10 incredible cars to buy in Bonhams' 80MM sale

10. 2010 Mosler MT900S

Priced from £150,000-200,000

Star Wars film director George Lucas bought the first Mosler in 2006. Quite a claim to fame then, as was a successful MT900R racing version that finished first in class at Daytona in 2003 and won the British, FIA Tourist Trophy, International Open, Britcar and Spanish GT Championships. You are still forgiven if you have never heard of Mosler. They did only make 20 cars.

This is one of them. Said to be as quick 0-60 as a Ferrari Enzo, the Mosler’s secret was light weight (the 900 in its name refers to the target weight of 900kg), and a mighty lump of 5.7-litre LS6 V8 engine with 435PS (324 kW) from the Chevrolet Corvette. The gearbox? That was a six-speeder from the Porsche 911. With a sleek mid-engine style, carbon chassis, scissor doors, adjustable suspension and Pirelli P-Zero at the corners, the Mosler is archetypal, low-volume supercar.

This rarity has had two owners, been professionally stored, serviced by a specialist…and is surely guaranteed to cause furrowed brows and double-takes wherever it goes, on road or track. 

9. 1996 Porsche 911 Type 993 Turbo

Priced from £150,000-180,000

Here’s a nice example of a sweet spot in the 911 range: a 993 Turbo. As a 993, it’s still compact enough despite those mushrooming rear haunches. It’s definitely still classic 911 pretty. Handling-wise, it’s not old-school capricious (thank new rear suspension for that) and as the first Turbo with all-wheel drive winter roads won’t hold too much fear. As the last air-cooled 911, mechanical charisma is guaranteed, as is power from the twin-turbo 3.6 flat six: 408PS (300kW) for 0-62mph in under five seconds. All boxes ticked!

And why this one? Well, it’s in a classy Midnight Blue metallic over Marble Grey cabin, its had five owners and covered 23,400 miles from new. It’s being offered from a private collection whose perfectionist custodian has ensured it is correct to its 1996 spec in all details – right down to its Michelin Pilot Sport boots. 

8. 1970 Aston Martin DB6 Mk2 Vantage

Priced from £160,00-220,000

Handsome as ever from its thrusting nose to the tip of its Kamm tail, this DB6 is from very late on in the model’s production life when it overlapped with the very different, 1967-introduced DBS. So it’s very definitely a DB6 Mk2 with the Mk2 benefits that included power steering and flared guards enclosing the DBS’s wider wheels.

It’s also a manual to Vantage spec which is good news for performance – it boasts the highest 325PS (242kW) state of engine tune – and also for rarity. Only 71 of the 245 Mk2s were to Vantage spec. Bad news? The car needs recommissioning. Good news? There’s no reserve price on this one. 

7. 1957 Bentley S1 Continental

Priced from £180,000-220,000

It’s easy to see why the S1 Continental is Bentley’s hero car and inspiration for the marque’s rebirth under VW. It’s coupe class and luxury personified, with plenty of poke too. The fastest four-seater of its day, its performance and refinement were tailor-made for high-speed driving across continents. 

And this one? Right-hand drive but delivered new to the US where the first owner didn’t fancy changing gears himself so had it converted to automatic transmission. Most S1 Contis were bodied by Park Ward including this one, which makes it one of 122 rhd Park Ward cars. 

6. 1963-64 Cooper-Chevrolet sports prototype

Priced from £190,000-£220,000

The fastest car down the Lavant Straight in the Whitsun Trophy at Revival last year? That would be this Cooper with its 550PS (410kW) 5.7-litre Chevy V8. It was clocked at 162mph. Sixties big-banger sports cars don’t come much more banging than this beauty, something we know well because it’s been a regular at the Goodwood Revival since 2003 when it won the inaugural Whitsun Trophy. 

Getting it to the podium took some doing because when this refugee from sports car racing at places like Laguna Seca arrived back on our shores from the US it had been used as street car. Wow, some daily driver or what? It was always a race car at heart though and after a full restoration to historic racing spec that thankfully is what it is again. 

It’s had just one season of racing since its last rebuild and is said to be fully on song. Here’s hoping its new owner brings it back to Goodwood again soon.

5. 1913 Hispano-Suiza 3.0-Litre Type 20 ‘Bis’

Priced from £300,000-350,000

One hundred and 10 years ago they were even more hung up on sporty performance in Barcelona than they were in Luton. But ever since King Alfonso XIII became a fan of Hispano-Suiza (he owned 30 during his reign), Spain’s premier cars also came with the bonus of royal kudos, as well as some sophisticated engineering. 

The important thing about this pretty blue four-seat sports tourer is the “Type 20 Bis” in its name. “Bis”, French for encore, means the car is powered by a “touring” version of an advanced racing engine with overhead cams and hemispherical combustion chambers. It made the Type 20 Bis a fast car for its day, ahead of its predecessor model, the Alfonso XIII (you guessed, named after the king) which was already one of the fastest cars around. 

The “Bis” spec also made it very rare: only around 20 cars were ever made for the factory and a few special clients. Survivors like this one are ultra-rare. The car was discovered in Corsica but its history prior to that remains a mystery. 

4. 1913 Vauxhall 25HP Prince Henry

Priced from £300,000-350,000

A 1960s barn-find to this Edwardian magnificence, and it’s all largely thanks to one man. That would be Ken Ball. He rescued this Prince Henry from ignomy 60 years ago and gave it the smart four-seater sports tourer bodywork you see here. In a delightful touch, Ken has offered to tell the new owner all about the car and its resurrection over lunch at his local in Ditchling, East Sussex.

Ken’s stories would not just be about rescuing this mighty beast from Vauxhall’s golden age but driving it too – including at the Brighton Speed Trials (he was class winner, 1963). The 25HP, after all, was no slouch. 

Its 4.0-litre engine developed around 60PS (45kW) which was a cut above the average, making it a contender in hillclimbs and reliability trials of the period. Its sporting legacy would reach peak sportiness with its successor of course, the Vauxhall 30/98, often cited as Britain’s first sports car. 

3. 1960 Austin-Healey 3000 Mk1 BN7

Priced from £350,000-450,000

One fast car, two very fast women. The combination of a works rally Healey and Pat Moss and Ann Wisdom in the Rome-Liege-Rome Rally was headline news in 1960. They won the event, considered Europe’s toughest, outright. Tough? Only 96 hours without a stop across Germany, Austria, Italy and into Yugoslavia. 

Never before had a British crew driving a British car won the marathon event. Never before had an all-female crew won a championship round. It was Pat and Ann’s finest hour and, says Bonhams, made “URX” the most famous Austin-Healey rally car of all time. 

Pat Moss (Sir Stirling Moss’s sister) loved her Austin-Healey so much no one else was allowed to drive it, unlike most works cars at that time. At the end of its career, Ann bought it from the factory for £500. Subsequent owners raced and rallied it, restored it (take a bow, JME Healeys) and entered it in all kinds of historic rallying events and shows, including earlier this year at an event at Gaydon – when it was driven there up the M40. Pat Moss would have approved.

2. 1999 Subaru Impreza Prodrive WRC

Pricded from £430,000-520,000

This car was built for the late Richard Burns, and at the time was the latest state-of-the-art rally weapon to emerge from Prodrive in Banbury to further cement the Subaru Impreza’s incredible place in WRC history.

Richard and navigator Robert Reid didn’t take long to show what they could do in the new car, winning a stage in the 2000 Monte Carlo Rally. At the end of the first day, the Burns/Reid Impreza was second overall, just behind Tommi Mäkinen. Extreme cold on the second day, however, saw ignition woes mean four of the top cars refuse to start – the Richard Burns Impreza among them. It wasn’t the end of the car’s career, for it went on to compete successfully in national rallying in France until 2011.

Today it would take more than a cold snap to hold it back after a five-year nut and bolt restoration, overseen by the enthusiast owner who bought it in 2018. And in its gleaming new Monte Carlo Rally livery, this 1990s rally icon certainly looks the part.

1. 1931 Bentley 8-Litre tourer

Priced at £550,000-650,000

"I have wanted to produce a dead silent 100mph car, and now I think we have done it." That’s WO Bentley talking at the launch in 1930 of the huge and hugely powerful 8-Litre. It was a true 100mph car – Autocar at the time squeezed 101mph out of it – which rather put its main rival, the Rolls-Royce Phantom II, in the shade. But only 100 8-Litre chassis were made before bankruptcy beckoned and Bentley was taken over by, you guessed, Rolls-Royce.

The car in the Bonhams sale didn’t always look as good as it does today. After a crash early in its life it served as a hack vehicle at a shipyard during the Second World War. But the sea air got to it then it was damaged in a fire. Believe it or not, the once-magnificent machine was cut up for scrap. 

In time a saviour came forward and the car was reconstructed with the Vanden Plas-style four-seater tourer body by H & H Coachworks that it wears today. It’s covered 2000 miles since restoration.