Having had a brief flicker of normality in August and September with both the London and Hampton Court Concours going ahead as scheduled, this was quickly extinguished in October as the coronavirus reasserted its grip on the nation and our classic car hobby, resulting in more event cancellations and postponements, one of which was the original date for Historics Autumn sale.
This was pushed back to December 12th and thanks to a (very) slight relaxation in the restrictions, they were able to go ahead on this rescheduled date with their usual wide variety of classics for most budgets. Royal Ascot racecourse was the venue again on a chilly day, making a warm coat and regular cups of cocoa or coffee necessary. It’s a great venue, but at this time of year you really notice the lack of heating!
After a few late withdrawals, there were 198 lots in all, including motorbikes and memorabilia, and despite the chilly weather, a healthy crowd of buyers and onlookers turned up – indeed, the Covid-restricted limit was reached. And as usual, there were many seriously lovely cars to tempt the enthusiast, including one of our recent Prime Finds, a smart silver Lancia Flavia 2000 with an estimate of just £9,000 to £11,000, which provided the car wasn’t hiding a long list of horrors, I thought very reasonable. As it turned out, I wasn’t the only one as it sold quite quickly for £14,560, well above its top estimate.
It wasn’t the only Lancia Flavia on sale, either – there no fewer than three other Flavia’s in varying states – one project, one very average and one in excellent condition. The first two sold but the last one, a 1963 car in a lovely shade of metallic Rosso with white leather upholstery, only got to £18,000. This beautiful coupé was in superb condition and came with restoration bills for £16,000, so represented a missed opportunity, in my view.
As usual at Historics auctions, the dominant marques were Jaguar Daimler and Mercedes, with as many as 31 examples from Browns Lane on offer, of which 20 sold, with XK’s proving quite hard to shift, as well as 25 of the Germans (21 sold), among which were the usual E-Types, SL Pagoda’s, XK’s and W107’s. I sometimes wonder how so many are found so regularly. While some of the E-Types and XK’s were admittedly superb – as you can see from the photos – there were one or two less usual examples of both makes up for sale this time around.
The Daimler Dart or SP250 is a bit of a “marmite” car, with most people falling on one side of the love/hate divide, mainly due to it’s guppy-fish front end styling, which to be honest would put me off. Nevertheless, they’re not seen every day especially in such good condition as the car on offer, a 1961 model finished in Jaguar Opalescent Grey with Oxblood interior that had been restored in 2016 but failed to find a new home, stalling £10,000 below its low estimate of £38,000.
The Benz that caught my eye was the 1967 220SE Coupé – based on value, probably the least desirable of these supremely elegant big coupés, but therefore the most affordable. This very tidy dark blue with black interior car carried an estimate of £23,000 to £26,000, selling for what seems to me to be a very reasonable £28,300, although this may be at least in part due to the fact that it started life as a convertible (I bet the original owner wishes they’d kept it as bought!) as well as having been converted for rallying and then back again, though you’d be hard pushed to spot it. The extensive chromework was excellent, the paintwork lustrous and the interior not at all bad except for one or two minor details. I like these a lot, but they’re a bit too big for me…
Speaking of big, there was some intriguing Americana on sale. One example that caught my eye was the 1957 Cadillac Eldorado Seville Special Sports Coupé – at 18.5 feet long, this was a properly big car, with almost as big a name, and a sizeable 6-litre V8 engine to move it along – it went for a decent £31,360, well above estimate. A later 7-litre Eldorado failed to sell, and the third Caddy on offer, a bright green metallic 1950 Convertible, also remained unsold.
Almost as big, and to my mind better-looking, a superb second-generation 1966 7-litre engined Buick Riviera in maroon with white vinyl roof that sold for a very respectable £28,000 with an almost perfect white interior. I love the smooth, uncluttered lines of this era of American cars. I think my favourite American car of the day though was the very imposing 1964 Oldsmobile 98 Custom Sports Coupé. As long as the Eldorado and menacing in a very dark green, almost black, this stylish pillarless Olds had great presence and a healthy history file, and it was also the best value among the US cars on offer, to my unsophisticated mind, achieving just £19,244.
As usual at a Historics sale, there were a handful of what you might call “star lots”, and I think it’s fair to say that a Ferrari Daytona qualifies as such. One of those cars that looks fast standing still, this metallic grey iconic – I think we can use that word for this car – 1973 model reached only £320,000 against an estimate of £390,000 to £450,000. For a car like this, restored just a handful of years ago, this seemed a bargain – Daytona’s are clearly not as in demand as they were, and it has to be said, neither is its little brother, the 246 Dino. The peak of the 246 market was reached a few years ago, I think, and this red RHD 246 GTS sold for £287,528, probably £50,000 less than it would have fetched 3 or 4 years ago, but at least it sold.
Other potentially bank-account draining lots were a splendid Bentley 4 ¼ Tourer by Vanden Plas (from when VdP were genuine coachbuilders) in a lovely shade of green that didn’t find a buyer after stalling at £98k, but this was only the second most-expensive Bentley on offer, with that honour falling to an exquisite S1 Drophead by Mulliner that topped out in the saleroom at £165,000 against a low estimate of £200,000, but was sold behind closed doors for £198,000. Cars like these and the very elegant magenta 1971 Rolls Royce Convertible by Mulliner Park Ward – another non-seller – were made for touring along the Cote d’Azure….preferably with an elegantly dressed and beautiful companion alongside.
In fact, the glamour lots struggled all round, with a superlative Pacific Blue 1966 Aston Martin DB6 – a colour that really suited an already very handsome car also staying with its current owner, despite having had some £300,000 had been spent on it since 2014. The same fate befell the exceptionally ugly 1989 Aston Martin Lagonda, a car whose appeal has always been lost on me.
Back in the realms of our Prime Find budget, there was quite a lot to choose from. I particularly liked the 1965 MG 1100, in its original pale blue with blue interior and a mere 26,540 miles under its wheels while under the ownership of only two owners – It sold for £10,080. Personal nostalgia attracted me to a 1958 Morris Oxford Series III in two-tone black over dark green – my father used to run an all-black Oxford when I was about 3 or 4 years old. Apparently only 36 remain on UK roads and this particular Oxford comes with a touch of glamour, having featured in The Bletchley Circle and Grantchester on TV, as well as the Elton John biopic, Rocketman. £3,169 bought you a slice of TV and movie history, but it was very scruffy and would need a lot of work to bring it up to scratch.
A very smart 1966 white with black roof Triumph 2000 Mk1 with blue interior achieved £10,640 – it was bought by a client of a friend of mine. I think he got a pretty good deal, the car was in excellent condition. Another car to evoke strong memories in men of a certain age was an immaculate 1974 coke-bottle Cortina 2000GT in pale metallic green and black vinyl roof – if your dad drove one of these for his company car, he was doing very well, but this car did rather less well, staying unsold.
For someone who wanted to relive their boy-racer youth, the 1983 Ford Fiesta XR2 Mk1 in silver with black and orange side stripe and pepper pot alloys that sold d for a healthy £16,753 – above top estimate – or even the 1986 Renault 11 – can you remember the last time you saw one? This one was kitted out in homage to the taxi that Roger Moore drove around Paris in A View to a Kill, effectively killing the car in the process. Just £2,128 bought this former European Car of the Year. If it were mine, I think I’d drop the taxi accoutrements…
For once, there were no long-hood 911’s to make me wish my bank balance was substantially bigger than it is, but there was a fabulous 1968 FIAT Dino Spyder in a stunning pale metallic Azzuro blue with beige leather interior. While the coupé version is lovely, the Spyder is exquisite, and this one was a fine example. And yet…interest flickered and was extinguished very quickly when it achieved just £65,000 against a low estimate of £85,000. It was perhaps the car I most would have liked to drive home that day, even if it was “only” a 2-litre as opposed to the 2.4. Just gorgeous.
Of course, there was much more on offer, but I – and you, dear reader – would be here for a week if I tried to mention every interesting car on offer; hopefully the gallery will give you a good idea of what else was available for last minute Christmas presents.
So to the numbers, which looked a little like this:-
Total car lots – 185 (there were also 9 motorbikes and three memorabilia items)
Sold with no reserve – 48, or 26% to the nearest 1%
Sold below estimate – 20, or 11%
Sold within estimate – 48, or 26%
Sold above estimate – 35, or 19%
Not Sold- 34, or 18%
So a sell through rate of 82%, which I would say was a pretty decent result; indeed, Historics most successful sale of the year in perecentage terms. While the auctioneers had to work hard to move through some of the lots, they managed to keep up a better pace than at the last sale and definitely earned their money on this day.
Based on these numbers, I expect they felt they had ended what has been an extraordinarily difficult year successfully, with perhaps a tinge of disappointment that some of the star lots underperformed. For me, it was a pleasure to once again be able to attend a live classic event, with the fervent hope that 2021 takes us at least some way back to being able to enjoy classic car events of all kinds once again.
