Ballistic Porsche road burner tops the charts at a packed sale which topped £1.1m with 75% sold
Brightwell’s had another huge turn-out for the October auction with bidders descending on Leominster in their droves to see an unusually large number of classic cars and motorcycles that so overflowed the indoor storage area that several dozen of the more modern vehicles had to be displayed outside. By the end of the day, 155 of the 208 lots on offer had successfully changed hands for a total of just over £1.1m giving a healthy 75% clearance rate.
Top price of the day went to a car firmly in the Modern Classics category, a nicely presented 2007 Porsche 911 GT3, one of the fastest sportscars of its era. With only 28,500 miles under its wheels, this 997.1 GT3 would have cost its first owner around £80k and is now so highly prized for its raw driver appeal that it can easily fetch £20k more than that today. Blighted only by a Cat D marker in 2014 which typically knocks about a third off the value, the Porsche was snapped up for a hefty £76,700.
While the hardcore GT3 911 has proved immune to depreciation, there are plenty of other hugely prestigious and expensive machines which have shed value at a colossal rate. A 2006 Aston Martin DB9 Vantage Volante with under 43k miles and 20 service stamps looked like a great buy at a whisker under £18k for a car which would have cost its first owner £115k. An equally sharp 2005 Bentley Continental GT with under 49k miles which would have cost around the same amount as the DB9 when new looked an even bigger bargain at a mere £10,700, this being about the going rate for these magnificent GTs at the moment. Okay, these sort of cars are never cheap to run and always come with the potential of ruinous repair costs if you are unlucky but still, at this price level, who isn’t tempted?
To put this scale of depreciation into some sort of context, a 1992 Subaru 284 Pickup with 29k miles which would have cost around £7k new fetched almost twice that amount at £13,500 while a 2005 Ford Focus RS which would have cost its first owner just under £20k still retained enough value to fetch £13,800.
While the modern Range Rover is right up there with the Porsche Taycan and BMW 7-Series in the top five fastest depreciating cars, typically losing around 60% of their value within the first five years, as they get older they move into a different category where value is driven by emotion and nostalgia rather than crude economics. No surprise then that a beautifully restored 1983 Range Rover Classic in sought-after two-door form found a willing buyer at £47,540.
While Series 1 Land Rovers have generally dropped in value from the highs of 10 years ago, a rare 1949 Series I 80” from 75-year single family ownership performed remarkably well for a vehicle which was partially restored but also somewhat battle-scarred, the £26,320 result reflecting the fact that it was an unusually early ‘Pre-Series’ model.
Rarer still was a 1969 Jensen FF MkI, one of only 320 made with pioneering Ferguson Formula four-wheel drive and Dunlop Maxaret anti-lock brakes. Consigned from a prolonged period in storage and in need of a degree of recommissioning, it was nevertheless in generally good cosmetic condition and looked like a good buy at £43,540, this being the Holy Grail of the Interceptor range that can still command over double that amount in excellent condition.
A 1959 Alvis TD21 Drophead Coupe which had been restored in the 1990s and was now nicely mellowed looked also looked like a decent buy at £40,320, this being another model that could easily be worth 50% more in top condition.
Perhaps the most surprising result was for a 1979 Rolls-Royce Corniche Coupe in good running order with a nice interior and 81k miles on the clock but with badly distressed paintwork. Offered at no reserve, it was predicted to fetch around £15k but some spirited bidding saw it charging all the way to a £24,640 finish. An excellent price when you consider that it is rare for even the best Corniche Coupes to fetch much over £30k at auction.
Brightwells have had some excellent results for the Rover P5B recently, including a couple of Coupes which have fetched £31k and £25k within the last 12 months. The Saloon version is generally reckoned to be worth only half as much but the stunning and unrestored 1973 P5B Saloon on offer was so beautifully preserved that it attracted a winning bid of £15,800. Even at that level many would consider it well-bought, cars as original as this being extremely hard to find these days.
In equally impressive condition was a fully restored 1971 Austin 3-Litre which would have appealed to the same sort of buyer as the Rover P5B in period. One of fewer than 10,000 made, it looked superb with gleaming Blackberry paintwork and comfortably beat its £6k reserve to finish on £9,240 – surely worth every penny when you consider how much it must have cost to restore.
Sticking with the Seventies, a pair of Triumph Stags did well, a restored 1976 example with a hard top fetching £11,760 while an unrestored 1974 model with only 39k miles on the clock in the hands of two owners looked like an excellent buy at £12,430 with concours potential should the new owner address the somewhat scruffy under-bonnet appearance. Beating both of them though was a rare and nicely presented 1977 Gilbern Invader MkIII which made an impressive £14,685.
British sports cars of the Fifties and Sixties are good value at the moment, the market now generally favouring much more modern drop-tops. A 1962 Austin-Healey 3000 MkII with various choice upgrades looked like a lot of fun for £22,400, this being about half what it might have fetched a few short years ago. A sharp-looking 1959 Triumph TR3 made £14,670 which seems to be about the going rate for these once £20k cars today. In similar vein was a nice and shiny 1952 MG TD/C MkII, a rare Competition model which was snapped up for a modest £13,600.
Attracting much interest during the viewing was an extremely rare 1959 Austin A95 Countryman Estate, one of fewer than ten still surviving. Restored to a high standard, it had also been fitted with direct fuel-injection, a low-pressure turbo and disc brakes to make it more suitable for modern road conditions. A proper Q-car, it deserved every penny of the £9,710 required to secure it.
Sports cars of the Forties are becoming temptingly affordable these days. A beautifully presented 1949 Allard M-Type Drophead Coupe looked great value at £15,630, being one of fewer than 100 known to survive and fitted with a more powerful 4.2-litre flathead V8 rather than the original 3.6 unit. Exceedingly quirky and brutishly handsome, it could easily have fetched double that amount about five years ago and it was surprising that a relatively humdrum 1969 Austin 8cwt Van just a couple of lots later made only £1,000 less than the Allard.
Going back in time still further, all but two of the nine pre-1945 cars on offer were successfully sold, top honours going to a wonderfully baroque 1941 Cadillac Sedanette two-door with slightly faded paintwork but otherwise reassuringly solid which looked like a huge chunk of metal for £12,780. A 1924 Rover 14hp Tourer made £8,400 and a 1929 Alvis 12/50 Atlantic Saloon fetched £8,230, amounts which get you into a wide variety of quality pre-war cars these days.
Other results of note included a 1966 Ford Mustang Shelby GT350 clone which made a whisker under £29,000, not bad for a muscle car which only an expert would be able to distinguish from the £200k real deal. Equally muscular was a top-of-the-range 1994 Porsche 928 GTS Automatic, one of fewer than 3,000 made and with a reasonable 87k miles on the clock which sold to a Dutch buyer for £22,400, the price being held back from its £35k potential because it was a LHD Dubai import in somewhat average condition cosmetically.
Altogether a highly successful sale demonstrating that the market for classic cars remains as strong as it ever was, despite the woes affecting other areas of the economy, with plenty of enthusiastic buyers out there at a wide range of budgets.
The next Brightwells auction will be on 9th December with a deadline for entries of 25th November so, if you are thinking of selling, please do get in touch by calling 01568 611122 or by emailing [email protected] for a free, no obligation valuation from one of our team of experts.
