Concours XJ12 fetches more than £32k and £24K is paid for low mileage XJ6 during The Silverstone Classic Sale where 80% of road going classics find new homes but historic single seater racers struggle to leave the grid
Jaguar XK150 Dropheads were priced by Silverstone Classic auction goers at £66,500 for a 1959 home market minter and £62,810 for a 1957 left to righthand drive conversion with 3.8 engine and obviously touched-in paint blemishes. Two more big cats from Coventry purred particularly well here with an 18 concours awards winning 1977 XJ12 Coupe attracting £32,450 and another apparently faultless 1967 XJ6 Series 1 with just 13,000 miles of pampering deservedly applauded when valued at £24,200.
£41,250 was paid for a 1964-made and always righthand drive Austin-Healey 3000 MkIII BJ8 that had been cosmetically refurbished 2002/5 and £34,650 bought a 1967 TVR Tuscan from long term restoration only completed in 2011. An aero-screened 1948 Allard M Type powered by Ford UK ‘flathead’ V8 cost a new keeper £27,500 and the much promoted 1960 Austin Mini 850 a mere 2600 displayed on the clock duly raised a heavyweight £23,650.
Whilst a most acquisitive blonde in the second row ruthlessly outbid the seasoned UK trade to buy many of the Italian sourced GT left hooker entries, which included a 1995 Ferrari F355 Challenge sold for £69,300, a 1996 Lamborghini Diablo VT for £58,300 and a 1985 Jalpa for £23,100, a 1981 Maserati Merak SS for £22,330, a 1986 Ferrari Mondial 3.2 Cabriolet for £16,770 and a 1970 Lancia Fulvia Sport Zagato for £12,870.
£73,350 and around a third of the original cost was forthcoming for a factory-supplied ready to rock 2008 Ferrari F430 GT3 racer and £34,100 was accepted for a 2003 360 Challenge GT with £45,000+ pre-sale estimate. A cool but largely static-stored 1998 Renault Sport Spider excited a long bidding battle until sold for £20,130 and a high-rise rear-winged Noble M12 GTO offered much performance per pound sterling at £17,600.
A more than top estimate £11,220 was available for a 1933 Nippy ‘Barn Find’ fitted with Ford 10hp engine and gearbox, but with correct A7 motor and box included. And a ‘Goldeneye’ and ‘World is Not Enough’ exposed Jeep-like Munga military 4x4 from 1964 Cold War Germany was surely inexpensively captured for £3520.
After a few post-sales had been concluded, I make the current stats for the auction - 39 or 80% of the roadgoing classics sold from 49 offered for a double-dip beating £1.04m with premium. Additionally, a BMW R69S solo with the added value of a Schorsch Meier touring tank and a matching bespoke Steib sidecar deservedly pulled £14,190.
Most of the strictly-for-competition machines displayed in another showroom in The Wing building really struggled however, with not one of the historically significant single-seaters with big number price tickets even moving off the grid. Although by the time the Group C pack had extinguished their headlights and been safely tucked up in their transporters and the Silverstone Auctions book had been shut, a dozen of the motor sporting redundancies in the catalogue did find new trailers in exchange for £237,890 to boost the overall sale total to £1.3m including premium.
By next week’s e-news, I should have also done the sums for Wednesday’s final HVA sale of this season at sun-baked How Caple, where the M50 runs out and the cider apples start, as well as assessed the ‘No Reserve’ reality at the dispersal by Artcurial of surplus Rainier Museum exhibits in unreal Monaco Thursday and clocked any significant movers among the shakers in the Friday drive-through at SWVA on planet Poole.
In the meantime, while the rest of us are subjected to Olympian telecasts with the occasional medal to sweeten the bill, rest assured, The Boy George will be hard at work finalising ‘Plan B’ with Saint Vince looking over his shoulder no doubt. At least it would appear that hood-down summer really has arrived, so I can to take to my freshly painted Caterham at last for some noisy relief from Olympics overload AND Newsnight. Vroom, vroom! RHE
