James Ruppert
One famous owner
Beckham paid extra for leather, a CD player and big alloys
Used cars usually cost X. There are all sorts of mitigating factors, such as mileage and condition, which we could call Y. Meanwhile, any number of other oddities can cause a spike in a motor’s retail value. The oddest one of all is a famous previous owner. We’ll call that one Z.
I recently found myself on the radio chatting about why Her Majesty the Queen’s Rolls-royce is expected to make £2 million at auction. There’s no logical explanation for that, except that the addition of a well-known name to a V5 in our celebrity-obsessed era makes quite a difference.
We’ve mentioned footballers’ cars recently; David Beckham is a serial sports car owner. For some time, his ex-motors have been the staple of the promoted classified ad and auction circuit. I’m not sure of the whereabouts of the 1995 Ford Escort Mexico he bought off Ryan Giggs for about £6000, but it is certainly worth more than that now. There was also a dull Volkswagen Golf Mk3 and a sponsored company car in the shape of a Honda Prelude. He even paid extra for leather, a CD player and bigger alloys, apparently. You can look up all the Porsches, Bentleys and Ferraris, but I thought the early ones were the most interesting. Potentially they could be easier to track down – and cheaper.
Sellers of the posher stuff often don’t reveal who the owner was unless you pester them or go through the vetting process required when you see the words ‘price on application’ in an ad. I did find a 1986 Ferrari 328 GTS owned by Hollywood producer Jerry Bruckheimer, on sale for £125,000 and currently in New Zealand. Not sure he’s celebrity enough to justify the premium, though. Prices usually bump around £100k.
I’m old enough to remember ‘female impersonator’ Danny La Rue. He had once owned a lovely 1971 Mercedes-benz 300 SEL that had been restored and well looked after. This was an auction lot and the predicted sale price was £18k-£22k, which seemed easily achievable. In the end, it went for £33,750. In this instance, though, it was all about the car rather than the largely forgotten celebrity owner.
It’s important to call up any dealer citing a famous previous owner to find out what proof they have to back up the claim. I had a few protracted and quite boring conversations to establish why a 2014 Mercedes SL350 AMG Sport that may have belonged to someone on telly was too far north of £30k for comfort.
So the algebra of used-car buying really is a simple ABC – as long as you avoid the a Z-list celebrity ones, which will only make the purchase unnecessarily expensive.