From: Employee@MilVeh.com
Date: Sun Aug 24 2003 - 10:15:32 PDT
Has anyone noticed that HMMWV's seem to be getting
cheaper? The last couple on eBay went in the teens
and not a lot of people bidding on them. They seemed
pretty decent too.
All things are subject to trend, even HMMWV's and the
civy Hummer very craze is slowing. They've both been
in the publics hands for quite awhile and the newness
is wearing off. At the same time the reality is also
setting in that the military HUMMER versions are a
highly specialized, not like your family jeep and that
fairly "limited use" is probably giving pause to
average 4X4 buyer.
Outside the small numbers of hardcore military
enthusiasts, like myself, there's not a lot of folks
who are eager to plunk down $30k for a used vehicle
that only goes 55 mph, has a rather unsexy 3 speed
automatic hooked to meek dielsel. Don't misunderstand
me, I have nothing against HMMWVS despite the obvious
drawbacks. I like em for all the same reasons I like
the deuce, Mutt, M38A1, etc. I'm just calling it as I
see it and time will tell if I was right.
Again, its just a guess on my part, but after a few
more of these big government auctions the retail price
will heading down into the 14-19k range. Seems like
the average decent HMMWV now is around 21-25k.
This is good and bad. Good for our hobby, more
affordable collectable vehicles for people like you
and me who would like to buy one some day, bad for
those of you who own them already, but heck, at least
you were the first on your block to have one and you
have that satisfaction. People paid a premium to have
the first color tv's and microwaves too.
One thing that may get in the way of future sales and
in turn impact the future pricing, is that all these
vehicles as far as I know anyway, were sold as "off
road only" and they were all licensed for the road at
the first opportunity. So, if I noticed that little
discrepancy, I'm sure the government noticed it too.
Question is, do they really care?
The bigger question might be, if they do care, what
are they going to do about it? Personally, I think
its more of a CYA game between the gov., AM-General
and those tens of thousands of lawyers looking for
people to sue.
Still, it's a (minor) threat to all present and future
HMMWV owners, just like it was for uncut MUTT owners,
but they all survived without consquences, so I bet
HMMWV owners will too.
See you at Oroville in Sept. (Surplus City event).
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.4 : Sat May 07 2005 - 20:23:37 PDT