Practical Classics June 2021

welcome to the workshop

Our 40th anniversary year has ended. That’s it. All done. When we gathered for the PC 40th birthday party in March 2020 and took photographs for the May issue, no-one could have foretold that that would literally be the last time any of us would gather in a large group for more than a year. What should have been twelve months of getting out there to say hello to everyone, has been a year of staying in. And that goes for our ‘Zoey’ – the magazine’s very first restoration project – which spent 2020 sitting in the workshop, rather than at shows. Now, owner Adrian Boyd has decided that it is time to let the former Pat Moss rallying A40 go and live with a new custodian. With Bonhams in charge,…

‘zoey’ seeks new home

All you need to know about everything important ‘The car will be sold on May 22, with an estimate of £40-50,000’ Fourty-one years ago, Practical Classics founder, Paul Skilleter, launched the restoration of a very special Austin A40 in the pages of PC. XOE 778 was the car in which Pat Moss and Anne Wisdom won the Ladies Class of the 1959 Monte Carlo Rally. Paul had bought the car in 1978 and chose her as PC’s first big project because, he says, she was ‘a typically common old British saloon’ but one with a special history. Talking in 2020, Paul described how the rebuild called for care and attention to detail. ‘We were meticulous in preserving as much of the original metal as possible. It was a lengthy process.’ Once restored, ‘Zoey’ was…

‘zoey’ the pc years

starting handle

The sale of eight more cars from the Vauxhall Heritage collection has set alarm bells ringing for many enthusiasts. Coming hot on the heals of the sell-off of Mitsubishi’s heritage fleet (after they quit the UK) and redundancies elsewhere in the UK’s motoring heritage sector there is unease about the future of manufacturer owned classics. It is a marketing about-turn from the position we were in pre-COVID, where makers saw heritage as a key element in building brand loyalty and awareness. I remember being on a Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders day at Millbrook three years ago when the heritage cars available to journalists almost outnumbered the new cars on show. It was obvious, then, that every brand’s back catalogue had a key role to play in positioning and inspiring its…

this month we love…

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big heritage sell-off

Vauxhall has disposed of another eight cars from its unique heritage collection, reducing its size to 60 cars, after an initial sale of ten cars last year at Brightwells. The sale by auction took place at Manor Park Classics on April 27 and was part of MPC’s first ever auction sale. All cars were offered with no reserve and included the 1937 BXL limousine, the collection’s 1966 Viva HB, a 1929 R-Type 20/60 and an E-Series Wyvern. Modern-ish Vauxhalls also came under the hammer including the collection’s low- mileage Nova, Tigra, Omega, Monaro… and a 2004 Frontera, which was the very last passenger vehicle to be built at the Luton factory. Danny Hopkins, editor of PC, put in the winning bid for the Frontera. He says: ‘I wanted to secure its…