How DriveIndex Computes Car Market Values
DriveIndex is a collector and enthusiast car market-intelligence platform. It publishes a market value, median sale, typical range, price history by year, recent verified sales and live listings for 7,200+ collector and enthusiast cars, computed from 95,000+ verified completed auction sales across 13 auction houses and marketplaces — outlier-filtered, mileage-normalised and recomputed twice a day — and its Value Signal classifies each car's price trend as appreciating, stable, bottomed, approaching bottom or depreciating.
Figures on this page are live and rounded down. Latest verified sale September 6, 2026. Values last recomputed September 7, 2026.
Where does DriveIndex get its data?
DriveIndex records completed sales from 13 sources: collector-car auction houses and online auction and dealer marketplaces, the venues where collector and enthusiast cars actually trade. Every record is a sold price with a sale date, read from the individual lot or listing page, and each record keeps the page it came from. Where the source publishes them, a record also carries mileage, transmission, exterior and interior colours, and equipment.
Asking prices are a different thing. Live listings are tracked separately, shown as listings with their asking price, and never enter a market value.
What counts as a verified sale?
A lot that actually sold. DriveIndex tracks 116,000+ auction results, of which 95,000+ are verified completed sales; the rest are lots that failed to meet reserve, which are kept as bids and excluded from every value, median and count on the site. Of the completed sales, 79,000+ are clean USD sales that feed the dollar statistics.
Before a sale can influence a value it passes the cleaning filters: cars with accident or salvage history on their vehicle report, replicas and tributes lumped under the real car's name, higher-spec variants mislisted under a base model, non-US sales, and prices far outside the model's own distribution are all excluded from the math. A sale that fails a filter stays visible in the history; it just does not move the number.
How is a market value calculated?
Each model-year's value is computed from its own verified sales, not from a guide or a formula applied across cars. Sold prices are first normalised to the model's typical mileage, so a 3,000-mile example and a 60,000-mile example are not treated as the same asset. The estimate is then weighted toward the most recent sales, so it follows the market rather than lagging it, and it is bounded so that one unusual result cannot drag a well-documented car's value with it.
A car with too few clean sales is labelled Limited Data and shown without a Value Signal rather than given an invented number. Equipment options (Paint to Sample, carbon-ceramic brakes, packages) are priced from with-versus-without comparisons of real sales of the same model, and reported only when enough sales exist on both sides.
What do the numbers on a car page mean?
- Market value: the mileage-normalised, recency-weighted estimate described above.
- Median sale: the middle verified USD sale for that model-year.
- Typical range: the 25th to 75th percentile of verified USD sales, shown once a car has eight or more. Half of all sales fall inside it; the full range is shown beside it.
- Price history by year: the median of the verified sales recorded in each calendar year, for years with three or more. It tracks the median of what actually sold, so it moves with the mix of mileages and options that came to market as well as with the market itself.
- 12-month change: the median of the past 12 months against the prior 12, each needing at least three sales; when the prior year is thin the comparison base widens to one to three years ago, and the page says so.
- Verified sales tracked: every clean sale in any currency. Dollar statistics use the USD subset and say so.
How often does it update?
New results are collected from every source daily. Market values and Value Signals are recomputed twice a day, and every car, model, generation and collection page refreshes from them automatically. Each car page states the date of its latest verified sale, and this page states when values were last recomputed.
What is the Value Signal?
The Value Signal is a subscription feature that classifies each car's price trend as appreciating, stable, bottomed, approaching bottom or depreciating, computed from the car's mileage-normalised verified sales over time. It carries a confidence score that is capped by sample size, so a thin history can never produce a high-confidence call, and it is accompanied by 1–5 year projections expressed as bear, base and bull scenario bands that widen as confidence falls. Projections describe a range of outcomes consistent with the car's history; they are not guarantees.
What DriveIndex does not do
It does not grade the condition of an individual car, appraise a specific VIN, or guarantee what a particular car will sell for. A market value describes the model-year; condition, options, provenance and documentation move an individual car within its range, which is why the typical range is shown next to the value. It does not include asking prices in values, it does not use user-submitted guesses, and it does not predict individual auction outcomes.
What is free and what is paid
Every public car page shows the market value, median sale, typical range, price history by year, 12-month change, recent verified results and live listings. A Pro account adds the Value Signal with its confidence score, 1–5 year projections, and every sold price with its source link; Collector adds the estimated market-bottom date, buy/hold/sell calls, the Listing Analyzer, option premiums and manual-versus-automatic values. Plans are on the pricing page, and who runs DriveIndex is on the about page.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where does DriveIndex's data come from?
From 13 collector-car auction houses and online auction and dealer marketplaces. Every record is a completed sale with a sold price and a sale date, read from the individual lot or listing page. Asking prices are stored separately as listings and never enter a market value. 95,000+ verified completed sales are on file, going back to 2003.
What counts as a verified sale?
A lot that actually sold. Lots that failed to meet reserve are kept as bids and excluded from every value, median and count. Before a sale can influence a value it must also pass the outlier filters: cars with accident or salvage history on their vehicle report, replicas and tributes lumped under the real car's name, higher-spec variants mislisted under a base model, and prices far outside the model's own distribution are all excluded from the math but kept visible in the history.
How is a car's market value computed?
Each model-year's value comes from its own verified sales. Prices are normalised to the model's typical mileage, so a 3,000-mile example and a 60,000-mile example are not treated as the same asset, and the estimate is weighted toward the most recent sales so it follows the market rather than lagging it. Cars with too few clean sales are labelled Limited Data rather than given an invented number.
What do the median, typical range and price history on a car page mean?
The median is the middle verified USD sale. The typical range is the 25th to 75th percentile of verified USD sales, shown once a car has eight or more; half of all sales fall inside it. Price history by year is the median of the verified sales recorded in each calendar year, shown for years with three or more. The 12-month change compares the median of the past 12 months with the prior year (or with one to three years ago when the prior year is thin, and it says so).
How often does the data update?
New results are collected from every source daily. Market values and Value Signals are recomputed twice a day, and every car, model, generation and collection page refreshes from them automatically.
What is the Value Signal?
A subscription feature that classifies each car's price trend as appreciating, stable, bottomed, approaching bottom or depreciating, computed from the car's mileage-normalised verified sales. It comes with a confidence score that is capped by sample size, so a thin history can never produce a high-confidence call, and with 1–5 year projections expressed as bear, base and bull scenario bands that widen as confidence falls.
What does DriveIndex not do?
It does not grade the condition of an individual car, appraise a specific VIN, or guarantee what a particular car will sell for: a market value describes the model-year, and condition, options, provenance and documentation move an individual car within its range. It does not include asking prices in values, and it does not predict individual auction outcomes.
Why do DriveIndex values sometimes differ from price guides?
Price guides publish periodic editorial estimates. DriveIndex values are recomputed from actual sold prices twice a day, so they move with the market instead of lagging it, and they say how many sales they rest on.
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