Ministerial transport
▶ While searching out photos for a feature I was writing for another magazine recently, I uncovered some of a particular Volvo 940 I bought some years back. It was a main dealer partexchange from a Norfolk-based Volvo main dealer, and pretty typical of the sort of thing I was buying at the time; twelve-years-old, long-term ownership, lots of history and generally OK.
The V5C, however, contained a surprise; I recognised the name as that of a former cabinet minister and further research conformed that at the time of buying the Volvo, the chap in question was actually Minister of Transport! He was ‘slightly famous’ for a few years in the 1990s rather than a ‘celebrity’, but did have the ultimate politician’s accolade at the time – a ‘Spitting Image’ puppet; albeit as the man with a bag over his head.
Anyway, there were two pieces of ‘evidence’ on the car itself; one was, under the rear loadspace, the shell of a then-state-of-the-art Ministry of Defence ‘Talos’ security system – all innards had, however, been removed. Additionally, the service history came not in the form of stamps in a book, but a print-out from the dealership; at the time this was normal with companyowned cars but that was the only time I’d ever seen it with a privatelyowned one. It was, though, clearly a replacement for other documentation that wasn’t being passed on.
Looking back, it was probably unrealistic to expect this to make the car any more valuable – we weren’t exactly talking Victoria Beckham or
Rod Stewart and I know traders who’ve bought cars once owned by both these without knowing it – and sold them for a premium as a result. But it did at least provide inspiration for a slightly different ebay description – a car that was bought for his own use by the Minister of Transport at the time.
Unsurprisingly though the buying public remained unimpressed – the car sold for normal price to a normal owner wanting a normal everyday car, and appears to have been scrapped four years (but 60,000 miles) later.