NYSE listed Hagerty specializes in insuring classic cars, and they're in New York City to reveal their 2026 bull market list, essentially the cars to watch.
Joining me now is Hagerty's CEO McKeel Hagerty.
Welcome to the New York Stock Exchange.
Thanks for having me.
Good to be back.
This business launched in 1984.
It is a family business.
You have been involved in the business full time for 30 years.
Can you take me through the evolution of Hagerty?
It started as a, you know, literally a retirement business for my parents who had been in the insurance business prior, and they knew that there were these little niches in the insurance world where there was a lot of passion, and wherever there's a lot of passion, that means there's better risk in the, from an insurance standpoint.
And it started off actually ensuring a tiny little niche of wooden boats, classic wooden boats, not a lot of people would even think about that as an insurance opportunity.
And then it evolved mostly into what was used to be called the classic car space, or the collector car space, and now we look at it as this bigger enthusiast vehicle category, which is cars that people want to own, they own because they love them, because they're drivers, they love that whole aspect of driving and owning cool cars, and the and the community around it.
So, uh, it's been an amazing few decades, and We've been 4 years here listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and um I'm having a lot of fun playing with cars.
How large is the classic car market?
It's larger than people think, so the, when we look at the collector car market, just looking at the US.
It's, it's over 35 million vehicles in our kind of target category, and these are cars right now that are registered, and that are extra cars in people's households, and they have some other characteristic that makes them interesting.
Usually what that means is the values are going up over time, rather than, you know, you buy a new car and it kind of goes down in value.
These kind of collectible cars, they're going up, and that's, that's our world, and we surround them with insurance.
We have our membership offering, which we call the Haggerty Drivers Club.
And now we have an auction company where we help people buy and sell these cars.
So it's a whole ecosystem that kind of works together, and it's a bigger world than a lot of people think.
Is there a specific profile of a classic car collector?
Car collectors, you know, they tend to be in the middle of their life where they have um a little bit of discretionary income, and uh they tend to own their home, they tend to have regular daily driven cars that they drive on a daily basis for a transportation standpoint.
And then, you know, they they're feeling good about things, and they want to go buy that special car that they drive on a sunny Sunday afternoon or for some kind of pleasure purpose.
And that's our world, and this, this pattern of people buying cars like this has been going on for decades, actually almost 100 years people have been collecting cars.
So it's a long tradition.
It's a bigger world than people think, and contrary to popular belief, the next generation is getting into collecting cars, and that's why we published this bull market list, which is to look at not just, OK, what are the cars on the rise, but what are the cars that the next generation is looking at and paying attention to.
That's right, you just launched the 2026 bull market list.
Essentially the cars to watch.
What cars need the cut and why?
It's 11 cars on the list, and uh you know, they're in different categories, so there's always some iconic sort of higher value cars on the list, and this year it's the Porsche Carrera GT, which was a car built in the early 2000s, very high performance, kind of the last analog, a purely analog high performance car, and of course Porsche is a brand that's been on the rise for the last 10 years.
Then there's this whole list of kind of driver's cars underneath that.
So, a really affordable example, which they made over $1.2 million of, is the Mazda Miata.
The second series of them is now really on the rise.
That's a car that was $10,000 for a long time, and now it's sort of mid-teens, $16,000 to $17,000 car.
The most collectible car in the in the world in in in the US is the Corvette, and uh this year the Corvette 06, the C6 Z06, which is a really high performance variant, made the list.
Um, BMW M5, another again kind of driver, fun performance car, kind of the high water mark of of BMWs.
But then there's another big trend underneath here that we've been watching for a few years, which is kind of trucks and SUVs.
We know that, you know, today, modern drivers are often buying trucks and SUVs as their daily use vehicle, and the vintage variants of those are, are really starting to show that collectibility.
So this year we have a really high performance uh Chevrolet uh pickup truck.
Uh, there's a Dodge Ram Charger, which was kind of like the Dodge version of a of a Ford Bronco, and Broncos have been really popular lately.
And uh and then kind of finally rounding out the list, we always sort of look at earlier kind of vintage classic cars and say, OK, what are the of the cars that maybe are more like their parents' cars or their grandparents' cars?
What are those that are starting to show interest for this next generation, and this year, the team uh picked the Continental Mark II, which is a really cool 50s stylish going out to dinner car.
All right, McKeel Hagerty from Hagerty, thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
