A few weeks ago, we looked at the 1965 Bentley S3 Continental that gained fame as Rolling Stone Keith Richards’ drug express to Marrakech, soon to be sold by Bonhams. Refusing to be outdone, RM and Gooding have both consigned their own Continentals with important historical celebrity provenance – albeit the earlier, R-Type flag-carriers of the sobriquet.
According to a factory worker quoted in the Birmingham Post, production of the Land Rover Defender will be extended through February 2016 (and possibly into April) in a response to heightened demand for the outgoing icon. Last year, 17,781 examples were sold in total – but the company has already sold 11,511 in the first half of 2015, an increase of almost 30%.
The car in question is the very first New 500 to roll off the production line, a convertible in ‘Bossa Nova White’ with a 1.2-litre 69HP engine, and personalised by the Umbrian master craftsman Stefano Conticelli. He has given the little car honey-gold, calfskin exterior adornments, a tailgate-mounted picnic basket in the same material, along with mirror domes covered in mahogany. In, apparently, a tribute to Riva yachts.
With only five H.J. Mulliner-bodied Bentley S1 Drophead Coupés ever produced in left-hand drive, it’s little wonder that they were the preserve of the world’s elite. Were you asked to link a specific personage to the latter in the 1950s, a suitable choice would be someone with the surname Rockefeller – indeed, this car was ordered new by John D. Rockefeller Junior through the official Rolls-Royce agency for the greater New York area.
Even before the last Bugatti Veyron, chassis number 450, left the Molsheim factory back in February, a heated discussion had built up among collectors and experts: would the 16-cylinder sports car with its 1,000HP-plus and numerous speed records become a collectable that – as with the McLaren F1 from the 1990s – would continue to gain in value? A glance at the auction results from recent years fuels the speculation: in 2012, RM Auction