129 rovers up for grabs? struth!
Amazing collection of Rover ‘P’-models about to go to auction Down Under
An extraordinary collection of 129 Rovers is going under the hammer in Australia.
One man’s private collection, mainly comprising of P4s, P5s, and P6s will be up for sale with Queanbeyan, New South Wales-based auction house Slattery on 18 November.
The cars are being auctioned off following the death of their owner, Dr Vincent Flynn.
Topping the bill are several immaculate P5B Coupés and a stream of increasingly rare Rover P4 ‘Cyclops’ models, and there’s an entire separate auction dedicated just to the spares. About a quarter of the cars are best described as ‘needing work’. Many think Flynn was hoping to preserve them for posterity.
As well as the 129 Rovers, there are several American classics, ranging from Cadillacs to Buicks.
The cars were collected over a lifetime by Flynn, a scholar of Indian history and a graduate of the University of Sydney. He was also a philanthropist who never married and established an active private charitable trust directed to the relief of poverty and education of disadvantaged persons of Indian descent.
Australian Rover enthusiast James Moule says: ‘Many Australian Rover fans sold their cars to Dr Flynn over the years. Now we know where all the Cyclops in Australia are!
‘Dr Flynn was quite the character. I first met him at Sydney University in the early 1970s – and he was Australia’s foremost Sanskrit expert, even by his own admission. ‘It’s good to know that his collection of Rovers is about to come back into circulation for us in Australia.’
Julia Hirschberg, marketing coordinator for Slattery says: ‘ The auction has been widely advertised in the US and Asia, as well as Australia. There’s been lots of interest – and a big contributing factor to that is that all the cars are remarkably well preserved.’
Fancy buying one to bring it home to the UK? Slattery accepts online bidding. ❚ www.slatteryauctions.com.au