Lot Ended
Description
Genuine Teal-built four-seater; aluminium body; Marina running gear;
just two owners since 2001; reconditioned gearbox and new clutch; recent
service; very smart; very tempting!
Even in today’s
market, any genuine Bugatti GP car from the 1920s is going to set you back at
least £300k and perhaps up to £4m for one with a distinguished race history.
For the many who yearn for the early Molsheim
cars, a replica is the only conceivable option which is why Ian Foster, a former
chassis designer for Daimler, set up Thistledown Engineering Automotive Ltd in
1983. Better known as Teal, they specialised in producing replicas of the
Bugatti Type 35 with Morris Marina running gear and GRP bodies.
In 1986 a
former AA patrolman called Bob Jones bought Teal from Foster and decided to
step things up a gear, creating a new steel box section chassis of great
strength and rigidity clothed in a hand-made aluminium body. Not to be confused
with a kit car, these later Teal-built Bugatti replicas were very expensive,
costing around £28,000 – almost double the average price of a new car at the
time.
This Teal Bugatti four-seater is one of
those later cars and has an aluminium body with wonderfully authentic wired
bolts holding the body panels in place. We aren’t quite sure when it was built
but according to HPI the registration number was changed from XWM 953M
(presumably the Morris Marina donor car) to NIB 1669 in January 1990 so it was
most likely made in 1989.
A copy of an old V5
shows that the previous owner was a Mr V Morriss of Ashford, Kent, who acquired
the car in 2001 and was to keep it for the next 23 years. Our vendor bought the
car from Total Headturners of Essex in January 2024, the invoice showing that he
paid £25,000 when it was showing 7,759 miles on the clock.
Sadly our vendor then became unwell and he has added a mere 15 miles
to the odometer which now shows 7,774 miles. However, a check of the MOT history
online suggests that the odometer was stuck on 7,756 miles from 2011 – 2014 so
the true mileage is unknown.
An invoice shows
that a week after our vendor paid for the car, Total Headturners treated it to a
good service, repaired the speedo and submitted it for an MOT which it passed
with no advisories recorded. The invoice also states that the car had been
fitted with a reconditioned gearbox and a new clutch in 2023 by PW Autos (see
last photo).
As you can see in the photos and
the video, this Teal looks to be in really splendid condition throughout and we
doubt that it has done many miles at all since it was built over three decades
ago.
The V5C records it as a 1974 Teal Tourer so
the next owner should be able to get it classed as a Historic Vehicle which will
make it free-to-tax and MOT-exempt as it is over 40 years old. It is currently
on SORN due to the owner's health issues.
Starting promptly and running well as we have moved it around on
site, this is a forced sale due to illness so someone could get a real bargain
at the modest guide price suggested.
The last
aluminium-bodied Teal we sold made over £45k in 2022 although to be fair it did
have a Jaguar XK 4.2 engine – an upgrade the next owner of this beauty might
like to consider…
Consigned by James
Dennison – 07970 309907 – [email protected]