JustBritish

Ever since the halcyon days of Jaguar’s formative years the British car maker has had a happy knack of delivering some eye catching icons. As those early days of the 1940s and 1950s bore witness to the company’s founding father Sir William Lyons’ aim to produce cars boasting ‘grace, space and pace’ so the legendary big cats have continued to attract attention.

The latest is the Jaguar XKR which has unreservedly set its sights on supercar status, proving in many people’s eyes, to be perhaps the best looking mainstream Jaguar model to date.

There is very much a luxurious character to the XK and XKR body style, whether in hard-top coupe guise or the cloth cocooned convertible which is driven here. This is truly a sophisticated grand tourer with the power to move the sports car experience on to a new level courtesy of class leading body strength coupled with the lightest aluminum architecture leading to an on road performance boosting fuel efficiency and delivering some precise chassis dynamics.
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Popularity: 2% [?]

A 1950 Aston Martin that raced twice at Le Mans sold for 550,000 pounds ($900,000) at an auction in London last night as demand contracted for other high-value classic cars.

The dark blue DB2 Team Car came fifth and third in the French 24-hour race in 1950 and 1951 respectively. It was offered with a low estimate of 250,000 pounds by RM Auctions, in association with Sotheby’s, at its annual “Automobiles of London” sale in Battersea Park.

The classic British racer had been owned by Aston Martin’s chairman David Brown, who coined the “DB” marque, and had been kept unrestored in the same private collection for the last 52 years.

“It was a strong price,” said Simon Kidston, a Geneva- based classic car adviser. “The purchase will give the buyer instant access to exclusive racing events like the Le Mans Classic,” Kidston said in an interview.

The sale raised a total of 10.9 million pounds with fees, with 81 percent of the cars successful, RM said. These figures include lots that were sold after the auction, such as a 1925 Alfa Romeo 6C 1750 GS that found a buyer later in the evening at 522,500 pounds, said RM. No figures were available for the number of lots left unsold at the end of the auction. The presale estimate for the event, which included 84 cars and 37 lots of memorabilia, was 10 million pounds.

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Yes, unfortunately, due to other projects and constraints I need to sell the MG Midget I bought to restore. Needless to say the hardtop sold quickly, but the rest of the car is still available. This includes a clear title in my name and all the goodies such as original SU carbs and air cleaners, gauges, etc…

Please take a look at my MG’s auction listing.

Popularity: 13% [?]

A new record high price for an MG sold at auction was set earlier this month, when a a pre-war MG K3 Magnette sold for 231,000 pounds, or the equivalent of $372,000, at H&H’s auction in Buxton, England. It wrested the high-price crown from a 1935 Magnette Airline Coupe sold in 2007 for 199,037 pounds.

It would take a book to detail the convoluted history of this car; in fact, a book has been written. Magnette-ised: The Pedigree of MG K3015-2 from 1934 to 2007, written by the seller, details the many changes the car has been through in the decades of its existence. H&H themselves described it as “the antithesis of a ‘matching-numbers’ car,” although it possesses an unbroken history as a genuine K3. The car is sort of like grandpa’s axe; the original frame was replaced with an unnumbered frame supplied by the factory, as was the original 1,086cc straight-six engine, and the body was changed from two-seater to single-seater, and back again. Further complicating matters is that the car’s original chassis, discarded in the late 1930s, has since been built up as a complete car.

There have been some lively discussions about the car’s authenticity on the website of the Triple-M Register, but the car’s long and colorful history has never been in question. For more, see the H&H website.

From: Hemmings Motor News

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