£200k for a load of pedal cars? That’s pushing it...
Retired garage owner set to sell collection built over 50 years
IT’S as impressive a collection of vehicles as any owned by a flash footballer with cash to spare, but with one significant difference…
They are all children’s toy pedal cars, lovingly acquired and restored over nearly half a century by retired garage owner David Worrow, 71.
With an estimated total value of £200,000, the 85 vintage models form what is thought to be the biggest private collection of its kind in the world.
It includes Rolls-Royces, Bugattis, Jaguars and Bentleys, as well as an armoured car, a First World War biplane and a pedal car designed to look like a boat.
Mr Worrow had begun collecting and restoring Jaguar E-Types when he saw a pedal version at a car show at a country house in the early 1970s and decided he had to buy it.
He went on to collect as many Jaguar models as he could, before widening the field to all pedal cars. He also built a dehumidified showroom next to his home near Chiverton, Devon, to preserve and display them in.
But now he is selling the collection at auction because ‘the fun was in finding them and restoring them, rather than having them sit there’. Mr Worrow added: ‘I think it is the boy in us which explains the attraction – they take you back to your childhood.
‘I’ve enjoyed the collection but I’ve had them sitting in my showroom for so long I’ve just got bored of them, so it seems the right time to sell them.’ The cars are being sold by Humbert and Ellis auctioneers, of Towcester, Northamptonshire, on September 8.
Highlights include a Bugatti Type 35 with an electric motor, estimated to be worth £6,500, and a Silver E-Type Jaguar that Mr Worrow built himself (£7,500).