Vintage veerings

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The daily newspapers tell us quite definitely that so far as used cars are concerned, the buyer’s market has returned. In other words, instead of the seller fixing the price and the purchaser being compelled to pay it or go without, prices are falling fast, to what the buyer considers fair. This is good news for vintage enthusiasts are in general more impecunious than most.

Writing of falling prices makes me wonder whether those older cars which really have only “hobby” value, will decrease to the level that prevailed 20 years ago, when the young enthusiast had a choice of some truly fascinating bargains. Open your motor journal of 1932 at its classified advertisements and you find :— 1924 AC two.seater, excellent condition, taxed, £22.

75-mph. 12/50 Super Sports Alvis, overhauled and in almost new condition throughout, £37 10s.

Austin Seven, 1927 Cup model sports, extras, good condition, £39.

Bentley sports two-seater, fast, £51.

Salmson, 1926, sports two-seater, £15.

1925 Morris-Cowley, excellent condition, £7.

And so on . . . (These are genuine examples). A year or so later such prices halved. Considering that such cars are now 20 years older and that storage or use for this period isn’t exactly going to enhance their value, these prices might very well be deemed appropriate to the present day and age, devaluation of the pound notwithstanding. Perhaps it depends now on the purchasers ? 

Advising us of its Mid-Summer Ball on June 27th, the London Aeroplane Club writes :- “Our idea is to recapture the carefree years between the wars, the vintage years, when the Moth was the symbol of sporting flying, when Amy Johnson—who learnt to fly at the London Club –and others made great flights across the World, when Bentleys won for three years in succession at Le Mans, when Great Britain gained the Sehneider Trophy outright, when the foxtrot came into fashion and ‘Better Sweet’ ran as Drury Lane.” They had a 1925 DH “Moth” and a 3-litre Bentley present and warned us that cloche hats and Oxford bags were liable to appear. The marquees were hung with souvenirs of the ‘twenties and ‘thirties (one photograph showed Rover Eight, Windsor, Bean and 11.9 Lagonda in happy progression along the Portsmouth Road–and alas, well in the middle of it !) and horse-less carriages were assisted off the premises at 1 am.