Classic Car Price Guide

A WARM WELCOME to the 2023 edition of the Classic Car Price Guide, powered by Octane in association with Footman James. Within these pages you’ll find everything you need to set off on your next buying adventure. Every year we chat to a broad network of dealers, specialists and car clubs to build a picture of the classic car market here in the UK. And one thing that has emerged loud and clear is that the classic car scene has never been more vibrant, more varied or more deeply rooted. As Aston Martin specialist Nicholas Mee told us: ‘Consider everything we’ve been through: Brexit, Covid lockdowns, and of course the war in Ukraine… Considering all of those things, the market has been remarkably resilient. Trade is still going on. Which…

Plenty of new benchmarks on the auction scene over the past 12 months, none more significant than the Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé (one of just two made) that was offered by RM Sotheby’s to a very carefully selected group of buyers at the Mercedes museum in Stuttgart. The gavel fell with a final bid of €135,000,000. Not only an astonishing figure, which obviously broke all records when talking about published and verified prices, but one that also finally answered the often-pondered question of ‘how much?’ when talking about these until now simply unattainable cars. Perhaps even more of a surprise, though, was Fast Ford specialists Silverstone Auctions’ landmark sale of a Sierra Cosworth RS500. The 5192-mile example was estimated to sell for £150,000-£180,000 at Race Retro, but it absolutely…

Conceived to compete in the abandoned Group B race series of the 1980s, the twin-turbocharged 288 GTO is the original Ferrari halo car and the rarest of the five, with only 272 built – ingredients that all but guaranteed it blue-chip collector car status from the outset. Gooding & Company tested new levels for GTOs at auction in 2013, breaching the $1.5million mark for the first time with a 27,000-mile example that sold for $1,512,500 at Pebble Beach. Bonhams upped the ante a year later in London, getting £1,513,500, before RM Sotheby’s 2015 Arizona sale indicated where the market sat for lower-mileage cars, achieving $2,750,000 for an ex-Matsuda Collection car with 10,911km (resold in 2016 at $2,585,000). A barely used GTO broke through $3million in 2017 and by 2022 the…

Inspired by the wide-bodied mid-engined Renault 5 Turbo, the limited-run Clio V6 was launched in 2001, with Phase 1 cars developed and built by Tom Walkinshaw Racing. Facelifted Phase 2 versions followed two years later, bringing improved handling and performance. These later cars now command a premium. Artcurial’s 2017 Rétromobile sale in Paris delivered one of the first significant results that indicated the model was on the rise, its two-owner Phase 1 car in silver with 4340km setting a new benchmark at ¤61,984 (£54,800). The best Phase 2 examples began changing hands at auction in 2020, The Market’s 7500-miler in rare Liquid Yellow selling for £52,000, before an uptick in 2021 saw a barely used car with 980 miles in a similar shade fetch £73,000 on Collecting Cars. By March…

FOUNDED as a hillclimb and sports car racing team in 1950, Carlo Abarth’s company expanded into producing tuning equipment and engines for various Fiats alongside its own racing models. Such was the cachet of the name that Fiat was glad to have its products branded with the Abarth badge. Its best-known and arguably most fun creations were the tiny and giant-killing Fiat 500-and 600-based models. After a flirtation with Simca, Abarth was taken over by Fiat in 1971 and continued to denote performance models, although it became little more than a trim level during the 1990s and 2000s. In more recent years it has been relaunched as a separate division by Fiat. ABARTH Fiat 750 Zagato Carlo Abarth’s 750 Zagato GT first appeared at the Geneva Motor Show in 1956…

BRITAIN’S OLDEST independent car marque, AC – for Auto Carriers – built its first three-wheeled passenger vehicle in 1907. It gradually moved upmarket; four-wheeled vehicles appeared in 1913 and, after WW1, the company expanded into sports cars. It continued after the next war as a struggling specialist manufacturer, even going back to three-wheelers, until it hit paydirt with the Cobra in 1962, its Ace roadster fitted with Ford V8 engines by US racing god Carroll Shelby. The marque limped through the 1970s and '80s with models such as the ME3000 but still exists today - the current AC Cars recently established a new HQ at Castle Donington, with plans for an updated Cobra GT Roadster. AC 2-litre After WW2 ended, AC resumed the building of low-volume quality cars with this…