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Bonhams

10 December 2015

Bonhams last sale of the year at the RAF museum in Hendon provided an interesting choice of cars with some particularly nice pre war cars on offer. Of these, one of the top prices was achieved by the Bentley 4.25 litre which was one of the last generation of Derby Bentleys and this one had the rare concealed hood coachwork by H J Mulliner. The car had been subjected to some restoration work by P&A Wood in 2012 but appears to be largely original. The final price including premium was £253,500. Keeping with Bentleys, a 3 litre 1926 Light Tourer with coachwork by Vanden Plas which is matching numbers throughout looked lovely and well deserving of the final price tag of £281,500. The Jaguar SS1 2.5 Litre saloon is rarely seen at auction and the example on offer here had clearly been subjected to a significant amount of restoration and the final price of £79.900 was £10,000 above the top estimate of £70,000. One car which really took our eye was the Riley RMC Roadster which again is another rarity. This car has also been the subject of a significant amount of restoration work. We were not surprised by the price including premium of £42,550, but what was surprising was that even at that level the car was bought by the trade and at that time of writing has already been sold for a further premium. The car certainly looked well worth the money and with prices on the continent around the £50k mark during the last couple of years the trader clearly knew the car’s true value. With Jaguar XK values all over the place at the moment we were a little surprised to see the XK150 3.4S DHC achieve only £85,500 including premium. This is a relatively rare car being one of only 104 XKS DHC according to the Bonhams narrative and having seen some auction results that have been well in excess of £100k this car looked good value. The market’s appetite for fully restored Series 1 Landrovers to as new standard remains strong as evidenced by the £43,700 paid for an example in this sale. Coys sold a similar example in January of this year and the price was also over £40k. Another lovely pre war car was a 1913 Morris Oxford 8.9hp 'Bullnose' Two-seat Tourer which is one of the earliest cars to have been built by Morris. In the photographs the car looks fabulous and is certainly an interesting piece of automotive history. The car achieved a strong £33,350.
Jaguar XJS prices have been firming up all year and it was therefore not that surprising to see a 1988 Jaguar XJ-S V12 HE Lynx Eventer make a strong £39,100. These do not come onto the market that often and three years ago you might well have paid £25,000 for a similar example showing how the rarity factor is likely to continue driving prices higher.