Auction abuse
As I’ve reported previously, it’s not often something interesting gets put into a runof-the-mill auction these days. Unusual old vehicles usually end up in specialist classic auctions or being sold online.
I’d class the recently obsolete Jaguar XK range as something a bit interesting. Noting one in a general part-exchange sale, I went to take a closer look.
The car was finished in a silver/gold colour with a black leather interior. It needed a full, detailed valet, no question, but then the car was nine years old and with 98,500 miles on the clock.
But what really crabbed the car was the way it’d been treated at the block. It was literally parked into the backend of a Focus C-MAX. My boss got into the C-MAX to push it forward as the Jaguar’s nose-cone bumper was distorting due to the pressure. Once separated, we could see the bumper had been damaged by the stop-when-youfeel-the-bump parking. The lashing eye from the Ford had punched a hole in the lower part of the bumper, while the top half had lost its paint.
Inside wasn’t much better. The boot trim had been ripped out and cast aside in an effort to locate the battery, presumably to enable jump-starting. Trim under the passenger side of the dashboard had been pulled down, no doubt to find the fusebox and replace a blown fuse from misguided jumpstarting under the bonnet. The key was wedged in the centre console, but the electrics had died, meaning the windows had all parked slightly down, letting in rain. Finally, in an effort to remove the registration plate, somebody had just pulled at the thing instead of unscrewing it from the bespoke surround.
The car was originally bought from a franchised main dealer for £60,000, but what should have attracted bids of anything up to £10,000 looked like a major liability. Unsurprisingly, it was never going to sell at that auction house.
A week later, I was collecting a car from the ‘out’ yard of the auction house when the Jag reappeared in a dramatic fashion. The wilful abuse of the old cat continued as the yard hands literally power-slid the thing around the yard before parking it up.
As it turned out, BCA collected it. They valeted it, photographed it, presented it well and subsequently sold it for sensible money straight away. But it shouldn’t have taken another auction to sell such a highly desirable car.