Market Intelligence
Historics and the ACA: British euphoria
This article discusses recent historic car auctions in the UK, highlighting the differences between collectors and enthusiasts. The auctions showed that the market is healthy and buyers are looking for both rare and fun cars. The article focuses on six cars, including a Lotus 340R and a 1962 Lagonda Rapide, which were sold at ACA auction, and a 1974 Alpine A110 1600S, sold at Historics. The article also mentions a rare 1995 Mercedes-Benz S600 L sold by Historics, which was originally purchased by the late Emir of Qatar and armored to B6/B7 level.
The world of historic cars could almost be divided into two main categories: collectors and enthusiasts. The first is populated by people who have healthy wallets and do their “job” impeccably and meticulously. Enthusiasts, on the contrary, just want to have fun driving their historic cars and aren’t averse to getting their hands dirty but don’t ask them if the colour of their car is the original one; the answer will be “No, but I liked it like this”. Who’s right? The answer is both of them.
The world of enthusiasts in the UK was positively bubbling during the first half of May with two extremely interesting auctions. From ACA, over the weekend of 1st and 2nd May, 236 cars were offered and after selling 206 (87.29%) of them, total takings amounted to £2,023,000 (€2,348,876). In absolute terms, that might seem like a small number but if you consider that their original forecast was £1,752,550 (€2,034,860), they ended up selling 115% by value.
