So many cars, so much pleasure

they’re big and bloated…”

Being such a single-minded restorer and collector surely posed issues in your married life?

Cass smiles. His wife, “Twinks”, passed away about five years ago, but she was quite happy living with this petrolhead: “She would always say she knew where I was – and I was in the garage, not at the golf club or in the pub… ”

He is happy that his son Robert has inherited his love for classic cars: he points to the body shell of an Alfa GT from the 70s, which his son is in the process of restoring. I am envious: that Alfa was one of the cars I first fell in love with, much as Henry did with that very first Austin-Healey he saw.

And, he knows that his cars have been an excellent investment. Even though his vehicles are top end cars, he is gratified to see that the market for older cars has been picking up, especially in the last five years, as people start to realise they represent not only a glimpse of a simpler, perhaps more innocent, time; but that they are also an inflation-proof investment.

“I could sit and look at computer print-outs and see my money growing in a bank or on the stock market. But these cars give me far more pleasure than that ever would…”