A touch of humour up for sale
Two cars steeped in British comedy folklore are being auctioned this weekend. Comedian Eric Morecambe’s Jensen Interceptor, the car in which he had a heart attack while driving just two months after buying it, is expected to sell for around NZ$200,000 when it sells to the highest bidder in Birmingham.
Demanding just as much interest — if not a similar fee — is a genuine Only Fools and Horses Reliant Regal three-wheel van that starred in a 2001 Christmas special episode.
Both cars will go under the hammer at the Silverstone Auctions NEC Classic Motor Show sale scheduled for tonight and tomorrow night (NZ time).
1968 Jensen Interceptor
In September 1968, Morecambe handed over $8520 for this MkI Interceptor coupe — roughly double the price of a Jaguar E-Type and more than an Aston Martin DB6 at the time.
While it might not be worth the same as its two British counterparts today, Silverstone Auctions still thinks the classic will sell for more than 20 times its original value. It’s expected to swap hands for between $170,000 and $208,000.
The comedian was driving towards Leeds when he had his first heart attack in November 1968 at the age of 42, after appearing at a variety club with Ernie Wise.
Four years later, during an interview with Michael Parkinson, he recounted the near-fatal moment, in which he had to pull to the roadside at 1am to ask a member of the public — a Yorkshireman with a broad accent — to drive him to Leeds Infirmary so he could check himself in.
The punchline was the Yorkshireman asking for the comedian’s autograph while he lay on a stretcher.
Nick Whale, SIlverstone Auctions owner, tracked the car to Belgium in 2014, finding it in a ‘sad-looking’ state years after it was released from Morecambe’s estate following his death in 1984.
Believed to be one of less than 30 of the 923 Series I Interceptors in existence today, Whale purchased the car for $53,773. Now fully restored by UK-based Jensen specialists, it’s almost quadrupled in value.
Nick said: “It’s a great car to drive. We went to enormous trouble to preserve as much of the original car as possible.
“This specifically includes the dashboard and steering wheel as I wanted to enjoy the same special view and experience the same atmosphere in the driving seat as my all-time comedy hero.”
1968 Reliant Regal
This is the genuine Reliant Regal three-wheeler used in episode 62 of the Only Fools and Horses series.
Registration number BWC 94F appeared in the episode “If They Could See Us Now” — the first of three Christmas specials to air after the turn of the century. It was viewed by 21.35 million people on December 25 2001.
The 1968 car, acquired from a Bonhams auction in 2008, has been reconditioned to celebrate its famed appearance and also has a few unusual retrofit features.
It has a reconditioned engine, new gearbox, keyless ignition, DVD player and cassette radio. That all sounds pretty normal so far, right?
But it also has a smoke machine, which emits plumes from the exhaust when a valve is opened on the dashboard.