start to increase at car shows, is when they’ve moved to bona-fide classic car status. And that will be in the next five years for the Jaguar XK, Lotus Evora, Range Rover and Volvo
C30 featured here. And here’s why…
JAGUAR XK (X150) (2006-2014)
Launched in 2006 to replace the XK8, the XK (X150) was a continuation of the grand touring line arguably kicked off by the E-type 2+2 and which evolved into the XJ-S in 1975. But this XK moved the game on by being underpinned by an aluminium platform shared with the new XJ saloon; and it showcased a new design direction being spearheaded by Ian Callum. Both elements were highly successful, with this 2+2 grand tourer being relatively lightweight for what it was, offering performance and economy that ran rings around the big-budget opposition.
As for its looks, the XK may have lacked the rest of the range’s obvious retro detailing but it was still clearly a Jaguar thanks to its E-type-referencing grille and muscular haunches – and was easily one of the decade’s best-looking cars. The range was nice and simple – you could buy it in coupé form from launch, with the convertible following the following year, and they came with a naturally aspirated and supercharged 4.2-litre V8. The former boasted 300bhp, while the latter had a supercar-challenging 420bhp, making it the perfect XK-R.
