‘Every car in the garage has a feature that makes it a modern classic’
When Rob and David Kendall found themselves in a position to acquire a few classics, two generations of car obsession bloomed into a diverse collection of speed machines
‘We developed some rules – it has to make us smile when driving, and when opening the garage door’
Rob and David are father and son, both of them chartered accountants by profession. If you think this has little to do with cars, Rob begs to differ.
‘My father was a chassis engineer. and he once told me, “You want to be an accountant, they run the industry!”’ At this point, Rob’s life-long interest in cars was already leading to weekend and holiday jobs at the petrol pumps or in garages, but a diversion to the straight and narrow route of accountancy meant there was some spare income to mess about with MGS. Indeed, when Rob’s son David reached driving age, Dave says his father made him have an MGB as a first car.
‘We had an MGB LE, an RV8, a TF Trophy and eventually an MGC GT,’ says Dave. Then one day I asked my dad why we were bothering because I never really grasped the MG thing – they’re not fast, and you don’t know whether you’ll get home in them.’
He wasn’t always in a position to offer advice. Dave reckons he had around 25 cars through his twenties, with highlights including an obnoxiously tuned Mini set up for hillclimbing and a Citroën AX GT. But it wasn’t until 2014, when he went to look at a VW Golf GTI MKI convertible on a whim, that things began to develop.
‘I bought it and my dad said he’d go halves with me. And that was the start of it all, really.’
Perhaps they were both growing up. Certainly, as Rob began to look towards retirement and Dave found success in his own career, the idea of parking the money in the garage rather than in the bank seemed increasingly attractive.
‘We quickly developed a couple of rules,’ says Dave. ‘First, the car had to put a smile on your face when driving. If not, we weren’t having it. But then we added another – does it make you smile as soon as you open the garage door?’
Aston Martin V8
This is an early member of the collection, indeed one of only two that made the leap from daily driver to weekend toy. ‘It was my business partner’s car at our firm,’ says Rob. ‘I think it scared him a little, but for whatever reason, it had only done 3000 miles by the time it was six years old in 2012. David had become self-employed by then and bought the car with that tiny mileage.’
‘I changed the wheels and the lights and added a Larini exhaust, and I took the mileage up to 16,000 using it as my main car,’ says Dave. ‘I decided it was crazy to justify the upgrade to a new one for three times the price when in my opinion the new Vantage sounds like an AMG and feels too much like a muscle car. This one is still Aston-like and sophisticated, but it has Bluetooth and all the other modern stuff. Thanks to a good network of independents in the Midlands, it’s cheaper to look after than a 911 too.’
Honda NSX
‘I’d followed these for ages,’ says Rob. ‘The values looked to be rising but a manual UK car seemed to command a big premium.’ Just how big, Rob discovered during a fraught buying experience. ‘We found it at a dealer and agreed to buy it on condition some work was carried out by a specialist. That took a while, and during that time the values rose further and the dealer tried to raise the price.’ After a wrangle, the car came home and did not disappoint.
‘It’s the best-handling car I’ve ever driven,’ says Dave. ‘Not the fastest in a straight line but I bet it would be the quickest in our collection round a track.’ Rob agrees, ‘You sit right in it; the car fits you like a glove. It’s not loud… but you get a lot of looks, and it’s totally docile. The only downside is that parts are very hard to get.’
Peugeot 205GTI 1.9
As we stroll around the garage and the driveway, both Rob and Dave mention the rare occasions where they have bought cars unseen, either online or over the phone. They’ve been very savvy – or rather lucky – and escaped many likely mishaps, but Rob admits to a bit of disaster with the little Pug, a car that Rob adored in the Eighties but never owned.
Rob explains, ‘I bought it from Jersey. The previous owner was a doctor and the service book was full of main dealer stamps, so we got it sent unaccompanied on the boat to Portsmouth.’
Dave recalls the moment they saw it, ‘Dad drove it round from Customs and it was a nail! We drove it straight to the bodyshop… it really wasn’t as described. At least it was mechanically mint and unmodified inside – no speaker holes in the parcel shelf!’
Now it’s restored, painted and re-trimmed in the right factory cloth, it just needs driving.
Porsche 911 (996) Turbo
Both father and son have up-to-date Porsches as daily drivers. They’ve also dipped their toes into previous generations several times, progressing from a Cayman S to an air-cooled 964 Carrera 4, a 997 Carrera 4S, then a 52-plate 996 Turbo similar to this example in Arctic Silver – but crucially, not a manual.
‘We sold it and took our time to find this Lapis Blue one,’ says Rob. ‘It has the X50 performance pack that delivers another 30bhp over the standard 420bhp, and it’s got the factory aero kit too.’ Rob describes it as the ultimate day-to-day supercar. ‘It’s not losing money, it doesn’t break down and it’s incredibly practical for something that’ll do 190mph.’
Dave agrees, saying he’s had the shopping in the front boot and the kid in the back seat, but for all that it’s not quite perfect – for Dave anyway. ‘It’s such a well-engineered sports car but it lacks some of the passion and emotion of the Ferrari.’
Ah yes, the Ferrari. You can’t miss it.
Ferrari F430 Spider
It might not be painted Rosso Corsa but the F430 has an immense presence in the metal. Partly that is down to size; parked among cars of previous generations, it seems huge, typical of 21st-century transport. However, for Rob and especially Dave, the Ferrari represents something of a pinnacle.
‘We’d been through much of the collector car journey and what you see here in the garage is just a snippet of it, but we had never experienced the full Italian supercar thing,’ says Dave. ‘We’d been on the Ferrari Owners’ Club stand at the Silverstone Classic and decided to do some research. The 430 was the last conventional manual transmission Ferrari ever made and cars with this gearbox are rarer than the Scuderia. That open gearlever gate – I think that makes it a modern classic. Every car in the garage has a feature, somewhere, that makes it a modern classic.’
Dave says the car has certainly delivered the Ferrari driving experience he was seeking but Rob isn’t keen.
‘I don’t like driving it, it’s too raw for me. As you would expect it’s not sensible car ownership either. You can spend £15k-£20k a year looking after it and doing next to no miles – one £20 oil seal led to a £6k, engine-out job and a new clutch. The roof needed fixing, and we were quoted £4k for the part alone!’
Ford Escort RS Turbo
If you’re noticing a pattern in this collection – hot hatches and supercars – you’re spot on. For Rob and David Kendall, their adventures in the classic car market are fulfilling two kinds of dreams – the supercars no-one thinks they’ll ever own, but also the accessible performance heroes they wish they’d had in period. And if the 205GTI was more one of Rob’s fantasies, this one is very much one of Dave’s, who explains, ‘I found this one three years ago. When I bought it we already had several other fast Fords from the same era in our stable, but an Escort RS Turbo Series 1 is special – I’ve never been in something that gets so much attention… You get endless honks and waves from lads in their vans and lorries who remember the RS Turbo S1 in the same light.’
After struggling to find parts, Dave brought the car up to scratch with a new dashboard and other improvements to return this Eighties performance legend to standard. And the view from the senior generation? Rob is politely agnostic about it.
Mercedes Brabus SL V12 S
Sitting on the gravel outside is a glossy black Mercedes SL, inert but sinister, rather like a crocodile resting in the sun. The Brabus logo and a few V12 badges warn you it has a very serious set of teeth. ‘I’d been looking at SL55 AMGS, but it felt like there were too many of them about,’ says Rob. But then I found this factory Brabus V12 S owned by a Portuguese guy who had a bodyshop in Acton – it’s one of just 12 in the world.’
Rob explains how these cars started life as SL600S, went off to Brabus for an engine rebuild – from 5.5 litres to 6.3 – and to be strapped with twin turbos and many other modifications, totalling £160k including the cost of the original car. ‘It makes 730bhp and 1026lb ft of torque,’ says Rob. ‘There’s too much power. I do wonder if the traction control is working… it spins the rear wheels at 100mph, so I’m not tempted by track days in this car.’
Renault Sport Clio Williams
Once again, a day at a car show inspired some happy-go-lucky investment. Rob explains, ‘We’d been at the NEC Classic Motor Show. We were browsing the adverts while having coffee, found this and bought it on the way home.’
It wasn’t quite a clean escape because the car turned out to need lots of bodywork, including a sill change, paint on both sides, plus an ABS pump and cambelt change. Rob continues, ‘We had the stickers in the door shuts made up by a signwriter to keep it looking correct, but we’ve never got as much from it as we should – it was trapped inside for a year while building work continued on the garage.’ Such are the perils of an expanding collection. But if you’ve got a 205GTI, why not get the only French hatch of the Nineties that could possibly eclipse it?
The others
The Kendall’s collection is not a static one, and although there is a core of cars that you suspect will be kept, others often join or depart – sometimes for eccentric reasons. They quote storage at home as being the biggest constraint, and often have to use external facilities as an overflow.
‘I had a thing for an old R107 Mercedes SL after seeing a red one in Dallas,’ says Dave. ‘But when I went looking, I preferred the blue colour and we bought a mint example.’
Rob’s vote for ‘most fun for the money’ goes to his £5500 2006 Mini Cooper S Works, bought after a recommendation in the pages of Classic Cars from Quentin Willson. He also has a 2001 Cooper Sport 500, one of the run-out specials from the end of original Mini production. ‘It’s a sentimental “have” – I owned a couple of basic ones when I was young and once bought one for £75 for my wife.’
In a space at the end of the drive, next to Rob’s Mini, is a car that he’s owned since long before the collection began.
‘Dave found this Jaguar XKR convertible in 2006, when it was 18 months old. It was my daily for five years. Dave wouldn’t let me have a standard one, it had to be the supercharged XKR. It’s the carbonfibre edition and it’s a great tourer. My wife and I used it for a trip to Lake Garda and were going to allow two and a half days to drive home – in the end we did it in one.’
The keepers
Getting the Kendalls to commit to selecting just one hypothetical keeper each is too much – their collection is very much about having different tools for different jobs. So David chooses his Golf GTI and the Aston Martin V8 as two of his top three, while Rob goes for the 205GTI and his faithful Jaguar XKR. But the Honda NSX is the only mutually agreeable choice in their respective shortlists, so we’ll take that as their final answer.
‘It’s not about the financials,’ says Rob. ‘But a bit of appreciation means that despite some large bills, we’ve been able to own and experience around 30 modern classics for neutral cost over the last seven years.’
Dave’s view is also separated from any investment concerns. ‘Why do I do it? I get to spend more time with my dad. We speak to each other most days about it. We’re always on the lookout for the next one and we have plenty more cars to tick off the list!’