The excuse for putting your savings into a classic car rather than a more conventional investment has always been the same: “Well, you can’t drive a share certificate.” Given the recent, contrasting behaviour of the markets for equities and collectible cars, however, it seems it’s the shares that are providing the thrills and danger, and the cars the solid growth.

Last year the total value of collectible cars sold at auction leapt 50% to €225m. This year the auction record of £5.5m (€8.25m) for the Bugatti Royale sold by Christie’s in 1987 could be broken by the fabled and incredibly rare 1939 Auto Union Type D racer, expected to raise over €9m.

Those with long memories and deep pockets will remember the last boom in classic car prices, probably unfavourably. Values swelled through the 1980s and after the headlines made by the sale of the Bugatti the speculators moved in, buying average cars at inflated prices with borrowed money. As interest rates rose and the recession struck these chancers were forced to sell, and supply simply drowned demand. A 1960s Ferrari 275 GTB, worth just a few thousand in the early 1970s, had risen to £750,000 by 1989. By 1991, after the crash, it was worth just £120,000. The same car is now worth around £500,000, having doubled in value in the past two years.

Although values are heading back to their late-1980s peak, another crash seems much less likely. Globalisation and its commensurate wealth creation have spawned a new generation of collectors. The big auction houses say that the speculators have yet to reappear and that the cars are being bought by genuine collectors with money they can afford to tie up. The biggest money deals are done privately between collectors; owners of one of the most desirable, collectible cars of all, the Ferrari 250 GTO, are turning down bids of over €15m (more than double the auction record for the model) simply because they won’t be able to replace it with something they enjoy owning as much.

The sharpest price increases have been in American muscle cars from the 1960s and 1970s, with a Shelby Cobra Super Snake setting the record for a US-made classic car earlier this year at €3.4m. Some experts believe that the value of these blue-collar performance cars can’t be justified when similar money will buy you a blue-blooded car with competition history from one of the aristocratic European marques, and that this may be a bubble that bursts.

Max Girardo, the 29-year-old European director of RM Auctions, advises buying the cars that his generation lusts after. Prices start at around €75,000 for a 1980s Lamborghini Countach or Ferrari Boxer, but they’re on the rise.

“The Countach will never go down in value now,” Girardo advises, “but if I had to put 10 cars away in a warehouse I’d buy 10 Boxers, because they just won’t get any cheaper – and a mid-engined V12 Ferrari is just a very cool thing to have.”