Classic Cars June 2021

Welcome Taking on some work can be the best way to own the car of your dreams, if you choose with wisdom and care Classic Cars advocating the concept of actively looking for something that needs work! The same magazine that month in, month out, goes to great pains helping you avoid undue cost and hassle. Have we lost our grip? Not at all, part of our motive behind this month’s lead feature is to help you judge when certain jobs needed on a car you’re considering are reason to run away screaming, or something to accept along with an appropriate price reduction as a route to owning the classic of your dreams. Russian roulette? Not quite. Well, it can be if you’re dazzled by some shiny paint on a…

Classic Cars advocating the concept of actively looking for something that needs work! The same magazine that month in, month out, goes to great pains helping you avoid undue cost and hassle. Have we lost our grip? Not at all, part of our motive behind this month’s lead feature is to help you judge when certain jobs needed on a car you’re considering are reason to run away screaming, or something to accept along with an appropriate price reduction as a route to owning the classic of your dreams. Russian roulette? Not quite. Well, it can be if you’re dazzled by some shiny paint on a bad example of a troublesome model, but our twelve choices were selected not only for their ease of ownership, but for their responsiveness to some…

SOUTH AFRICAN SHAKEDOWN Fresh from a two-year restoration in Johannesburg, South Africa, Michelle Hambly’s 1969 Porsche 911E Targa is ready to collect – and what better way to test its integrity than with an epic 1000-mile trip back to her home in Cape Town? Words WILHELM LUTJEHARMS Photography PEET MOCKE It looks fresh, clean and neat – it looks new. This 1969 Porsche 911E Targa has been with its restorer for just over two years. Since it went up to Johannesburg I’ve pestered the owner, Michelle Hambly, about taking the car on a road trip back to Cape Town (where both of us live) when it’s finished. Michelle is known is throughout the South African classic car community, especially the Porsche contingent. She will eagerly share early childhood memories of…

It looks fresh, clean and neat – it looks new. This 1969 Porsche 911E Targa has been with its restorer for just over two years. Since it went up to Johannesburg I’ve pestered the owner, Michelle Hambly, about taking the car on a road trip back to Cape Town (where both of us live) when it’s finished. Michelle is known is throughout the South African classic car community, especially the Porsche contingent. She will eagerly share early childhood memories of how her late father was always tinkering with his car in the garage and her passion for cars grew from there. However, over the past decade and a half her passion has bloomed and her days have become filled with all things Porsche. Even the curveball that 2020 threw didn’t stop us.…

The W113 Mercedes SL, or Pagoda as most prefer to call it, has fallen in value quite substantially. In 2017/18 dozens of international dealers and restorers paraded a beauty contest of amazingly restored examples priced at £250k (and more) but the market couldn’t get its head round the concept of ‘The quarter-of-a-million- Pagoda’ and values slid back. But now might be a good time to reconsider those perfect, mint W113s because many are now back on the market for between £100k and £150k – which will be what they cost to restore. The recalibration of Pagoda prices means that there’s some serious value in those mint, chequebook restoration cars that now need nothing. ‘There’s some serious value in restored minters’ In March 2021, Silverstone dispatched an early ’64, UK-supplied 230SL manual –…

Classic Cayman? I have a 2015 Porsche Cayman flat-six with 22k miles and full service history that I’ve had from new. Is it a potential future classic? George Nuttall Like all Porsches, your Cayman is definitely a future classic. But it may be some time before we see prices start to rise significantly. When you carefully work out how much it cost you originally to buy, plus servicing and maintenance and the interest on the money you’ve spent owning it, any notional future gain might be wiped away completely. I wouldn’t worry about the future. Just go out and drive it – now. Quentin Willson Invest in my Astra Bertone? I own a 2004 Vauxhall Astra Bertone coupé convertible 2.0 turbo with 50k miles in very straight condition although it does have some minor cosmetic issues. It’s…