John Simister
Has John finally achieved his own personal automotive nirvana?
What classic car, in the real world, would you most like to own? Not a ‘dream car’ – in my case probably a Ford GT40, an Aston Martin DB4, a Porsche 911 RS or something rapid and pre-war – but a car you could reasonably aspire to given a fair financial wind?
I was at the splendid Kop Hill Climb with a friend recently, fabulous cars of all ages and grandnesses all around, and I was asked exactly that question. ‘After all,’ he said, ‘a Rover 2000, a Mazda MX-5 and a Saab 96 can’t be your Holy Grail. Can they?’
Well, I said, of course they can. But maybe he had a point. Given how many cars I seem to have bought, kept for not very long at all and then sold on in the past decade or so, it might seem that I am trying hard to find automotive nirvana and regularly failing. What is it that’s really going on inside my head, if only I knew?
For years – decades in fact – I had a string of warmed-over Hillman Imps and their derivatives. I had been intrigued by them since my schooldays and only finally kicked the habit earlier this year. I could admire, and covet, other cars but with an Imp in my life I was happy. But there was a gap in this fixation for a few post-millennial years, when I needed to look outward and upward and see about realising a latent urge for something more exotic.
For some reason, I had suddenly found a Lancia Fulvia HF to be an irrresistible prospect. I acquired one at a bargain price, spent the same amount again on getting it mechanically right (bodily not, though), enjoyed it greatly for a while and then sold it because of that imperfect body. There followed a car I had long wanted and could finally afford, a Lotus Elan. It, too, was fun and troubled in equal measure, and again the reality fell short of the dream. Same with the next Fulvia HF, now in Japan.
After I sold these cars, of course, their values quickly rose. So not only did I not benefit from the rise, I also could no longer afford another example of either model. Nor, indeed, much else in that part of the market such as the Bertone-shape Alfa Romeo GTV, Alpine A110, Ford Escort Twin Cam or Eighties Porsche 911 that also occupied my wish-list.
Not if they were any good, anyway, and I had now discovered for myself that buying a sub-standard example of a car you covet is a very good way of puncturing the dream.
So, to answer my friend’s question, I genuinely don’t know. My sense is that the cars I once dreamed about, could briefly afford and now can’t really aren’t so desirable, so brilliant and so tempting that they can truly justify their current monetary worth. They are not, in their design and engineering, in the pleasure they can give, obviously better than the three highly interesting, historically significant and rather less valuable machines that I currently have. Just different.
I wandered among the cars at Kop Hill, admiring many of them but lusting after few. It was the same in the Pre-’66 and Tax-free Classics car parks at the Goodwood Revival earlier this year; I loved seeing the cars, but felt no urge to own them because I am very happy with what I have. To own any more, even if funds were available, would be an encumbrance: where would I put them? How would I keep on top of their needs? What would I do with them? And I don’t want to part with the ones I have, because I like them too much.
With each dream can come a latent nightmare, unless you’re lucky. Currently I am lucky and the fleet will be stable for a while, I hope. It seems that with a 1961 Saab 96 two-stroke, a 1972 Rover 2000 TC and a 1989 Eunos Roadster (the pre-war Singer Le Mans has gone, by the way), I have achieved my own personal Holy Grail. I never thought it would come to this but, in the real world, here we are.
And practical classics, all of them.
‘The reality can fall short of the dream’ ‘To own more cars, even if funds were available, would be an encumbrance’