There is no particular reason to place particular regard in anything I write here. Worth mentioning, since I don’t want you to drop off the page on line one. I have raced and collected cars and motorcycles for thirty years. I created and ran the motorsport show, Chelsea AutoLegends: 500 cars and 10,000 people. Mistakes were made in both but by and large, they’ve washed their faces and brought me and others pleasure.
The question I am asked frequently and I ponder without answering, is: “With the advent of clean running and driverless cars are classic cars about to die? And if racing is your bag, surely the thrill of driving is all but captured on simulators.”
Are we collecting horse drawn carriages just as Mr Mercedes designed the first motor driven machine? Will I have a museum of outmoded contraptions that make children yawn? I scratch my jowls, frown and wonder about the future.
To do that, I wonder about the past. What first attracted me to machines? In part,
it was a medieval frontline appeal of the charger. The eye is drawn to the form and my heart races and I salivate at the thought of battle. Naked motorcycles appeal too. Their metallic muscles displayed, as if an anatomical drawing; the hip-shaped fuel tank; the delicate control through the hands and the threading the machine with balance. I love all these things. The danger of beautiful machines.
I love watches too. Machines that are both left- and right-hand drive, their garage is a shoe box, the insurance an option not a legal requirement. With tiny jewelled internals, they tick towards infinity. I wonder, were there people in the ‘70s who asked: ‘Now digital and quartz watches are better at keeping time, will anyone bother to wear
a mechanical watch?’ The watch collector of their day will have scratched his jowls, frowned and wondered what would become of these clockwork marvels. They survived. I think it was hard going for a while and even Rolex made a quartz movement. More than survival, the good ones thrived. Now we must cast our minds forward to a time of only driverless cars on motorways, probably not even owned by the user. Given the speed of drone development, likely we will be thrashing about in sky taxis. What cars will make it?
When assets give a yield, all things can be calculated. When they don’t, we must have faith that they will keep heading upwards in value. My Lola t332C was sold in the ‘70s for £2,500 – I believe circa £37,500 in today’s money. I suppose it’s worth £130,000. This is a workaday race car with no utility beyond the circuit. Being a single-seater it is less valuable than the equivalent Le Mans car. The Lola T70 has gone up far further, say to £750K. I see racing cars as a solid investment. In the future, if they do away with driving on the road, there will be people like me who crave chancing their arm at the circuit.
What racing cars are interesting today? Anything unfashionable is likely
the answer. Group B rally cars haven’t moved north as far as they might. Brutal, dangerous, fast, madness. No car has a reputation like a Group B car. It’s a bag of primed mantraps. A buy.
Road cars. What of them? The easiest thing to contemplate will be the cost of a tank of fuel. Say you have an Aston Martin DB5 worth millions (£500 in 1970,
£750,000 now). What’s the issue with paying a thousand pounds to fill up? Nothing, especially if the value is increasing faster than it is drinking. But, were you to put the same money into topping up your rusty BMW, you might have an issue. Sadly, fuel will be that expensive. It nearly is already; when you buy leaded race fuel, it makes you gulp. I think this fuel conundrum is the simplest tool to think about what might or might make it through. What will be the Rolex and what won’t?
