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H&H

21 June 2014

The latest H&H Auction presented a few surprises and the whopper has to be the £131,000 paid for a Jaguar XK150s Coupe barn find. The car was complete with what appeared to be original paintwork and interior having been in the same ownership since the late 70s. Underneath there was clearly some of the dreaded tin worm taking hold in the chassis but overall this was an exceptionally original car. Did it deserve the 131k price tag, only time will tell. What we do know is that the 3.8s cars are rare and well sort after, you only have to look at the original dhc 3.8s that was sold at RM last year for in excess of 300k although that did and still looks expensive. Clearly the marker for rare variants of cars is still very strong but we cannot help but wonder what you do with such a car. A full restoration would arguably destroy value but at the same time the car in its present form is deteriorating and will need work to preserve its current form. It may well be that the new owner will simply put the car away in a temperature controlled environment as a pure investment. We shall see over the years how these cars perform in terms of value and they may well be very canny investments but at present these are extremely strong prices that are being paid.Another such example at the same auction was the barn condition Jaguar E-Type Series 1 4.2 litre which went on to achieve £90720 and again will present something of a quandary given the need for some of the paint to be revitalised as well as other aspects of the car.

The bargain of the auction has to be the £35k paid for the 1936 Rolls-Royce Phantom III Sedanca De Ville which appears to have been in good order and is surely worth 50k plus of anyone's money.

There were 27 no sales out of 73 cars which was a little on the high side and maybe a sign of the market perhaps consolidating a little after such a hefty run which would be no bad thing. A full list of the cars sold can be viewed here