Kicking Horse Ford is well known in town for its selection of new and used vehicles, but it’s another slice of the pie that is starting to become a real winner for the local dealership.
“It’s a part of the business that we really enjoy,” said Dan Maisonneuve about his dealership’s sales of classic cars. “They’re interesting, they have a lot of character and they generate traffic for the dealership.”
Kicking Horse Ford started with buying the odd classic car here and there and found that there is a solid market for the vintage vehicles in this area. Now, Maisonneuve and his partner will frequent classic car auctions and do internet searches for their next purchases. Their reputation as an active member of the classic car industry means that they’ll get calls from other dealers who aren’t in the business alerting them of potential deals.
Most of Ford’s classic car buyers are from the area, but the dealership has had buyers from all over, especially from European countries like Sweden and Switzerland, where classic Fords, Dodges and Chevrolets can be sold for considerably more than what they cost in Canada.
For Maisonneuve, a self-described “car nut”, half of the fun is in the search for the dealership’s next purchase.
“The chase is as much fun, or more, as the actual selling of the car. You find what you thought was a great, great deal, and you bring it here and find out it was a super buy, you can’t wait to sell it so you can go out and do it again,” he said.
The appeal of a great, classic car is easy for Maisonneuve to understand. It all comes down to feelings of nostalgia.
“A lot of it was that it’s the car that they had, or wanted in high school…we hear the story virtually every time someone comes in, and that’s what they’ll say ‘I used to have one of these’…so they have that connection from way back when, and that really tugs at the heart strings for them.”
Unfortunately for customers now, their dream car that once cost $3,000 now frequently costs $30,000 or more.
“That’s an overriding story that you hear all the time, ‘I used to have one of these, I paid $3,100, I should have kept it!” said Maisonneuve.
