E-type and Bentley shooting brake stand out at H&H sale

By Lizzie Pope

| 30 Nov 2018

Classic & Sports Car – £115k Jaguar E-type leads H&H sale

This 1961 Jaguar E-type 3.8 ‘flat-floor’ Roadster was the top lot at this week’s 148-strong H&H Classics sale at The Pavilion Gardens in Buxton, Derbyshire.

A particularly early example – indeed, the 290th right-hand-drive roadster to be built – it had been in the vendor’s family since 1992 and was sold to an online bidder for £115,000, undercutting its lower pre-sale estimate by £15k.

Finished in Carmen Red E-type with a red-leather trimmed cabin, the E-type is a matching-numbers car that has been restored over a 10-year period, but could benefit from a little TLC.

It was sold with a Jaguar Heritage certificate, photographs of its restoration, an original E-type service manual and operating handbook, and large wedge of invoices, tax discs and old MoTs; its original welded in, louvered bonnet was also included.

However, if you really wanted more of a project, there were a number of Jaguars to choose from. How about a 1956 XK140 Fixed Head Coupé – well, a rolling chassis, partial body and engine – which sold for around £13k? A XK150 in need of love failed to sell, while bidding reached over £47k for the refurbished chassis, new body and freshly overhauled engine of a 1955 XK140.

This Mini Thirty is a special anniversary edition

One car – perhaps unsurprisingly – that beat its £8-10,000 pre-sale estimate to sell for a touch under £13,000 was this 1989 Mini Thirty (above), one of just 2000 Cherry Red examples built to celebrate the model’s 30th birthday.

And as if that wasn’t enough, it’d had just one lady owner, been garaged and covered a mere 4000 miles in its 29 years.

As well as being sold with its original sale agreement and V5, book pack, keys, number plates, supplier sticker and tax-disc holder, its new owner also got a Mini Thirty brochure and price list.

In fact, it was one of several Minis to cross the block. A 1966 Morris Mini Minor also beat its pre-sale estimate and went for £6300, while selling for less than half that was a 60,000-mile 1977 Leyland Mini 1000.

There was also a 1965 Austin Mini 850 that crept over the £10k mark when the gavel fell and a 1987 Austin Mini Park Lane which achieved just over £4000.

This 1926 Rolls-Royce 20hp Tourer has lived quite the life

Among the older cars to sell was a 1926 Rolls-Royce 20hp Tourer, with coachwork by Hooper, pictured above, which smashed its pre-sale estimate to fetch £49,450.

It’s a car with a fascinating and well-documented history, after being ordered new by then the richest man in Penang, in what is now Malaysia, Chung Thye Phin. Hooper took delivery on 1 February 1926 and the Rolls received a four-door, dual-cowl Tourer body, as well as uprated suspension with heavier duty leaf springs, before being loaded on to the SS Benalden on 26 May, bound for Penang.

It’s thought it was loaned to the Duke of Gloucester when he was visiting in the late ’20s and was used by both Japanese and British troops in WW2.

The next owner was Henry Stonor, a British expat, who brought it back to the UK – where it benefited from some TLC from Rolls-Royce – before it was shipped back to the Far East on the SS Ulysses in 1952.

Stonor made great use of it. As a founding member of the Vintage Car Club of Malaya, he took it to second behind a Bentley Speed Six at the November 1953 Malacca Speed Trials and second behind an Alvis Silver Eagle at the July 1954 Sungei Way Sprint. He then tasted victory in the October 1954 Rally of Malaya, during which he covered 320 miles of largely unmade roads in nine hours, and the car was also a class winner on the Seremban Sprint in July ’58.

The Rolls also featured in the 1960 documentary film The oil that grows on trees and transported HRH Prince Richard of Gloucester around Malaya in January 1963, later achieving a third-place finish in the support race to the 1967 Malaysian Grand Prix. It then returned to the UK – again!

It may’ve been repainted, rewired and retrimmed several times, but it’s easy to see why this story charmed bidders.

Other interesting earlier entries at the sale included a 1938 Austin 12/4 Heavy Pick-up which sold for just shy of £17k, and a 1927 Willys Overland Whippet Saloon which changed hands for a little over £5000.

Bentley Mulsanne Turbo Shooting Brake (top) is… different! Heinkel Trojan 200 (bottom left) is another oddity; Fiat X1/9 failed to sell

There was also a unique car on the lot list that certainly divides opinion – check out the 1983 Bentley Mulsanne Turbo Shooting Brake above, with coachwork by Coway Ltd of West Horton, Lancashire.

Finished in Mustard over Claret, it might not be to everyone’s tastes, but there was a round of applause as a bidder in the room beat phone and online rivals to secure the car, which was offered with no reserve, for £35,650.

It really is quite a thing and comes with a pull-out awning, colour-coded umbrellas, sat-nav and a drinks refrigerator.

Turning heads for rather different reasons was a 1962 Heinkel Trojan 200, which went for £9000.

The auction, which took place on Wednesday (28 November), was a successful one: sales totalled £1.3m and 77% of lots changed hands. A few unsold vehicles did catch our eyes, however. How about a 1981 Fiat X1/9, a 1990 Mercedes-Benz 500SEC or a Sorrento Green Peugeot 205GTI?

Stunning £3m+ Porsche 550 RS Spyder heads to Paris sale

Jim Clark Lotus Cortina set for £200k sale