I forgot to address your second question: will prices on the 129's fall dramatically when the 230's hit?

My guess is probably not much, or any way probably not much more---I think that they have already been affected. I'm expecting that there will be a short supply of 230's for a while and this will keep interest in the 129's up for a "soft landing."

After all, no matter how nice the 230 is, the 129 is still a helluva car. There is, after all, an extremely strong following for the 107's to this day, and always will be. The day will come, say ten years from now, when the 2000 model that you're looking at will be at its lowest value. But I would think that if you keep it nice, the least it will ever be worth is around 20,000. That means you can drive one of the classiest cars in the world for ten years for 45,000; doesn't sound like a bad deal to me.

And there's one more possibility, though I don't see how anyone could possibly predict it---the 129 may turn out to be a "classic" much like the 63-67 Corvettes. When the "new" body style came out in '68, it was a hit. But within a few years, the '67 became the most desired Corvette of all, and remains so to this day, with the others of the 63-67 series right up there. The 68-up isn't close.

Travis