With Britons preparing to protect their savings from a tax-raising Autumn Budget, a classic car could be a far more interesting alternative to piling money into cash and investment Isas or pensions.
And the good news is that as it stands for most owners, profits on a classic car are tax-free.
But that’s only if you identify the motors that are both good value but also incredibly collectable – and therefore ripe for a boom in value in the years to come to promise a strong return on investment.
To help you pick out some of the best options is classic car insurer Hagerty and its unique ‘Collectability Algorithm’.
This takes into account more than 20 factors, from the size and shape of a car, how powerful it is, whether it was popular with celebrities and how well it sells today.
Each car is compared with contemporaries and weighted for importance to recommend those with the most potential for longevity in the eyes of collectors.
Daily Mail and This is Money has teamed up with Hagerty to name modern classics that are under 25 years old and still available for under £25,000 – which seems more than suitable in the year 2025.
Prices listed are quoted are from the September 2025 UK Hagerty Price Guide for vehicles in ‘excellent’ condition…
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John Mayhead, editor of the Hagerty UK Price Guide: Collectability has always been a subjective thing when it comes to cars: for one person, a car can be beautiful, evocative and thrilling, for another dull, predictable and ugly.
Fortunately, here at Hagerty, we have huge amounts of data covering everything from the two million classic and collector cars we insure worldwide and public sales we track through to studies of celebrity cars, demographic information and race data.
So, we decided to make the process more objective, and created the Collectability Algorithm, a tool that assesses a huge number of factors about a car, weights them, and places the model within a percentile compared with all the other cars we track.
Here then are the top ten scoring cars from that list that were produced in the past 25 years and can still be found for under £25,000:
10: BMW E46 M3 Coupe
Hagerty ‘excellent’ value: £20,900
Collectability Percentile: 54.5%
The E46 is arguably the greatest generation of BMW’s iconic M3 – especially if you can find one with the incredibly engaging manual transmission
There’s a huge amount of love around for the E46 edition of the BMW M3, and with concours examples topping £30,000 (and rarer CSL/CS much more), it is no surprise this car is on our list.
The model scored highly for the M3’s competition pedigree, for its S54 straight-six engine that dominated its peer-group in period, and for having desirable two-door form.
Today, low-mileage cars that have been well maintained are becoming collectable as they balance a classic look with a very spirited driving experience.
9: Jaguar XK8 Coupe 4.2L (X100)
Hagerty ‘excellent’ value: £7,200
Collectability Percentile: 55.7%
Skip the 4.0-litre Jaguar XK8 from the turn of the Millennium and head for the 4.2 V8 instead
The early 4.0-litre versions of Jaguar’s XK8 gained a reputation for expensive bore wear failures and although that (and other niggles) were addressed by the time the 4.2-litre upgrade arrived in 2002, values continued to be affected.
That means the XK8 in later guise is the least expensive car on our list despite scoring well for engine power and limited production numbers and now seems to offer good value for money.
8: Alfa Romeo Brera 3.2 V6
Hagerty ‘excellent’ value: £10,700
Collectability Percentile: 56.9%
Achingly good looking, the Alfa Romeo Brera was one of the best looking coupes of its era. Find one fitted with Alfa’s astonishing V6 engine and you should be onto a winner
The 3.2 JTS V6 that powers the Brera may not be the legendary Busso V6 that was fitted to its stablemate coupe, the Alfa Romeo GT, but with a power output 256bhp it made the Brera a quick car on the road and increases its collectability.
That said, it is the body by Giorgetto Giugiaro at Italdesign that sets the Brera apart, scoring this car highly and placing it in the top ten.
Now rare, even the 500 specially enhanced by Prodrive are still relatively affordable.
7: TVR Griffith 500 SE Convertible
Hagerty ‘excellent’ value: £24,900
Collectability Percentile: 58.3%
The 500 SE was the last in the generation of TVR’s soft-top Griffin – and the one Hagerty says has the highest collectability factor
With the same 340bhp 5.0-litre V8 and five-speed manual gearbox as the preceding Griffith 500 but with a Chimaera dash…
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