Flight museum’s buying flurry
H&H’S £2.4m result driven by higher-end entries and Herald record
H&H’s Duxford sale would rightly have had cause for celebration as several lots pulled in six-figure sums and the catalogue’s cover car took highest-price accolades.
Summer is traditionally the time when punters are happy to open their wallets and dig deep and H&H’S sale was a key part of an auction flurry, with both Bonhams’ Festival of Speed and Barons holding sales two days later and Brightwells wrapping up its timed-online two-dayer the day after.
Clearly with a quartet of sales punters had much to choose from but the H&H Classics oering clearly struck a chord. Top price was the £393,750 that bought a Ferrari 365GT that had been re-bodied to ape a pontoon fender Testa Rossa. It was bought by a UK collector.
Still in six figures a 1960 Jaguar XK150 S 3.8 drophead showed the premiums generated by the S derivatives and it was away for a highly pleasing £163,375, a tad ahead of the £158,500 that bought a 1965 Mercedes-benz 300SE cabriolet.
Duxford wasn’t entirely about sixfigure sums, as a 1957 Austin FX3 at £9562 showed. A 1966 MGB GT made £10,167 and a 1949 Triumph Roadster £12,938. This was also a sale with the accolade of oering not one but two Triumph Herald 13/60 convertibles, one from television series Last Of The Summer Wine, which made £15,600, but television stardom didn’t make it the dearer one; a fully restored 1970 example went on to make £20,250 (see our news story, page 6).
Three from four 1960s Austinhealey 3000s sold, with a 1962 car making £63,000, a 1966 model £51,750 and a 1963 model at £37,125.
Away from Blighty and needing plenty of work, a 1958 Mercedes-benz 190SL still made £38,250 and a very smart same-year 190 saloon £19,688. In the modern classics segment the big engines were where the bargains could be found, possibly as a result of rising fuel costs. A 1998 Bentley Arnage Green Label sold for £12,712, a 1996 MG RV8 for £27,000 and a 2002 Mercedes-benz CLK500 £3150.
Grossing £2.4 million here was a good eort that was suitably well rewarded, although clearly some lots, including an early Excalibur and two pre-war Sunbeam saloons, weren’t anywhere near the top of the Duxford punters’ shopping lists.
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