Parkers Guide turns 50

Parkers, the comprehensive car valuation and reviews service, turns 50 in 2022 (as such, it's got a few years on us here at Lancaster Classic Car Insurance – we celebrated our 35th birthday not long ago).

We thought we'd take some time to salute the guide's many achievements over half a century – and also to reflect on how motoring has changed since that first Parker's Guide (more on that apostrophe shortly) came out back in March 1972.

Parkers: a short history

Up until early 1972, UK buyers looking for a used car had to conduct their own painstaking research in order to work out how much they should be paying for a particular used model. If you were seeking, say, a 1966 Ford Cortina 1600E with 30,000 miles on the clock, your best bet (or only) option was to tour a few used showrooms and find out how much similar cars were going for.

That situation radically changed in March of that year, with the first edition of the Parker's New, Used and Trade Car Price Guide. Priced at 20p, the Guide featured page upon page of valuations for new and used vehicles alike, plus some very skilled, hand-crafted line drawings of Britain's most popular cars of the time.

Small wonder, then, that the Parker's Price Guide revolutionised how cars were bought and sold in the UK. It helped buyers to become much more aware of how much they should pay for a given model – or even a rough ballpark for a car of a certain size and age. It also forced car sales outfits to standardise their prices in order to keep up with the market.

Over time, the monthly Parker's magazine expanded from that core database of recommended prices, into reviews and technical data on all cars currently for sale in the UK, as well as news from the UK car marketplace. Indeed, the Parker's (later Parkers) Guide was published as a monthly magazine until as recently as January 2020. It has also been a website since 1998, featuring a brilliant mix of in-depth reviews and price lists for both new and used cars.

Parkers today

Yes, the latter-day Parkers has evolved from purely a car valuation resource to a fully comprehensive research tool for car buyers, featuring car reviews, advice articles, finance, news from the car sales world and more.

The website now gets around 2.5 million visitors a month, typically generating 250,000 valuations within the same time frame. The company also works with various partners to supply readers with the best car buying and leasing services.

How does Parkers arrive at its valuations? Well, its team of independent experts visits hundreds of car dealers and auctions each month, processing a huge range of car prices to help it to come to its valuations for thousands of cars. In an average year, in fact, Parkers monitors around 1,500,000 used car sales! The company has also, since 2017, run a series of awards for the best cars in a number of categories and market sectors.

In short, Parkers continues to do an invaluable job of helping British drivers to buy, sell and run their car. And, with spiralling running costs brought on by a combination of Brexit, the pandemic and the Ukraine crisis, this service has rarely looked more essential.

The Parkers Guide timeline

1972: Launch of the Parker's Car Price Guide. The first issue goes on sale in March 1972, priced at 20p
1973: The Guide's front cover goes full colour for the first time.
1998: Launch of the supplementary Parker's Car Chooser magazine, which runs until 2006.
1998: The Parkers website launches, with reviews for many of the new and used cars currently available.
2005: The Parker's Car Price Guide goes full colour throughout
2011: Parker's loses its apostrophe, rebranding as Parkers
2016: The rival print publication, Glass's Guide, releases its last print edition, going online-only from this point. This leaves the Parkers Car Price Guide as the only printed valuations magazine on the market.
2017: The monthly magazine is given a revamp. It now includes road tests, buying guides and more content on various deals available.
2020: The monthly print magazine ceases publication, with all focus now on the website – including its own car valuation tool.

How has motoring changed across Parkers' 50-year lifespan?

The best-selling car, in the year of Parkers' birth, was the Mk3 Ford Cortina. That big and graceful saloon, with its graceful 'Coke bottle' styling, had a price range of £963 and £1,210 back in 1972. According to the Bank of England's inflation calculator, this translates to £13,520-£16,988 in today's money.

That's significantly less than the showroom price of a 2022 Vauxhall Corsa (£17,380-£28,905), which is a car two classes down the pecking order from the big Cortina. If we're paying more (even allowing for inflation) for a smaller car these days, does that mean that motorists are worse off in 2022 than they were 50 years ago?

Well, in fact, the situation isn't quite as simple as that. One obvious thing to state is that, although today's Vauxhall Corsa may sit a couple of classes down from a Cortina, it is in so many ways a far cleverer and more comfortable vehicle (and therefore, by some metrics, a more valuable one) than the big Ford ever was.

What about keeping your car on the road, both now and then? Well, back in 1972 the average price of fuel was 8p per litre. When you compare that with today's average fuel price of £1.74, the price rise looks astronomical. However, plenty of other commodities have experienced similar prices – the price of a Mars bar, for example, has risen from 2p to 74p across the same time period, although a pint of milk has experienced a steadier price rise, from 6p to 46p.

Of course, we have to compare these exponential price rises with the way salaries have risen over the same time period. Back in 1972, an average UK salary would have been around £1,500: that has multiplied by a factor of 20 to around £30,000 now. And, while your car might be more expensive to buy now, the chances are that the costs of keeping it maintained and fuelled will be – relatively – less than they were in 1972. After all, fuel consumption has increased markedly – that Corsa we mentioned will do around 53 miles per gallon (mpg), compared to its Cortina predecessor which would have put in around 25mpg.

Cars are also far more reliable now, so costs of ongoing servicing and maintenance should be a less significant part of your household budgeting. What's more, the very process of buying a car is easier now: interest rates against any loan will be much lower, and car finance is much easier to arrange, with many options including hire purchase, a personal contract purchase, personal leasing, or a personal loan. Taking all these things into consideration, it's probably cheaper and easier to own a car now than it was back then.

1972-2022: the best cars

As part of their 50th birthday celebrations, Parkers have chosen a car for each year since their inception in 1972, and have asked website users to vote on their favourite. The selection includes:

1972: Renault 5

The first car chosen from Parkers' 50-year history must be one of the best. The diminutive, smart-looking and game-changing 5 rode the crest of the early '70s supermini wave. With fuel prices rising (sound familiar?), many drivers wanted smaller, more economical cars at the dawn of that decade. And the answer came in the form of seminal small hatchbacks like the Honda Civic, Fiat 127… and the remarkable 5.

Very handsome in a boxy way, the 5 was an almost instant hit. It was the most popular car in its native France for many years, but also made a significant impact over here as well. For years throughout the late 1970s and 1980s, this chic little Gallic runabout was one of the most common sights in UK cities.

1976: Mercedes-Benz W123

These days, Mercedes' middle-range product, between the compact C-Class and the big, luxurious S-Class, is of course known as the E-Class. Back in the 1970s, though, the cars were still known by their internal designation – so the 1970s version of the E-Class was the W123.

And what a car it was. When you visualise the classic big, handsome Mercs from your childhood, the chances are that it's a W123, with its foursquare looks and big statement chrome grille, that pops into your mind's eye. Superb build quality, sober but handsome styling and a huge range of engines made the W123 generation hugely popular, in both saloon and estate guise, around the world. If you owned a W123 Merc in late ‘70s Britain, you had arrived. If you went for the estate version, meanwhile, well, you could cram half an antiques shop in the back there and still waft around in peerless comfort.

Deservedly one of our favourite Mercedes classics of all time.

1982: Ford Sierra

Ford broke the mould with the Sierra. Gone were the sensible, straight lines of the outgoing Cortina, to be replaced by something far more curvaceous and fluid.

These changes were made in the name of aerodynamics: the new car had a hugely impressive wind drag coefficient of 0.34, an impressive drop from the Cortina's 0.45. In fact, those looks proved a little hard for buyers to get their heads around for the first few years, and the Sierra wasn't an instant big seller, trailing in the wake of its Vauxhall rival, the Cavalier. By the middle of the '80s, though, buyers had got used to those futuristic looks and realised that beneath them lay a hugely capable, practical and fuel-efficient family car.

1989: Mazda MX-5

We've often waxed lyrical about the many virtues of Mazda's 1960s-inspired soft-top pocket-rocket. We've listed some fun facts about the iconic convertible, and we also shared some of our expertise when it comes to acquiring one of these fast, fun little cars.

The MX-5, in its first two generations, has been one of the most popular cars for which we've provided classic car insurance, and it's really not hard to see why. The car has always had so much going for it: for one thing, its lightweight and nimble handling recall the golden days of British soft-tops by Lotus, MG and Triumph. Yet it also manages to balance all that fun with bombproof Japanese engineering. Lastly, the MX-5 has always been an affordable sports car for the masses – and it remains so in classic car guise.

1999: Audi A2

We end our list of five great cars from five decades with a vehicle that's maybe not quite acquired classic status yet – but which, we're sure, won't be long in doing so. The A2 was Audi's first venture into supermini territory – previously, the smallest Audi you could get was the Golf-rivalling A3.

The new car was something of a packaging and construction miracle. Audi tasked its design team with creating a car that could carry four passengers some 500 kilometres (315 miles) on a single tank of fuel. Fuel efficiency, light weight and ingenious packaging were the watchwords: and those designers fulfilled the brief in some style. The A2's aluminium space frame saved around 250kg, helping to provide a final kerb weight of around 900 to 1,000kg.

Almost too innovative for some, the A2 sold modestly, and decent examples are now fairly uncommon. If you do fancy one, you'll be owning a small but significant footnote in car design history and, we think, a classic in waiting. As such, we'd recommend protecting your A2 with some specialist classic car insurance.

How can you make sure your car is valued correctly?

As the owner of a classic car, you'll be reading this article with interest, as you will no doubt want to know how a valuer – whether from Parkers, an auction house, an insurance agent, or other – might arrive at a valuation for your own classic. After all, we all want to know how much our automotive pride and joy is actually worth.

This may be so that you can arrange the right classic car insurance that truly reflects the vehicle's value; it may be to give you a better idea of what other classic(s) you could exchange it for when the time comes for a change. Whatever the reason, it's essential to have an idea of the value of the classic car sitting in your garage. But how is this done?

Well, when it comes to modern cars, valuing them is easy enough – they will have a precise market value, as determined by the manufacturer when new, and then as reflected in their depreciation over the next few years.

With a classic, however, the valuation process is a little trickier and more bespoke. For one thing, you'll need to agree a valuation with the provider of your classic car insurance, as this will decide how much you will receive in compensation if your vehicle is damaged beyond repair. Here at Lancaster, for example, we provide a two-year agreed valuation as one of the various benefits of our classic car insurance policies.

But when your valuer (whether from the insurance company, or elsewhere) does come knocking, how can you make sure that you’re getting a fair and accurate valuation for your cherished classic? Let's look in a little more detail at the valuation process, and how you can help to get the best price tag attached to your classic.

The agreed valuation

So, how does an insurer arrive at a valuation for a classic car? Unlike the valuation process for a non-classic car – which is tied to the vehicle's make and model, plus its mileage and age, and which can be cross-referenced against thousands of similar vehicles – the process of attaching a value to a classic has to be done individually for each car.

This valuation is based on a host of factors – including condition, of course, but also taking into account how rare and sought after that particular marque and model is on the UK classic car circuit. For this reason, an insurance provider or other valuer will require some expert knowledge of the classic car market, and/or be able to call on specialists who can give their own verdict based on their own in-depth knowledge of the marketplace.

Here at Lancaster, we have an extensive network of experts and club contacts, which allows us to give a precise valuation of any classic. Armed with this information, you can select the correct classic car insurance policy for your vehicle. Not only that, you can be secure in the knowledge that you will be able to set a reasonable asking price, should you ever come to sell your vintage car.

Keep modifications to a minimum

If you run a classic car as a 'daily driver', you may decide to make certain modifications to the vehicle, to make it suitable for modern driving. For instance, power steering was not fitted to most cars until the 1990s, but is universal now – so you will probably find it indispensable for manoeuvring in modern traffic. Elsewhere, many older vehicles may lack seatbelts and other safety equipment that is now either a legal requirement, or strongly recommended.

It's just worth being aware, however, that any major modifications or modernisations to your classic are likely to affect its value in the eyes of a professional valuer and/or classic car enthusiast. These modifications may make the car safer, or simply easier, to drive, and therefore easier to sell on to others planning to use it for the same purposes. This trade-off between authenticity and ease of use is one that you'll want to think about carefully – both for your own usage, and for the time when you may want to sell the vehicle on.

Whatever role your classic has in your life – whether it's as a daily driver, an investment, or just something to show off to friends – make sure you get some suitable classic car insurance to allow it to keep playing that role.

Keep all paperwork

As well as taking every step to keep your classic in the best condition possible, there's another thing you can do to help ensure it gets a fair valuation. This is to keep as much of the paperwork and documentation, relating to any ongoing maintenance and restoration of the vehicle, as you possibly can.

Being able to show that you've used competent, certified mechanics, for example, may well help to get a better valuation than either doing the work yourself or going for a cheaper mechanic without the right credentials. Make sure you keep all quotes, invoices and so on that show that restoration work has been done to a high standard.

Not only that, you should retain any documentation that shows your vehicle's history – when it was made and/or registered and how many previous owners it’s had. Many classic car owners love to be able to build up a vivid picture of the car they are buying, and being able to tell some or all of your car's story will add to its value.

We've got more advice on safeguarding the value of your classic, from maintaining the engine to keeping mileage as low as possible, in this helpful feature elsewhere on our blog.

Get your classic insured through Lancaster

We salute Parkers for the brilliant job it’s been doing for the past 50 years. Through its various services – valuations, reviews, and more – it has helped to demystify the process of choosing and buying a new or used car.

And once you’ve made your choice, the team at Lancaster will be ready to help you find the classic car insurance to match.

Specialists in the classic car world with contacts right across the industry, we are well placed to provide you with the specialist classic car insurance that you need. Not only that, we offer a range of benefits including discounts for car club members, a choice of repairer, and a two-year agreed valuation.

Call us for a classic car insurance quote today.

Policy benefits, features and discounts offered may very between insurance schemes or cover selected and are subject to underwriting criteria. Information contained within this article is accurate at the time of publishing but may be subject to change.