Going, Going, Gone. Now what?
The Big Day had arrived. Off I went, up to the hurricanelashed wilds of the Lake District for my cousin Mike’s wedding. Oh, and down in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, my Peugeot was up for sale. At exactly the same time. With my phone on silent in my suit pocket, a copy of the latest price guide back at the hotel and Russ Smith standing by in ACA’S auction room to send a text once the hammer fell, I took my place in the little farmhouse chapel in Lorton. Would the phone buzz audibly between one ‘I do’ and the next? What’s the etiquette for checking your phone during a marriage service?
In my head, I’d speculatively spent the money already. If it scraped its lower £1500 estimate, I’d get another MR2. If it made £5k or more, I’d look at Lotus Excels (go to page 88 to see why). If the sort of people paying £15k for 205Gtis really got their teeth into the 405, I’d seriously start looking at C4 Corvettes, but I knew that was a long shot for my 126,000-miler.
In the end, the phone went off before the bride-to-be arrived and the price – £2000 – presented a conundrum. After vendor’s commission at 7% and the £75 entry fee, that left nearly double my initial outlay on the 405 and, adding on a few other bits of money I’m owed, it meant I had £3500 to spend on my next classic. Not enough for a Lotus but, because I’m not looking for a daily driver, I can be a bit more adventurous than a third MR2. I also fancy another glassfibre-bodied classic – sanding down door bottoms and wheelarches and worrying about floors falling through is a tedious and avoidable exercise in a country where it rains a lot. Even on wedding days.
I keep a little notebook with a record of all the cars I’ve driven and genuinely found hard to fault. I dug this out, and worked my way through it alongside our price guide, also bearing in mind kit cars and low-volume specials based on them too.
In between the roll-call of Astons, Ferraris and the Lancia Stratos was a theme of Ford, BMC, GM and Rover-powered stuff. I jotted down a list including the Clan Crusader, Ginetta G26 and G32, Midas Bronze, Reliant Scimitar GTE and GTM Rossa, and mentally dismissed them – ‘always seem to be race-modified and overpriced... too rare to plan for... nasty gearchange... cramped... all automatics... all seem to be unfinished projects...’
And then I reached the last cars in both lists, and the realisation struck me – I’ve never driven a TVR I didn’t like, and according to my budget I can afford a very nice 280i coupé or a half-decent drop-top.
So by the time you’ll have read this, I’ll have paid a visit to the TVRCC stand at the NEC. We need to talk about Trevor…