No lockdown blues

Historics tops 80% figure for third sale running

Historics’ good year ended with another stonking sale. It offered 185 cars at Ascot Racecourse (and online, of course) and shifted 151 of them for a superb 81.6% sale rate. Once again the buyers for top-end cars largely remained in hiding, but there were plenty of strong results in the sub-£30k range, like the Jaguar XJ-S highlighted in the Market Indicators section below and the Alfa Spider pictured here. It is an S3, so the least desirable of the long-running range thanks to its spoilers and rubber bumpers, not to mention them only being sold in lefthand-drive. This one had notably been converted to right-side layout in period by Bell & Colvill and was one of the few originally sold in the UK. It had also covered less than 40,000 miles and obviously been well cared for. Estimated at £12-16k, it sold for £17,920, and it’s a long time since I’ve seen one reach those dizzy heights.

Least desirable Alfa Spider S3 made £17,920

The scores are impressive, even if the overall sale rate was greatly helped by being able to offer a quarter of the cars with no reserve. That also tells us that sellers are both motivated and being realistic