Wednesday, 10 June 2015
Daimler 250 V8
I have been looking at the prices of these cars for the past 3 or 4 years. When I first started looking quite nice ones were going for between £4-5k. This figure has slowly but steadily been rising with odd, exceptional cars going for £20k +. I started looking in earnest a few months ago. Some nice cars went through various auctions, which I could never make due to work or other commitments.
I was scanning the internet, particularly e-bay and the classic car sites. There was always a number of cars that looked good but on each occasion they were at the other end of the country. And all the time the prices kept creeping ever upwards.
I read an article in a classic car magazine about finding cars in local papers, not using auctions or via the classic car magzines. A few days later I saw an advert in one of the weekly classic car newspapers. There was no picture, just a brief description and a telephone number. The gentleeman selling the car explained the story - he had bought it a year earlier from a chap who had restored the car but never got to drive it due to having a stroke just as he was finishing the car. He explained that all of the usual problem areas had been sorted, boot floor, car floor, sills and crows feet.
So I went to have a look. The car was in Ramsgate. I live in Lincolnshire but was working in Suffolk, which meant I could drive over after work. The car was under a cover, alongside a number of Mark 2 Jags.
I crawled around underneath with a torch and indeed all of the problem areas looked good. The car was originally beige but has been re-sprayed the same maroon as the Jag in Morse. I realised that it was not the best re-spray I had seen. The test drive was fine, normal for a 45 year old car and the engine ran smoothly with a lovely sound and good oil pressure. I could not work out what was happening with the leather seats - they looked much better than they should but they had not been recovered. Only after I got the car home did I realise that they had been heavily covered with some kind of leather paint. I looked through the paperwork - lots of bills for the repair panels and parts for the rebuild for the bottom of the engine. The chap wanted £8,500, we finally agreed on £8,000.
Next time I will cover getting it home
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