TONYBrown

In France

More auction news and prices

THERE ARE TIMES IN THE YEAR WHEN THE auction market is highly charged with interesting cars, and all of a sudden it seems that we have a steady run of comparatively basic fodder. Well, I suppose that the sale of any collectible Jaguar is of interest, but you get my drift. It would not excite great interest if all I was reporting was the constant sale of rather iffy S3 XJ6s to be blunt. But amongst the stones there are always diamonds, to coin a phrase.

The first up was something pretty rare to see, a lovely, but rather sinister-looking 'MkIV' sold by Historics. The first ever car to carry the Jaguar name, it was a rare car being a RHD model, since with steel rationed, and the export drive in full flow the USA was the targeted market. Having had a restoration at the beginning of the century it was estimated at £27-32,000, but steamed way past that to sell for £38,000. Someone got a rare and beautiful car there. I keep harking back to the XJ-S market, and two very contrasting results have cropped up. H&H sold a Regency Red Celebration Convertible for £24,750, but Historics sold a stunning 10,000 mile example, resplendent in Turquoise with Cream interior, for an equally stunning £44,800. Both lovely cars, but the cheaper one had 85,000 on the clock, which frankly isn’t much for a Jaguar engine. Was one worth £20,000 more than the other? I don’t think so.

We all know that, with very few exceptions, the quickest way to lose money is to buy a new car. I remember two brothers, clients of mine, who bought two new Rolls Royce Shadows in 1982, and within eighteen months had sold them and gone back to far more reliable MercedesBenz. A loss of £100,000 was incurred. Or to put it another way, three five bedroom detached houses where I lived in Leicestershire. But someone has to buy new, or we wouldn’t have these lovely auctions to buy a bargain. Certain names are often associated with specific models, and if one says 'Guy Broad' immediately one thinks of the range of XKs. They own them, they race them and they sell them. Here is one of their restored cars, taken back to bare metal, repainted in Royal Blue and mechanically brought up to a standard suitable for today’s roads. Alloy radiator, five-speed box. The demerits are a change from LHD to RHD and non-matching numbers, but it is a stunning car, with only 30 miles on the clock (how on earth can someone buy a car and only drive it to the pub and back a couple of times, then sell it?) and was hammered for £95,200.

Far Left Stunning and in demand. This low mileage Celebration Convertible XJ-S sold recently for £44,800.

Higher mileage than the Turquoise car, this XJ-S was a bargain.

I am pretty sure that the seller incurred a loss of at least £25,000 here, and equally, someone got a beautiful tourer.

The replica market is alive and well, although with authorities now watching more carefully to see if the vehicle is legal and has passed the tests one has to be careful out there. Some auctioneers are still being economical with the truth, and not declaring to the unwitting punter that while the car looks like an S.S. Jaguar 100, feels like an S.S. Jaguar 100 and smells like one, it is actually an XJ6 on the documents.

The result when the new owner tries to register it can be the withdrawal of approval and the requirement to put the car through government examination. I am pleased to say that in this case I understand the auctioneer did, on the rostrum, announce that with this car there was a risk. No matter, and fully forewarned, the Suffolk S.S. Jaguar 100 sailed gaily past the estimate and well into the distance, fetching a whopping £70,000 including commission.

I follow the Ian Cooling auctions of Jaguar memorabilia and ephemera, and recently discussed an auction coming up which in both our opinions contained quite a number of items which, to say the least, were questionable.

For example, there was a leather desk blotter advertised as belonging to Sir William Lyons. I asked the auction house for provenance, and their reply was ludicrous. “The seller will write you a letter stating that it was his”. Yeah, I think I’ll pass that lot. But, H&H sold a superb collection of brochures, including rare copies of the launch of the XK100 two litre for £368. Not that dear really. Then again, someone must have liked a rather appalling (to me anyway) E-Type pedal car. £322 to you sir.

Reliant or brochures? Take your choice.

For some light relief and not to do with Jaguar, but to prove that provenance and stardom makes a great difference, I give you one of the three Reliant vans bought by BBC television for T.I.T.S - or Trotter’s Independent Traders to you. You could either have had the lovely 'MkIV', or the Reliant for virtually the same money. It takes all kinds of people to make the world go round.

The Howey Paradox

YES, HE WAS THE STAR OF A previous edition, and his former C-Type is featured in this one, but the enigmatic character who was Captain John Edwards Presgrave Howey resounded heavily with our readers who asked for more.

So we went to Melbourne to find his family's mostly unrecorded history. An irony is that although the Howeys were a powerful farming and coal mining dynasty from the north of England, all members appear to have been immensely private. It was written that our man, Johnie, was painfully shy.

In Victoria the Howey name can been seen in the towns of Gisborne and Pakenham plus the Melbourne CBD because the family had an early masterplan for newly established Australia. Hugh, at 21, arrived in Sydney with staff and hoards of cash in 1826, and married into the Minchin family the same year. They created the town of Minchinbury, and Hugh bought a 1000 acre farm there. His sister and her Scottish husband followed, and created a 1000 acre farm at Wollondilly near Liverpool. Hugh too bought 1000 acres there for a second farm before setting his sights on