Bargain corner. The temptations of Cliff Goodall at the auctions of Amelia Island
14 March 2020 4 min read 6 images
With the fall of the quotations also in Amelia Island, eagle-eyed buyers had a field day. With $100,000 they could have taken home anything from elegant pre-war cars to eye-catching young timers, all with the common denominator of having a very high “collectability factor”. An example? How about six? Bonhams
The particularity of this auction was the very high concentration of inexpensive cars. If, in 2019, 53% of the cars sold went for less than $100,000, this year 61 of the 85 cars (over 71.7%) were below this threshold.
Strangely, the two most interesting cars with affordable prices had the same selling price. The 1932 Lancia Dilambda with coachwork by Castagna, a barn find with promising potential for Pebble Beach (or Amelia Island since we are here) and the Benz Patent Motorwagen, a replica of the very first car commissioned by Mercedes-Benz in just 100 units in 1986 to commemorate 100 years of the brand. Both were sold for $47,040. With $100,000 you could have brought them both home...
Gooding
With a budget of $100,000 the cars I would have tried to snatch up were these two.
A 1960 AC Aceca. A two-litre, 90 horsepower engine, much less interesting (and collectible) than the Bristol 125 horsepower, it’s true, but two important factors must also be considered. The first: until a few years ago the AC Aceca went for over $200,000 and also it is nothing more than the coupe version of the AC which, in addition to being worth over $300,000, was the model from which the Cobra was derived – narrow wheels and huge wheel arches and powerful American engine – from the Shelby saga. The sale price was $95,200, much less than the $130-160,000 estimate.
The other car I would have made more than one offer for was a 1994 BMW 850 CSi in an “anything but BMW” red. Recently the price of this model (be careful not to confuse it with a normal 850 Ci, because it is very different and is worth less than a third) has started to rise steeply, exceeding the $100,000 barrier and, in some of the finest examples, double. This one was estimated at $90-120,000 and went away for just $67,200.
RM
If my choice pick from Gooding was the ancestor of the Cobra with a lacklustre engine, at RM I was drawn towards completely the opposite. For the same amount as the AC Aceca, a Sunbeam Tiger MkII could have been brought home. Just to tell you two names of the creators: Ken Miles and Carroll Shelby... But why pay $95,200 when there was one of the first series at $89,600? Because compared to the MkI, the second series comes with the 200 bhp Ford 289 engine that made the Cobra famous. (Strictly speaking, the Cobra also mounted the 164 Bhp 260 engine from the MkI but only on the first 75 examples). Then because less than 10% of the 7,000 produced were MkIIs. And finally, because on average, MkII models are worth 40-50% more than the equivalent MkIs, while in this case the difference was just 6%, not even the cost of the hard top (which the most recent one had).
Alternatively I would have tried my luck trying to win the 1927 Rolls Royce Phantom I Avon Sedan by Brewster. Compared to the austere lines of most of the other Phantom I models, this one carried a very sporty (and decidedly more modern) bodywork, albeit mounted in a later period. This sedan had been in the possession of Todd and Peggy Nagler since 1963 and in 2016 it underwent an extensive restoration and was therefore fully ready for use. A Rolls Royce Phantom I, a serious contender for high-level Concours competitions and very recently restored could not possibly cost under $100,000. Wrong! After the auction, it had a tag with $89,600 written on it.
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