Buckley’s market matters
I bought a cheap P38 Range Rover the other week – and I mean really cheap. So cheap, in fact, that I didn’t have the heart to bid the man on it. It had plenty of miles on it, mind, plus faded paint and an ominous tap from its 4.6 V8, which I fondly believed was a hydraulic tappet, but is almost certainly a little end. Still, it drove beautifully and had the most anally compiled history file that I’ve ever seen; thousands have been spent on it, some quite recently.
My wife commandeered it at once. Meanwhile, I advertised it at a healthy mark-up with no expectation that it would sell. Not being able to figure out how to work the heater, I sent a brief note to the former owner asking how to switch it off or at least turn it down (the manual didn’t make it obvious). I wish I hadn’t bothered. He pointed out that he had spotted my advert and that he could see now ‘what sort of person’ I was. The way he was talking you’d think I’d swindled him! I merely paid his asking price, saved him the bother of dealing with the great unwashed and promised I wouldn’t break the Rangie for spares. Anything else is just business, and none of it his. Still, it really is quite a seductive thing to drive and the passing of the years have, I think, given its shape a lot of charm. For the money I’d get for it there seems little point in selling it, really.
In other news, I am probably about to buy my first Scimitar GTE, although a conversation with a Mercedes-benz specialist of my acquaintance who worked for a Scimitar specialist when he was a lad reminded me why I have left it until now. “They were a bodger’s car,” he said, “and owners would make their own modifications, such as the bloke who brought one in with toilet-roll holders for internal doorhandles; we sent it back to him fully serviced, plus bog rolls fitted both sides…” Wish me luck!