We have more detailed photos of these cars and can Email them to interested buyers.

 Objects of Desire and how not to buy a car.         

 For those of you that enjoy reading our meandering narratives and a little bit of pontificating about cars and money, read on. 

Yes, the world is once again in a man made economic crisis and once again the cars we offer for sale are ever more desirable as they are genuine machines of great beauty and also provide great and lasting pleasures. These cars symbolize both a continuing series of technological innovations and un art de vivre. 

 Certain cars are genuine fun machines and are a lot more enjoyable than watching stock prices go down unless you are into that sort of thing. Car values are determined by traditional market supply and demand not by the futures market, derivatives, hedge funds or complicated financial schemes designed so that few can understand them. There is nothing difficult about understanding why a certain car makes you happy whenever you see or drive it. Desirable cars seldom or never drop in value overnight like stocks can and do. The value of a car does not depend on the futures market. So, buy a car from us and enhance your net worth! 

"Ultra automotive sophistication can rob the joys of simple and primitive pleasures that can be most enjoyable ." says Scotty while rebuilding a V12 Jaguar engine. 

 Great styling is something many late model cars lack as a beautiful shape does not necessarily have a good drag co-efficient.  Women were not designed in a wind tunnel either yet they manage to look great in spite of not being designed by a CAD/CAM program and a wind tunnel.

  All modern cars are designed with careful attention to drag co-efficient using wind tunnels and CAD/CAM design. This is a good thing as modern cars are aerodynamically efficient yet as a result many modern cars look much alike. Some people look at a car like a lawnmower and could care less what they drive as long as it is cheap to run. This is not a bad thing at all but these people would be bored reading this website. Boring cars get you around but so does a well designed wheel barrow. If you swap the badges from a 2010 Mercedes Benz and a 2010 Lexus would anyone really notice? 

Here are photos of a 1961 Austin Healey Sprite that was purchased from a shop that amazingly enough specializes in restoring Sprites. The looked great on the outside but what was underneath...

In this photo you can see several fingers poking through the floor. This was not a factory option. Soon after he bought the car, the car owner asked us to replace the entire interior and after we removed the carpets, we found a hand made piece of plywood covering the entire drivers side floor and non standard rust hole. 

In the above photos, you can see a front suspension that has not seen a professional in decades, rotten wiring and general  old rotten car stuff.  It is always the mechanicals that are frequently ignored and such cars are sold as "restored".  So, the lesson here is always to have a look at what you are purchasing as for some sellers, they know that many buyers are unknowledgeable about cars and base buying decisions on superficial appearances. So they polish the apple and leave the rotten core for someone else to bite into. Rotten apples should not sell for as much as a nice ripe apple but they do all to often. 

Beats a heart that does not soar when driving a vintage Jaguar E-Type, a classic Rolls Royce, an always beautiful Austin Healey, a mysterious Bristol, a cool MGA, a handsome Bentley or a ferocious Mercedes Benz 300 SEL we wistfully enquire?

If not then it's a cold heart and needs some warming up. A good way to do that is to own a car such as we offer even though we do not have many left to sell! Exhilarating experiences other than brute speed have been designed out of many late model cars despite their hugely powerful gas sucking engines. Modern cars are safer than vintage cars and for most drivers this is a very good thing as many people are lousy drivers. 

But you know this don't you?  That what is behind you is of no concern? Perhaps this is so because people were designed to walk and run, not drive.  Sports cars were designed to be driven by those that relish driving such cars. There is more to a car than brute horsepower and modern cars are better than vintage cars in many ways yet are also worse in many ways. For example, the engines in vintage cars were designed to be admired and heard. Many engines, like 1950-1968 Jaguar motors, were beautiful Machine Age designs with highly polished aluminum heads and cam covers adorned with chromed acorn nuts and two or three carburetors quite unlike most modern cars that feature boring looking engines buried beneath plastic covers so the engine looks like a big ugly plastic battery. 

So what's wrong with a fine looking motor or even an electric drill like this Machine Age Sioux drill?  

"Classic old designs juxtaposed with modern technology is what our firms are about. For what is the meaning of this moment without considering and savoring the beauty of that which once was?" says Scotty while considering and savoring the beauty of that which once was every day of the week. 

Many modern cars are stuffed with gimmicks, bells and whistles to help manufacturers float a high sales price. Some cars apparently accelerate without warning due to over complicated and very expensive electronics. Modern cars are filled with expensive modules that control just about everything and once the car gets on in years, the cost of some of these components is absurdly expensive yet the stupid self serving managements of many car manufacturing companies keep making modern cars ever more complex with many layers of highly technological parts that will never be affordably fixable when the cars have depreciated. 

The fine cars we deal with were made from steel, leather, chrome,  wood and Rexine! Early models were made using the eyes and hands of artistic human beings. Jaguar Cars founder, Lord Lyons, had his cars designed using full size clay mockups. He had his engineers build these mockups in his home driveway so he could look at them out the windows and think about the designs while he had his morning tea and crumpets. When he looked out the window and the car was beautiful from every angle, that was the design. Thus the cars we like to own have humanistic charms and flaws that make them ever more endearing to the soul. We honor the spirit of great automotive design with our restoration work. 

Have a look at some cars we have available and keep in mind that we offer a full and comprehensive pre-purchase inspection service if your car quest is not to be found on our steadily shrinking list of automotive offerings.  Many cars have been sold so the list is growing ever smaller. 

"One thing that never gets boring unless you are a boring person is the thrill of driving a great car." Says a beige person. 

Buying cars though on line auctions:

Caveat Emptor!  

Regularly we have cars brought to us which have been acquired almost sight unseen (other than by little digital photos like what are on our website) via popular on line auctions. Many bogus claims are made on the internet claiming this and that and little truth is there. We know this to be true because many owners ship these cars to us for extensive work.

 Be especially cautious of sellers proclaiming their car to be:

1. "perfect" (Nothing built by mankind is perfect. The adjective "perfect" should not be used to describe a car.)

2. "The best there is."  (The best what there is? How could this seller honestly state that their car is best there is without seeing the rest of the "best there is" cars in this series and knowing what to look for?)

3. " 1982 Rolls Royce, brand new" (How can something be built in 1982 and be brand new?) 

4. "totally restored" ( Usually offered with no detailed documentation of any restoration work that was supposedly undertaken) generally the price is a fraction of the parts much less the labor involved restoring a car. Lots of times the car is being sold by a junk yard claiming to be a "specialist". 

5. "recent major restoration does not come any better" ( see #4)

6. "great investment" (for who?) 

7. The following advertisement was copy and pasted word for word from an actual ad to sell a 1960 RR Silver Cloud.

"Hard to find original unmolesder car.  This vehicle appears to have never been smoked in. The wonderful condition of this vehicle leads us to believe it has been garage kept. Bid with confidence this vehicle is being offered with a Limited Warranty. All vehicles are sold as-is and without warranty. Seller makes no representations or statements as to the fitness for purpose or condition either implied or expressed."

Hmmm, "appears" and "leads us to believe" sure leaves a lot of wiggle room. There is a limited warranty of some sort offered but the car is sold as -is without warranty. In the 1960's and before, a great many more people smoked than today so the odds of any car having never been smoked in is possible but the odds are against it. Very confusing eh?

Here are photos of a 1958 Silver Cloud under chassis. The car was purchased on a well known on-line auction from a Florida car dealer-junkyard for around $32K. If you look carefully, you can see that at some point in the past, someone welded some thin metal on top of rotten heavily rusted metal. This sort of thing does nothing but mask the rust problem. This metal is also rusting away and this entire frame area is rotten. The front fenders depend on these parts for support and these fenders were moving up and down with the bumps on the road. The car was advertised by the Florida car dealer/junkyard as being "totally restored". The buyer did not have the car examined prior to buying it. He did travel to Florida to look at the car but could not drive it because the steering wheel had been removed for "polishing".  He bought the car anyway and his troubles began. 

When this car was delivered to the buyer in Kentucky, it had no brakes at all, barely ran and they almost wrecked it taking the car off the truck. The paint work was very old and appeared to have been sprayed by a painter on LSD in a dust storm.  The chrome or what was left of it had been sanded, the shine was gone and all the trim was in dreadful condition. The new owner could not find anyone local to repair the brakes so he shipped the car to us. We examined the poor car and found the brake cylinders to be rusted solid thus the car had no rear brakes at all. The front brakes were in just about as bad condition.  Of course for $32K, the car had never been restored, had not been rebuilt nor had it any decent care in decades as far as we could tell and we can tell a great deal.  Look again at the photos of intense rust in the frame areas. We call this totally restored rust.

 Once we heard the too familiar and sad story on the car, we suggested to the owner that he return the car to the seller and get his money back as $32K was way too much to spend on a rusted out junk heap that was a poor parts car at best. Well, the seller refused to give the money back yet also claimed he could rebuild all the brakes on the car in two hours. As the brake pipes and all the cylinders were bad with no telling what else, we told the owner to take up this offer as at this point as he had nothing left to lose except perhaps his life due to a brake failure. So he had the car shipped back to Florida. All these shipping costs were paid by the new owner. It was a bad deal for everyone but the seller I suppose. For the seller, it was a "good investment".  

On line car purchasing is a buying method fraught with peril as most any car can be tarted up to look good in a series of digital photos. What you see is not at all what you can get and many people sell cars via on line auctions because they are unable or do not want to to sell these cars in their local areas. This is so perhaps because the cars may be in pitiful rusted condition. Photos can show what the photographer wants to show or what they don't want to show. Ever heard of Photo Shop? This is not to say that ALL cars bought via on line auctions are Trojan horses waiting to pounce on your wallet but some are. Avoid purchasing any car that is advertised as "totally restored" or " buy from the best" as 99.9% of the time this is not true. We strongly suggest that any major automobile purchase should be inspected by a knowledgeable person before purchase. In other words, don't be stupid. ( How dare he say that!) Instead, be smart!

If you had a moment of adrenalin fueled rashness and bought a car that was advertised as "totally restored" for an all too cheap price and it turned out to be the rusty heap of junk that it should have been advertised as being, now you have to deal with the consequences of making a rash decision. We all do such things but why not be sensible? 

A before purchase examination is simply sensible. Otherwise such purchases can be like playing craps with someone else's loaded dice. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose depending how the people holding the dice feel about it. We prefer our clients to purchase good cars so we do offer a most comprehensive inspection program for automobile purchases and many shops around the country do this service as well. NEVER go by an inspection the seller provides as there is a genuine conflict of interest.  If a professional inspection is not possible, be sure to ask LOTS of questions keeping in mind that words and phrases like "restored", "rebuilt", "everything is new" or "perfect", have vastly different meanings to people. If you have to have a perfect vintage car, you will never be happy as nothing made by humans is perfect especially a vintage something.

There are folks that actually profess to believe that painting something with a spray can is restoring or rebuilding it. These are not people you want to buy a car from. Some car owners claim their car has been "totally restored" for much less than what the parts to do so would cost! Don't buy a car from these people either. 

Of course a buyer may choose to be like the Captain of the Titanic was. .

"Hey Captain, this weather bulletin says there are lots of icebergs out there!" Says the soon to be drowned Marconi radio operator.

" The sea looks good to me so full speed ahead while I take a nap. Don't bother me unless you hit something really big", says the smiling but soon to be embarrassed and drowned Captain. 

We have a new page for the sale of rare and unusual automotive related objects and for antiques we have collected over the last 30+ years. Check out this section!  

Here are some cars that have passed through and found new owners. 

  1935 Rolls Royce 20/25 with Barker coach work. Thanks Sold!     

                          1971 RR Silver Shadow, L.W.B.  Thanks Sold!  

                         1979 Rolls Royce Corniche Thanks Sold!

                                             1976 Rolls Royce Silver Shadow Thanks Sold!

                       1975 Silver Shadow-Long Wheel Base    Thanks Sold!

1988 XJS V12 Convertible    Thanks, sold!

                   1991 Jaguar XJ6 Vanden Plas       Thanks Sold!

                                                   1972 Jaguar E-Type.  Thanks Sold!

                           1975 Jaguar XJ6C   Thanks Sold!    

             1965 Jaguar 3.8 S  Thanks Sold!

                   1977 Jaguar XJ6CThank you, Sold!

                                                            1952 MGTD  Thanks Sold!

                                                              1971 Triumph TR6 Thanks, SOLD!

 1960 MGA Coupe  Thanks SOLD!

 

             1970 Triumph TR6,     Thanks Sold!

1961 MGA Roadster Thanks Sold!

                                                  1980 Triumph TR8   Thanks, Sold!

 1957 Jaguar XK140 Roadster Thanks Sold! 

1978 Rolls Royce Corniche Thanks Sold!  

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  More later....