Daily Mail - 17.08.2019

Daily Mail, Saturday, August 17, 2019 Page 31

Retired garage

owner set to sell

collection built

over 50 years

By David Wilkes

1950s Maserati racing

car with the firm’s lime

and yellow livery

Bugatti

Type 35

with

electric

motor

rather

than

pedals

First World War

biplane that was a

‘rusty pile of bits’

before Mr Worrow

restored it

Silver E-Type Jaguar

with red leather

upholstery

£7,500

£6,500

£2,250

£2,250

Prized: Some

of the 85

pedal cars

collected

over half a

century

1960s Tri-ang Sea Spray boat pedal car,

believed to be the only surviving example

£1,550

Armoured car with

working toy gun.

Right: David

Worrow

IT’S as impressive a collection of

vehicles as any owned by a flash

footballer with cash to spare, but

with one significant difference...

They are all children’s toy pedal cars,

lovingly acquired and restored over

nearly half a century by retired garage

owner David Worrow, 71.

With an estimated total value of

£200,000, the 85 vintage models form what

is thought to be the biggest private col-

lection of its kind in the world.

It includes Rolls-Royces, Bugattis, Jaguars

and Bentleys, as well as an armoured car, a

First World War biplane and a pedal car

designed to look like a boat.

Mr Worrow had begun collecting and restor-

ing Jaguar E-Types when he saw a pedal ver-

sion at a car show at a country house in the

early 1970s and decided he had to buy it.

He went on to collect as many Jaguar mod-

els as he could, before widening the field to

all pedal cars. He also built a dehumidified

showroom next to his home near Chiverton,

Devon, to preserve and display them in.

But now he is selling the collection at auc-

tion because ‘the fun was in finding them

and restoring them, rather than having them

sit there’. Mr Worrow added: ‘I think it is the

boy in us which explains the attraction –

they take you back to your childhood.

‘I’ve enjoyed the collection but I’ve had

them sitting in my showroom for so long I’ve

just got bored of them, so it seems the right

time to sell them.’ The cars are being sold by

Humbert and Ellis auctioneers, of Towces-

ter, Northamptonshire, on September 8.

Highlights include a Bugatti Type 35 with

an electric motor, estimated to be worth

£6,500, and a Silver E-Type Jaguar that Mr

Worrow built himself (£7,500).

£2,250

£200k for a load of pedal

cars? That’s pushing it...