No, we didn’t add any zeros to that number…
One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, a lesson so aptly summarized in the £90,000 winning bid for a wrecked 1960 Jaguar XK150 S 3.8L Drophead Coupe. That’s approximately $130,000 USD, mind you, so someone dropped what most would consider a huge sum on a classic car that’s doing its best impression of an accordion. What a time to be alive.
Someone actually crushed a 1967 Shelby GT500 on purpose. See the result here.
Auction house Bonhams is of course almost downright giddy in announcing the result, and why not? Surely there were many reasonable people who scoffed at auctioning such a vehicle, which had been crashed but never restored 25 years ago. Who in their right mind leaves such a valuable classic car in ruins for a quarter of a century? Someone who just got a tidy payout for that lack of initiative.
We’re all quite familiar with the debate between those who believe leaving a classic completely original and those who think restoring a vehicle is best, but this takes that argument to the next level entirely. Will the new owner, who paid out a handsome sum to own this long-wrecked car, opt to maintain it in the crushed state? Is this what’s becoming of the car collecting hobby, or is this just some freak side show event the likes of which we’ll not see again for a long time?
A sign of sanity in this insane story is the fact the classic Jaguar sold for 6 times the projected rate. That means the professionals who watch auctions closely weren’t expecting anyone to drive the price of this car up so dramatically. The lends some weight to the opinion this is a fluke.
Then again, it might not be. The sale of this 1960 Jaguar XK150 S 3.8L Drophead Coupe for an eye-watering amount could become the “new normal” among people with more money than sense. You just never know for sure.
