There might have been no NEC Classic Car Show this year – blame you-know-what for that – but the traditional auction did go ahead, in COVID-friendly online form. Silverstone Auctions ran the show over two days and, as usual for this sale, cars came in all shapes, sizes and prices, from a £3,000 Citroën Ami to half-million pound Aston Martin DB4 and Maserati 3500GT. In what was perhaps a sign of the times, the Ami sold but the Aston and Maserati didn’t…
Nevertheless almost eight out of 10 cars did sell, netting £8 million in total and leading Silverstone Auctions to hail it as a huge success, helped along by big interest in the sale of Stirling Moss memorabilia. Two of the biggest-ticket cars were a BMW M1 (£382,500) and a 1982 Renault 5 Turbo Group 4 racer (£337,500), while there was no shortage of interest in the multitudes of Merc SLs, fast Fords, BMW M3s and 911s at five-figure prices. Here are eight cars from the sale that stand out for us…
World’s most expensive 928? It would have to be up there, given you can pick one up for a fifth this price. Why so special? To 928 fans they are all special of course, but being one of 42 right-hand drive SE models with just 10,325 miles on the clock makes this black with black leather example stand out. With manual ‘box, an extra 10PS and other driver goodies, the 173mph, 0-62 in 5.3 seconds coupe is effectively a Club Sport edition. The auction house says it is in “spectacularly good condition,” as you might expect after being in the care of Hexagon Classics for the past few years.
If it was rarity you wanted you would have to go a long way to beat this. As a UK supplied car, the 300PS twin-turbo, all-wheel-drive Japanese coupe is one of just six that made it here officially before Mitsubishi pulled the sports car plug and went back to selling 4x4s. It’s done 35,000 miles, has lived in a heated garage for the past five years and was sold complete with its GTO registration plate, in recognition of the name aficionados know it by.
Another rarity from the same year, the Sport Spider was Renault’s race-inspired sportscar that is perhaps better remembered these days for the BTCC-supporting one-make UK Spider Cup where the likes of Jason Plato and Andy Priaulx did battle. But it was a road car too and in the 18 months or so before Renault cried enough and halted production, 1,635 Sport Spiders were made, 60 of which, including this one, came to the UK in right-hand-drive form. Recaro seats, stripped-back interior, adjustable pedals and lift-up doors provided plenty of raw sporting appeal, as did the 2.0-litre four from the Clio Williams – it boasted only 150PS (110kW) but the Sport Spider weighed in under a tonne.
You want to go electric and turn heads? What better than TopGear magazine’s 2011 Luxury Car of the Year, the Fisker Karma? At launch this dramatic-looking debut model from former Aston Martin design director Henrik Fisker’s new auto company was billed as the world’s first petrol-electric hybrid luxury car. It’s not quite like today’s hybrids – more a range-extender that you plug in – but for its day it was very innovative and everyone agreed very well engineered and built. And it could go: 0-60mph took 5.9 seconds thanks to the 400PS twin electric motors on the back axle, charged up by a 200PS petrol engine in the nose. This example, in the UK since 2014 and with 20,000 miles showing, has solar panels in the roof – to keep the air-con running and the cabin cool when you leave the car parked up in the sun. It’s a very Californian problem…
You surely do not get more classic Italian supercar bangs for your buck than this. This is an early Pantera, without the spoilers and extended guards of later cars, and we reckon its pure Tom Tjaarda-penned lines are at their best, especially when as here finished in blazing Arancione a Molla orange. This is a matching numbers car which means that behind the seats is its original 5.7-litre lump of Ford Cleveland V8 in HO (high output) form, its unburstable 365PS hooked up to an all-synchro ZF five-speed ‘box. With 170mph and 0-60mph in around five seconds, this is still a fast car. Later Panteras (and the model lasted until 1993) were faster but it’s the purer narrow-body early ones like this that get the classic vote.
Here is another Italian supercar snip from the NEC Classic sale. The badge might say Fiat but the body is pure Giugiaro (when he was at Bertone) and the engine a glorious V6 from Ferrari. The coupe is an early 2.0-litre Fiat Dino, powered for homologation reasons by Ferrari’s Formula 2 four-cam engine of the day, with the 8,000rpm rev limit to prove it. The engine may be the same but with its front engine/rear-drive layout and 2+2 cabin the Fiat Dino could not be more different from its more famous mid-engined compatriot from Maranello. All that plus matching numbers and a bare metal restoration 10 years ago for £35k? Someone must be pleased…
For almost the same money as the Fiat Dino you could have bagged yourself a V6 coupe homologation special from the same era, but from Germany, not Italy – the Ford Capri. A bit like Fiat with the Dino, Ford needed to homologate its sporty coupe for racing but there was no really hot Capri to suit – until the boffins in Cologne came up with the RS2600, a full-on performance model for road and track whose newly fuel-injected motor delivered class-leading performance for 1971. This car now with its doubtlessly very proud new owner is thought to be one of three RS2600 development prototypes.
And finally, the perfect period home-from-home to park up in the paddock at the Festival of Speed presented by Mastercard or Revival next year. It’s an Airstream, one of the last to feature the signature aluminium body before construction moved to fibreglass in the 1990s. It is also believed to be one of the largest Airstreams in the UK, pulled along by a 7.4-litre Chevy V8 and chock-a-block with polished aluminium fixings, bespoke carpentry, soft leather, all mod cons and a double bed surrounded by wrapround windows so you don’t miss a second of that Sussex sunrise. A rolling work-of-art and glamorous camping personified, says Silverstone Auctions, and we agree.
Images courtesy of Silverstone Auctions.
For Sale
Porsche
928
De Tomaso
Pantera
Mitsubishi
3000GT
Airstream
Fiat
Dino
Ford
Capri
Fisker
Karma
Renault
Sport Spider