Return of the Saint
Stunning result for Volvo 1800S at H&H Buxton auction
Amid a fairly standard H&H sale at Buxton Pavilion where 73.3% of lots were sold, one result really stood out. It was the whopping £40,500 paid for the 1967 Volvo P1800S – way above the car’s £24k-£28k estimate, which was in line with ours and other price guides for the model. There’s no obvious explanation like it being a low-mile timewarp or freshly restored example; it was neither, just a well-presented car with added bling from chrome wire wheels and the cowhorn bumpers from an earlier P1800 model.
But was it such an outlier? Two other results in the last couple of months has seen £37,775 paid at Mathewsons and £38,300 at an Osenat sale in France for similarly unexceptional Volvo 1800s. Similar also in that they were both creamy white too – the livery of Roger Moore’s car from that eyebrowraising Sixties TV series The Saint. Have people spent too much lockdown time watching these old TV shows, perhaps? No Volvo P1800 in another colour has made much more than half this figure at auction this year.
There was less excitement from the other 104 cars in the sale, though a nicely restored early MGB GT in striking Aquamarine looked very good value at £10,688 against a £13k-£15k estimate. We also saw a continuation of a trend for the market to be losing enthusiasm for VW Campers, MG TDS and thirsty modern classics from the Rolls/ Bentley stables. They’re all still finding buyers, but not at anything like the prices they were fetching two years ago. It’s a good time to be shopping if any of those are on your bucket list for ownership.