VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND NEWER 1949-1954 What is a clean 52 Styleine Deluxe worth?

I recently aquired a blue and white styleline deluxe coupe. It has the original 3 on the tree, visor, skirts, city bars on both bumpers and hood ornament. The gages work, even the clock. The car is an older restoration and everything is stock. There is some very minor rust about the size of a pencil eraser on the pass. door and the rest of the body is in good shape. The car leaks a little oil on the garage floor (not a big deal, my wifes 2008 subaru does the same thing!). On a scale of 1-5 I think it's a solid 3.5-4. I can email anyone pictures if they need them to give me an idea. I have only collected 55-57's and 60's Chevy's before and would like to sell this one soon. I am having fun taking my kids for ice cream and my youngest son wants to take it to his communion in a few weeks. Thanks in advance for the help.

Well there are lots of variables here, how many miles are on the car, condition of the paint and interior, how it looks under the hood, where you live.... The best you can do is have a ball park figure, because to use the old cliche its worth what someone else will pay you for it - kind of like my stocks in Oct 2007. That said the best way it to see what others have paid for one. Sure, you can look at the various price guides out there, Old Cars Weekly has one but I like to keep track of cars in my area that have sold. For example I live in Kansas City and last month we had the Mecum Auction in town. Lot S144 was a 1952 Chevy Business Couple with 32,000 miles on it two toned green. The car was a low 2, high 3 (the common car grading scale is 1-6 where roughly 1 is concours trailer queen, 2 is excellent original or good restoration, 3 is nice driver, 4 is original but needs work, 5 is rough and 6 is parts car). This car sold for $13,500. I hope that helps and if you sign into Mecum's website you can search their past auction results. Old Cars Weekly posts auction results from all around the country as well.

I would say it's a really clean driver as it had a full restoration in 1999-2000 and has been barely used since. It has always been garage kept. It is Blue with a white roof and visor and has the gray interior. Nice colors in my book. I would rate it a solid 3 maybe better on your 1-6 scale. I was going to ask around $10,000 in Rhinebeck. I may be too low on the asking price. Thanks for your help.

A club member just sold a very nice 51 business coupe converted to a club coupe for 3,500 bucks.(very sad). It had a repaint, wide whitewalls, excellent replacement interior, 57,000 miles and ran very good. The first offer had been accepted at $2,000.00 When I said I would pay $2,500 I had a deal but the deal breaker was the wife. Any way, the car was buffed out, detailed and in less than 3 weeks sold on E Bay for $12,000.00 Nice profit.

Wow, that's a huge profit.

I was wondering if adding seat belts ( I have 2 young kids) to the car would hurt the overall value.

I will be at Rhinebeck swap meet Saturday morning with this car.

TWO YOUNG KIDS or VALUE OF CAR ? You can always hide the belts when not needed

I haven't been cruising with the kids yet. I have always added belts for them in all of my other pre 60's cars but I am thinking of selling this car as it is too nice to hot rod.

I had a lot of great response to the car this weekend at Rhinebeck and have 2 really good offers. Many people feel my asking price of $10,000 was way too low. I just want to break even..

A self proclaimed 49-54 Chevy expert said my car's true book value after going over the whole car was around $16,500. I thought that way high for today's economy. He said it was rare to see a car with this many options all together (visor, skirts, bumper garnish moldings, city parking bars, top of the rear quarter moldings, back up lamps, impala hood ornament, turn signals etc.. I told him to buy it!!

I paid about that much for mine with pretty much the same options in 2008. Mine is rust free TX car older resto with ok paint. Sahara beige with saddle brown top and like new interior. Engine/trans rebuilt. 69K miles runs like a clock. Bumper extensions are rare and hard to find. $10K is way to low for a nice hard top.