Here’s a sobering thought: It’s been 30 years since the 1980s.

Feeling your age? So are 1980s automotive icons like Chevy Camaros, Pontiac Firebirds and Mazda MX-5 Miatas—and they all need special classic car insurance.

“When you ask a typical independent agent ‘Tell me about the classic car space,’ they tend to think everybody either drives a Model T or they’re Jay Leno,” says McKeel Hagerty, president & CEO of Hagerty. “They tend to think classic cars are extremely old antiques or they belong to a guy who’s so wealthy and unobtainable and untouchable that they don’t have any of those clients. It really couldn’t be further from the truth.”

Classic and collector cars—and the demographic of the drivers who love them—have evolved significantly since the muscle car era, Hagerty says. While American vehicles built in the 1960s-70s are still the hottest general classic car trend, “it’s not the huge collector and it’s not the really antique car that people are collecting anymore,” Hagerty says. Vehicles from the late 1970s and 1980s like Chevy Corvettes, Ford Mustangs and Toyota Supras “are all becoming very collectible.”

Where there’s nostalgia, there’s an opportunity for a vehicle to become a classic. According to Jeff Walker, senior collector car specialist, Chubb Collector Car Insurance, drivers get nostalgic when they “look back on their personal ‘glory days’ and recall the car they may have driven in high school. Or maybe it was a car they wanted at that time but couldn't afford,” he says.

When Walker asked friends around his age, who graduated high school in the ‘90s, about the cars that interest them, they cited examples like Acura Integra Type Rs and NSXs, Camaros, Mustangs and Supras. “As long as enough people think a car is ‘cool,’ there will be demand for a limited supply,” he says.

“Early 80s Mazda RX-7s, Toyota MR2s and other little cars like that—there’s really not many nice ones left because people bought them and used them,” says Jim Kruse, program director at Condon Skelly Collector Car Insurance. “They’re somewhat rare.”

“A lay person or any independent agent in the market might be confused—‘A Chevy C10 pickup truck is a collectible car?’” agrees Branden Helton, product manager at American Modern, responsible for collector vehicle line of business. “But those things really are.”

It’s a visibility gap that’s making many agents unaware that a client with a newer vehicle still needs a special classic car policy rather than a PAP. “What we find is those are the cars that most agents just keep on the regular auto policy,” Hagerty says. “Even though those are just weekend cars, they’re not making that connection that that too is now a collector car.”

As the definition of “collector car” changes, insurance products and services must follow suit. “The feeling that I have about cars in my mid-30s vs. my dad—I might connect with an ‘86 Camaro Z28 that he had, vs. the Model T his dad had,” Helton says. “The nostalgia effect I think is much different, and trying to underwrite a 1986 Camaro vs. a Model T is a much different approach.”

Cars even newer than the 1980s are joining the collector’s fray as well. Helton cites the latest versions of Camaros and Dodge Challengers and Chargers, adding that Jaguar recently released a new E-Type racecar. Mustangs, Camaros, Firebirds and other iconic models from years as recent as the 2000s have already become “modern classics,” Hagerty says. “It’s a huge opportunity for an agent if they want to take that interest to say, ‘Hey welcome to the collector car world—you have something really cool that needs to be preserved.’”

For these newer vehicles, “from a coverage perspective, it’s still kind of up in the air as to what impact that’s going to have,” Helton says. “Comparing a 2015 Hellcat Challenger to a Model T is very different, so that impact to the policy is still unknown at this point. There’s just not enough data there.”

And when it comes to more modern exotic cars that could be considered collectibles, be careful—many companies won’t insure them. Kruse says high net-worth clients who have made a lot of money on the stock market in recent years may wish to purchase an exotic car without being true “collector car people.”

“Exotic cars are becoming increasingly difficult to underwrite for most companies,” Kruse says. “It’s just a toy for them. It’s a Ferrari this year, next year it’s a boat and it’s a helicopter the year after that. A lot of companies have been burnt in the specialty market on those types of risks. And it’s easier to say ‘We’re not going to take any of them’ as opposed to taking the time to truly underwrite the risk.”

Jacquelyn Connelly is IA senior editor.