The most collectable modern Bentley?
Is the Brooklands the most collectable modern Bentley? Owing to the timing of its arrival, which unfortunately coincided with the global recession, just 430 of the handsome handmade coupés were sold between 2008 and 2011. Each took the engineers and craftsmen at Crewe more than 650 hours to build and it shows – everything from the door shuts to the sumptuous leather feels uncompromised and expensive. This gorgeous black example from 2009 has covered just 7,000 miles and blurs the line between stealthy and elegant. It’s not too late to celebrate Bentley’s centenary, you know?
Scaglione’s swelled stunner
Franco Scaglione’s gorgeous narrow-bodied Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GTA is admittedly proportionally perfect, but we’d defy anyone to say the bulging, rivet-strewn bodywork of the 1300 Junior variant doesn’t look truly menacing. This comprehensively restored red-and-yellow example from 1970 was raced extensively in the period in Germany and has been prepared to race. So, what will it be – Peter Auto’s HTC series or the Modena Cento Oro?
One of two
The end-of-the-line Heritage Edition Defender received a number of subtle styling tweaks that harked back to its greatest-grandfather: the car we all affectionately refer to as Huey. With its Grasmere Green paint and simple ‘steelie’ wheels among myriad nods to its illustrious heritage, we thought the special edition was the coolest car on sale back in 2015. You might remember the final Defender to roll off the line in Solihull was a soft-top built to Heritage specifications. Land Rover built just one other soft-top Heritage Edition for a very important client. And it’s that very car that you can find for sale in the Classic Driver Market today.
A championship-winning Porsche poster child
As striking as its Works Martini cousins – and now almost as desirable thanks to its giddying performance – this Kremer Racing 1973 Porsche 911 2.8 RSR became the face of Porsche’s official posters after winning the European GT Championship driven by Clemens Schickentanz and John Fitzpatrick. It also contested two 24 Hours of Le Mans races and the 1975 Tour de France Automobile. How’s that for very important provenance?
The original Mercedes hot rod
The 190mph Mercedes-Benz AMG Hammer was so named because its 400bhp, abundantly torquey V8 could uproot oak trees and drag around the small 300E body with ferocious force. The makeover in Affalterbach was eye-wateringly expensive (like two Ferrari Testarossas expensive) but that didn’t matter one bit – this was the 1980s when excess ruled supreme and cocaine fuelled people’s confidence like never before. The spiritual godfather of all the fast AMG-spec Mercedes’ you see today, this ultra-stealthy and über-luxurious 1986 300E AMG W124 is one of the original and some might say the finest Hammers of them all. The irony that it’s currently listed for sale in Miami is certainly not lost on us.
