Buckley’s market matters
I saw Anders Bildt recently, a serial BMW 2002 owner and friend of our dear departed David Evans. We like the same sort of cars and, as we chatted about what we had owned he noticed how often people have been kind enough to donate cars to the Buckley collection over the years.
I suppose it started with my gran’s Hillman Husky, circa 1980. She was trading up to a Marina 1.3 Coupé, so I sold the surplus Imp for £30 to a man who drove it home with no brakes.
Anyway, I soon came up with a list of more than 20 freebie vehicles. It has leanings towards Italian produce, including at least two Gammas, a pair of Lancia 2000 Sedans and two Alfettas. The tally of three Mercedes even includes a 3.5 Coupé, which was a massive project but very much worth doing – it was the first right-hooker and the ex-earls Court Motor Show car.
A kind C&SC reader passed an NSU Ro80 to me a few years ago (I gave it away to someone else – I think it’s still around) while my faithful light-blue example got given back to me by the trader who bought it from me!
My friend Pete Wood gave me a BMW 3.0 CSA when he suddenly decided he was going to move to the USA; by the time he’d opted to stay I had already sold it.
There was also a BMW 2000 saloon, although strictly speaking I swapped it for a bottle of wine…
You win some, you lose some with ‘gifts,’ such as the time a London dealer gave me a Borgward Isabella – probably because the scrap man would have wanted paying to take it away.
I should have done something with the green Super Snipe estate, but ended up swapping it for a Vauxhall Viscount. The other Humber was an ex-harold Wilson Imperial, with air-conditioning and bomb-proofing.
I inherited an Audi 100 5E and a Talbot Samba, both rare today but scarcely classic then. I had much more fun in a manual 3-litre V6 Nissan Cedric Estate, which is the best Japanese car I have owned. Hopefully the Riley 2.6 I was given a couple of years ago is well on the way to being restored; I swapped it for some 2.6 interior parts, only to learn that the man who had given it to me wanted it back. Too late, pal.