Gold in them there Hillmans? 

It turns out we’ve got a few months before the Large Hadron Collider sucks us all into a black hole, and it seems rumours of the finance sector’s death have been exaggerated, but we aren’t out of the woods yet. The prime minister is warning of a recession and, having been chancellor for ten years, he probably knows what he’s talking about.

So, shares, house prices, and the pound are sliding, and pretty much anything else you care to invest in is coming down in value. If you’ve got money to save you could put it in a high-interest account, but it was the dodgy lending decisions made by some of the world’s banks that helped get us into this mess in the first place. The uncharitable amongst us might think that, if we’re already buying them out of trouble with our taxes, we shouldn’t top it up with what we’ve got left.

It’s at times like these, so I’m told, that smart investors look to buy into commodities with an intrinsic value. That means something rare and precious, the supply of which is unlikely to be affected by what happens to everything else - something like gold.

But although gold’s pretty to look at, it doesn’t really do a lot else. Cars, on the other hand, are fun. Unfortunately, you’d have to be pretty optimistic to see a new one as a sound investment - even premium small cars like the Mini lose a chunk of their value the moment you drive them off the forecourt. But choose a car that hasn’t seen a forecourt for, say, 25 years and you might really be onto something.

Classic cars are, at least in some ways, a bit like gold. They’re in limited supply, and we can all agree that they’re worth something even when we aren’t sure about our houses and the money in our pockets. As with everything at the moment, though, it’s hard to be sure exactly what they’re worth. Motoring pundit Quentin Wilson says prices are falling, but auctioneers BCA are putting a positive spin on recent sales.

My solution? Cover all your bases - money, transport and housing - by investing in a classic car that, should it all go wrong, you can live in. VW Camper, anyone?

IMAGE by Flickr user Elsie esq & AmerigoLand