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Price Fixing ➼
Bonhams car department
has established a satellite
operation dedicated to selling
“more affordable vintage,
classic, modern” cars using a
drive-through format. Named
MPH, the new venture is based
at Bicester Heritage in
Oxfordshire, a former Second
World War bomber base that
has been developed into a site
dedicated to all aspects of the
collector car industry from sales
to storage and repairs. Four
MPH sales will be held each
year, with the first on
September 26. Buyer’s premium
is 12.5 per cent of the hammer
price plus VAT, while seller’s
commission is just five per cent
plus VAT, with the cost of
entering a car for sale varying
from £125 to £300.
mph.bonhams.com
S classic car specialist Gooding and Co. is gearing
up for this month’s Monterey Car Week, where it
will serve as the official auctioneer of the Pebble
Beach Concours d’Elegance for the 16th year in a
row. The potential star of the two-day sale—happening on
August 16 and 17—is this 1958 Ferrari 250GT Tour de France
Berlinetta (above), which was originally shipped to Sweden
where it was first owned by racing driver Sture Nottorp. The
car, one of only 78 examples built, was later exported to
America where it was restored in 2012 to such a high standard
that it has since won concours awards at Amelia Island, Villa
d’Este and the Palm Beach Cavallino Classic. Bids of up to
$6 million are expected. goodingco.com
Out to Launch
A Shannon class lifeboat
that was paid for with
money raised from the
sale of two classic
Ferraris was named and
launched on April 27 at
the Royal National
Lifeboat Institution’s station in Hastings, East Sussex.
Northamptonshire businessman Richard Colton
bequeathed the proceeds of the 1960 250GT SWB and
the 1967 275GTB/4 to the RNLI and, when the cars
came under the hammer at auction house H&H in 2015,
they realised £6.6 million and £1.9 million respectively.
Shore Thing
Meet Pebble Beach’s likely star
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MODEL
CITIZENS
This year’s 50th
anniversary of the first
flight of Concorde
prompted the
consignment of no
fewer than eight scale
models of the
much-loved supersonic
passenger jet to
Artcurial’s recent
aviation sale in Paris.
Sizes ranged from a
desk-topping 42cm to a
one-36th scale, 170cm
effort that fetched
€3,900 on June 16.
Concorde buffs also
reached for the sky to
bid for old Concorde
cockpit instruments,
including an
anemometer, an
airspeed indicator and
a Mach metre that
could record the sound
barrier-breaking
aircraft’s progress at up
to a world-shrinking
Mach 2.
The late Rowland Emett is
best known for his cartoons,
but his madcap brain was at
its most magical when
devising wacky works such
as A Quiet Afternoon in the
Cloud Cuckoo Valley. This
sculpture, that comprises
eight automata including a
train with a teacake-toasting
driver, will be on show at
Bonhams London from
August 12 to September 3
after which it will be sold to
the highest (and probably
most eccentric) bidder.
TOTALLY CUCKOO
➼
The recent dispersal of the contents of the Tupelo
Automobile Museum by Bonhams included the sale of a
“Leslie Special” built for the 1965 movie The Great Race, a
madcap caper in which Professor Fate (played by Jack
Lemmon) and The Great Leslie Gallant III (Tony Curtis)
compete in a dash from New York to Paris. The Leslie
Special was, of course, the suitably ostentatious transport
for Curtis’ character but, despite its glamorous
appearance, the car was built by the Warner Brothers
props department using 1957 Ford F100 pick-up trucks
clad in glass-fibre bodywork. One of four identical Leslie
Specials used for the filming fetched $112,000 on April 27.
GREAT Lengths
SEPTEMBER 2019 VANITY FAIR EN ROUTE
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