Market highlight
Auction house to offer Mccartney’s Lamborghini at Goodwood sale
Why Paul Mccartney’s old Lamborghini 400GT turned our head this month – will you be the one to buy it?
‘The Beatle bought it just a week before clearing off on the group’s mystic month in India’
This would be an interesting car even if the first owner hadn’t been Paul Mccartney. It was one of four Lamborghini 400GTS that were converted to right-hand drive in 1967 for the UK market by Hoopers. The Beatle bought and registered it on February 16 1968, just a week before clearing off on the group’s famous mystic month in India then coming back to create the White Album.
None of that appears to have had an adverse effect on Mccartney’s enthusiasm for the Lambo because he kept it until 1971, well into his solo career. The car made an appearance in the 1996 BBC TV series, Anthology of the Beatles.
Several changes of owner later, in 1979 it came into the hands of motoring writer and vintage Vauxhall expert Nic Portway. He kept the car for 32 years and looked after it well, including a repaint, rebuilding the gearbox and rear suspension and fitting a set of new Borrani wire wheels.
Then at Bonhams’ Goodwood Festival of Speed sale in July 2011, with just over 45,000 miles on the clock, the impressively original 400GT was sold for £122,500. That sum that looks remarkably cheap by today’s standards, and indeed seemed to include none of the usual premium for having been owned by a Beatle – in fact it was bang-on for a mint 400GT.
The car has since changed hands privately and has just returned from the Far East to be included in Bonhams Goodwood Members Meeting sale on March 18. In the intervening years that mileage has increased to only 45,454, so it appears to have been displayed rather than driven.
The price is a little different this time around too, with an estimate of £400,000-£500,000. That does add a solid chunk of ‘Mccartney factor’ – the matching value in the 2018 ‘mint’ column of the Classic Cars price guide is £325,000, but given Sir Paul’s Aston Martin DB5 recently made more than £1.3m, at a million pounds less it doesn’t feel too outlandish.