Auction View

Extensively driven by Colin McRae during Prodrive’s famously thorough testing and development programme, and rallied by Valentino Rossi in 1999, Subaru Impreza WRC 97 chassis 001 was hammered away for a more than forecast £230,625 at Epsom. Built by Prodrive in 1996, the works rally team development two-door Scooby was rallied from Greece to Ireland before returning to Prodrive’s workshops for restoration in 2009. A 2001 Impreza P1 limited edition with 68,230 miles on it also sold, making £18,000 with premium, the lower estimate. As more younger classics are selling, it seems, than older ones, for which there are more vendors than potential buyers. Among earlier classics, although a better than expected £249,700 was paid for a 1966 Aston Martin DB6 Vantage manual non-runner that had been stored since the 1990s, a 1964 DB5 ran out of bids at an insufficient £670,000 and only 50 per cent of the cars on the carpet eventually sold.

This is a reflection, I would suggest, of a combination of political and economic uncertainty following the inconclusive General Election and too many cars coming to market in more auctions than ever before, but fewer of them selling. Even though some record prices are being paid for certain models, the market continued to correct during May according to four out of five Historic Automobile Group International Indices.

The headline HAGI Top Index declined 0.52 per cent month on month and prices by 3.83 per cent year to date. Prices paid for Ferraris went down by 0.24 per cent in May and are 2.17 per cent down since January. Although the Porsche monitoring HAGI P has fallen the most, down 3.62 per cent last month and 7.33 per cent in 2017, so far.

Only the HAGI MBCI charting classic Mercedes transactions rose 2.15 per cent in May, their prices up 6.86 per cent in the year to date.

‘This is a reflection of political and economic uncertainty’