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Old 12th September 2018, 07:24
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I just spent the weekend at Goodwood Revival. I can assure you that there was no shortage of people with huge wealth and money to burn.

Obviously those bidding on the multi-million pound cars at the prestige auction are only going to be the wealthiest of the lot, but an awful lot of the mid-range classics in the £30k - £100k bracket on the dealer stands had 'sold' stickers in the windscreens by Friday afternoon.

Also check out the prices of 'starter' classics like Spitfires and Midgets. A year ago a nice example of either would set you back around £2,500 but you need about double that today for anything even half decent, while outstanding cars are selling for £10k+. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MG-Midget...53.m1438.l2649

I guess the problem is that if you're either:

1/ capable of building one of these specials yourself for four to five thousand, you may lose sight of the value you add with your time and skills and only be thinking of the car in terms of the cost of the parts rather than the emotional impact it has on others, or;

2/ unable to see past the 'man built it in a shed so it can't be any good' mentality, you may not be able to see the desirability of something that looks like it's worth millions but could be yours for less than the price of a new Kia Sportage.

The reality for me advertising my Spyder for £24k last year was that there were at least five serious buyers making offers around that price and it sold for very close to the asking price within two weeks. The buyer was given a money back guarantee - return the car in the same condition within one month of taking delivery and I'd give him his money back with no strings attached - but he chose to keep the car and it now lives in a collection worth tens of millions of pounds. A fitting place for a car that turns heads the way it does, despite its humble origins.

And on an even more potentially controversial note, I do find that people who don't have the funds to buy one of these cars for what it's really worth arguing about the 'overpriced' nature of them is rather like the third-class passengers on the Titanic arguing about where the toffs should be sitting in the lifeboats.

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