Classic_Boat_2016-03

CHRISTIE’S

BY DAVE SELBY

Why pay more than £10,000 for an ocean

crossing to New York when you could get

afloat on the Norfolk Broads for £4 a week?

That’s the scope of the tantalising choices

promised by classic advertising images.

One of the top sellers at Christie’s latest

London poster sale was an iconic 1930s

image of the Normandie by celebrated artist

AM Cassandre. Much imitated in modern

cruise-ship advertising, it fetched £10,625.

Yet for just £2,000 you could have

bought an evocative railway poster

depicting the grimey glamour of the Thames

in the 1940s. A 1930s resort poster for

Bandol on the French riviera, bought for

£2,250, offered a precious glimpse of

summer to buoy you through the British

winter. Perhaps more within your means

and cruising range is “The Cornish

Riviera”, yours for £1,375, as depicted in a

railway poster advertising Penzance to

American tourists. It’s not recorded whether

any US visitors asked for a refund when

they discovered the seas in the British dream

destination weren’t quite as blue as

promised, or skies as sunny.

But perhaps most tantalising was the

prospect of a Broads sailing holiday on

“200 miles of safe inland waterways” for

£4 a week. In your dreams! Nevertheless it

was one of the most attainable artworks in

the auction at a relatively modest £1,125.

Take a closer look at more Saleroom lots at classicboat.co.uk/saleroom

In the 1950s as Austin-Healey sportscars were making waves

on the road, the Warwickshire car maker also dipped its toe

in the water with a series of sports boats.

Last of the line, introduced in 1960, was the pacy glass-

fibre 13ft 6in Sprite, which promised “jet-like acceleration” for

just £225, considerably less than the cheapest new car. And

this 1961 example certainly delivers, with its 80hp Mercury

outboard which gives it a top speed of 50mph.

Fully restored in 2010, the four-seat Mimi is coming up to

auction on March 20 at Bonhams’ Goodwood classic car sale

with an estimate of £7,000-10,000. You’d pay considerably

more for an Austin-Healey Frog-eye Sprite, which has only

two seats and is useless at towing water-skiers.

BONHAMS

Spritely Healey in a hurry

Saleroom

Four quid

promise

BONHAMS

CHRISTIE’S