I am surprised at how topsy turvy classic car prices are! You can find a 1973 Ford Escort 1300 E (2 door) for £25000 but my 1938 Armstrong Siddeley 14/6 was less than 25% of that.
True, the Escort is fully restored while the AS is just in everyday condition but over 2 million Escorts were made between 1968 & 1974 while the total production run for the 12 & 14hp AS was a mere 3750.
Also, the AS has been around for 82 years & is still driving while the Escort has only been around for 46.
I am sure that the AS is the rarer car & should be more desirable from a collector’s view but many pre-war vehicles seem to command quite low prices compared to quite modern, high volume production cars.
I am not complaining too much, I bought the AS to drive around & show off in as I like the old styling & if the car was more valuable I would not have been able to afford it. I can take it to shows & let others look & touch it whereas if it was hugely valuable it would be roped off at shows or perhaps never leave the owner’s heated garage so would never be seen by the general public.
Beautiful car Mark. I’m sure it’s a great pleasure to own and to tinker around with. I think prices in that Escort sort of class you mention are driven to some extent by the “I always wanted one of those” and the “my Dad used to have one” buyers. The Cortina 1600E would also have been a object of envy in its day.
quote=“captainendeavour, post:39, topic:28398”]
The equivalent of taking a hammer and angle grinder to a car and being pleased with the result.
[/quote]
Massively enjoyable read, Christopher, the whole yarn, cameras, guitars, knob-head collectors, write some more, literary gold dust…
Looks like I’m buggered then 
I was once given an Armstrong Siddeley by a pal. As I was only about 22 at the time, [circa 1972] even I had my doubts along the lines of Greeks bearing gifts. These were confirmed when we had to tow this stately car back to my pal’s place behind a Morris 1000. Despite being a beginner at ‘roadside engineering’ I could see that this thing was beyond me, so I declined his kind offer.
Some 15 years later, having more or less mastered the craft of keeping dodgy motors going by this business of ‘roadside engineering’, due to having far too much fun and not enough money, I was given a Jag Mk10 by the producer of ‘Tubular Bells’. Where the front seats should have been the floor appeared to be covered with the emetic results of a heavy night at our local, the Warwick Castle W9. Where the seats had gone was never explained. I turned that one down, too.
Life just seemed so much simpler, freer, in those days. The pro photographic supplier where us snappers bought our hardware and consumables had a sale of redundant gear from their a/v dept. I bought a Rogers stereo audio amp for £60. Rogers, back then, made very high quality amps and speakers. I did so knowing that one channel was down but I knew lots of guys in the recording business who could fix it.
The first person I approached was my friend who had tried to fob me off with the unsavoury Mk10. With his share of the proceeds of Tubular Bells he had built a recording studio on a barge on the Regent’s Canal, Little Venice. He fancied this amp and offered to swap it for something …
“What you got for swapsies, then?” “Ummm - how about a Volkswagon?” “What Volkswagen?” “A Volkswagen Variant” “Whassat?”
Google Volkswagen Type 3 to find out. It was the first car VW offered that was not a Beetle, a Karmann Ghia or a van. It was the Fastback model - LHD. Surprisingly, it worked. Not a bad trade for a stereo amp with one dead channel
I drove it for a year or two before selling it for a handsome profit to an Aussie couple who were going touring Europe.
Any petrolhead must have the Mulliner Bentley S1 Continental Fastback in their top 5 most desirable cars ever. For my producer pal it was #1. Eventually, probably due to a spike in sales of ‘T.Bells’, resulting in my pal briefly having an account with Coutt’s, funds were available and he bought one.
It was not in the league of the Concours d’Elegance at Pebble Beach but an S1 Fb is an S1 Fb. However, I felt he was letting the side down rather when I found him on the roadside outside his flat, oil up to his elbows, with the top off the engine.
"Doing the timing… " “Tom, a gentleman does not do the timing of his Mulliner on the roadside. He has a chap from Bentley do that.” It was like catching Kristen Scott-Thomas doing the ironing.
The Bentley had to go, of course.
Some years later, when I had bought a boatyard on the Tamar, my pal called me and asked if he could moor his vessel with me.
“Well. Depends. What is it?” “Errr … a Dittisham Class minesweeper”
Now, parking boats is even more of a problem than parking cars. People pay serious money to displace a few cubic meters of water. At 120 tons and 100 feet long, this thing was way out of my league. You don’t moor a minesweeper to a swinging mooring designed to hold a modest 40-footer safely in a hoolie.
My friend had, once again, let his enthusiasm get the better of him. He was known for the following saying, “Fab! I love it! I want it How much?” This thing needed new propshafts. There were two, in solid bronze, 9" dia by about 12 feet long …
The last I saw of it, it was moored on the Dart looking every bit the scrap that it was, at, coincidently, Dittisham, on the inside of a pontoon - so my pal couldn’t slip the moorings and do a midnight flit.
Are you admitting to being a tax cheat?
No, just fully utilising my creative talents 
I owned a VW Variant 2-door Estate in the 1980s. The VW badge had been half-inched from the front luggage compartment (bonnet), it was at the time when the Beastie Boys were at the height of their fame, and the VW escutcheon was their trade mark. So it probably ended up round some spotty Essex oik’s scrawny neck.
I rebranded the car Beastie Bomber in white paint across its ‘face’ to the glee of local yoof.
It was a great car to drive, rear engine, great handling and lots of oomph. The flat four engine made a very nice noise.
The VW Variant Estate came top in ‘Jolly Super’‘s’ (Jilly Cooper) Sunday Times ‘road test’ of cars, circa 197?, to have nookie in. For the size of car, loads of room to get horizontal.
I hope you enjoyed yours.
Why not just stop using social media? I quit Facebook as apart from birthday reminders I didn’t see the point.
This site is another, same 20 ish people doing all the talking, yes you can find out things you need to know but mainly rubbish, and bored people
Let’s get on with our lives and get off social media for a month, I bet you can’t all do it.
And maybe you should try only posting supportive, positive or informative replies for a month?
Off you pop then 
Brutal tough love!
If the tax folk are looking for money hidden ‘down the sofa’, I wish they’d find some for me…
What a fascinating story! Do you still have the boatyard on the Tamar? I deeply regret getting rid of my boat, but as you say, it is prohibiively expensive to rent a slice of water…
20-ish people? Chance would be a fine thing…!
. I’ll be 82 in May.
But I’m not bored in the slightest degree. SF is stimulating, thought-provoking, on the ball with news and comment, highly informative, witty, wise and very funny.
And people are generally very interesting, tolerant and kind. What’s not to like? 
Why not start a topic that attracts people who think along the same lines as you, or share your interests?
I sold up in 1999. As my shipwright used to say “You didn’t have to buy a boatyard to go sailing”. And I very rarely had the time.
It’s a traditional boatyard with swinging moorings in a picture postcard setting, complete with accommodation. It is, as we speak, for sale now, if you fancy the life of Mole and Ratty, tho’ it won’t seem like that as you haul a boat ashore as darkness falls and a gale is wind against tide, shot-blasting you with what seems to be most of the Tamar.
Can be nice in summer, should there be one. Have a look for Weir Quay Boatyard, if only for the pictures.
Not suggesting anyone is a Tax Cheat here… but this is interesting… how much tax was paid when this was sold ???
Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason has one too, and he races it!
I actually saw this Ferrari when we visited Mas du Clos in 2004. Had no idea of its worth… just loved it… and all those other cars… phew…