Ones That Got Away

[SSO]

Recently put together a short piece on a few mega cars that I had the chance to buy and didn't for a range of reasons that seemed logical at the time.

Its a painful list including a McLaren F1 with Le Mans race history, Ferrari Enzo, and a Porsche Carrera GT:


Anyone else have a few "regrets"?

[Trev450]

The ones that comes to mind are a Dino 246GT that I could have purchased back in the early 80's for £3500. A new, unregistered Escort RS2000 Custom for £3000 and a 911 Carrera 2.7RS.

Edited by Trev450 on Thursday 18th March 18:56

[W111AAM]

When I bought my F355 in 2010 there was also a 348 GT Competizione for sale. One of 8 RHD examples. Been for sale a while and I think the dealer wanted £32k?!!

[Ferruccio]

Miura SV. £40,000. Mostly working. A few bits in boxes. In a shed in Uxbridge. Late 80s.

Last year. LM002. £160,000. A true Lamborghini. Horrible to drive. LHD. But still utterly intoxicating.

[Andym3]

Back in 2001, it was a toss up between getting an E30 M3 Sport Evo III or an E36 M3 Evo, both priced at £12k. Guess which one I chose!

[F355GTS]

2006 288GTO for £150k, I decided to order a new 599 instead

[Mattjevans]

2012, Ferrari 456 for £30k. Ok, have hardly gone up and would have cost a fortune in servicing, but I could have been driving a V12 Ferrari for the last 10 years...

[rat rod]

Ferruccio said:

Miura SV. £40,000. Mostly working. A few bits in boxes. In a shed in Uxbridge. Late 80s.

Last year. LM002. £160,000. A true Lamborghini. Horrible to drive. LHD. But still utterly intoxicating.

My friend bought a Miura in box's for £40K, Probably around 21/23 years ago at a rough guess,

It was a almost finished item when i met him approx 19/20 years ago

He did a lot of the work himself .

He then put it on the market for a £100K/£125K can't remember the exact figure.

Remember seeing the car at one of the Alexandra Palace Classic Car Shows,

After being unsuccessful selling it he did a deal with a collector near Bristol for three cars and some cash.

One being a Bentley S3 but can't remember the other two.

The collector from Bristol entered the car in Coy' s ,brave even then, It failed to sell and while it was in storage care of Coy's

awaiting his collection the property next door to the storage facility caught on fire and the Miura received smoke and fire damaged,

Not destroyed more singed with items melting, The car was written off by the insurance company and the collector owner

bought the car back off them and was rebuilt for the second time,

Don't know if the guy from Bristol still own's it or not.

Ring any bells,sorry don't have any chassis no or reg no, colour is red if any help

Edited by rat rod on Friday 19th March 05:54

[cgt2]

1998 - F40 with around 36,000 kms for £90,000. Being sold from an underground car park in Fulham, never saw it in full daylight and vendor was reluctant to drive it upstairs to show it in the light!

[_Leg_]

Looked at this every evening for weeks and weeks recently wanting to add it to my collection but as I never buy cars without driving them (and Covid precluded me doing just that as I'm in York and it's in Bicester) I didn't go for it. I (naively) was hoping it would still be there when we were allowed to travel. Then one day I looked and it had sold. I was actually a bit upset.

Sigh. Damn you Covid. Still not over it to the point that my Mrs has asked me once or twice, when I go back hoping to see 'no sale', what's up with me hahahaha, what a clot.



https://bicestersportscars.co.uk/car-sales/coming-...

[rat rod]

_Leg_ said:

Looked at this every evening for weeks and weeks recently wanting to add it to my collection but as I never buy cars without driving them (and Covid precluded me doing just that as I'm in York and it's in Bicester) I didn't go for it. I (naively) was hoping it would still be there when we were allowed to travel. Then one day I looked and it had sold. I was actually a bit upset.

Sigh. Damn you Covid. Still not over it to the point that my Mrs has asked me once or twice, when I go back hoping to see 'no sale', what's up with me hahahaha, what a clot.



https://bicestersportscars.co.uk/car-sales/coming-...

I think you don't know how badly you want something until it's gone, Not your fault in this case but the result is the same.

I lost a 50's Cadillac convertible in Edinburgh 2 weeks ago for the same reason as you, I'm in Hampshire and was warned that the Scotch

police were turning anyone from across the border around and sending them back .Also i felt that i probably would have been stopped before

i got there because of the distance.

Annoying as i also was going to get my service book stamped at Lamborghini Edinburgh at the same time for fear of losing it in the post.

Hopefully Boris is going to let us out to play soon and i'm sure you will find another toy , maybe nearer home this time.

We must have similar eclectic taste as i sold my Austin Seven Ruby only a few months ago to buy a Chummy.

Edited by rat rod on Friday 19th March 05:53

[rat rod]

cgt2 said:

1998 - F40 with around 36,000 kms for £90,000. Being sold from an underground car park in Fulham, never saw it in full daylight and vendor was reluctant to drive it upstairs to show it in the light!

OUCH ! Considered high mileage for a F40 but still cheap if it was genuine car and sale, Guess your never know.

Sounds to good to be true so hopefully you dodged a bullet, The cheapest i can remember was £125K .

Perhaps it was the same car, not many around at those prices even when things go tits up.

I did the same but not on such a large scale. Drove to north Wales to see a silver 308 GTS on carbs'

Arrived at what looked like a run down rented cottage ,the guy who was selling lived in the I.O.M and the car was registered there,

The car was ok but not perfect , wanted to buy it but the guy seems a bit dodgy and fitted a description of someone who tried to scam a

400 Ferrari off a trader a few weeks earlier who at the time was trading from where Sparks were for some years on the A40 Western Avenue in London.

Can't remember what he traded under but i'm sure it's where i met Mike Perry before he went to Portman ,

Because i was nervous about the whole thing i offered him a silly low figure that i felt he probably wouldn't accept.

He shocked me by saying yes which sent more alarm bells going and because of the I.O.M registration number which

i couldn't check it out like a uk car , I panicked and went back empty handed all the time wondering if i had done the right thing as if it was

genuine was leaving the potential of a very large profit behind. guess i will never know to.

Did make some calls the following morning to the trader who almost got scammed ,Getting down to finer details like the guys very large

over the top Rolex and his equally large Alsatian dog it sounds like i did the right thing ,

Edited by rat rod on Friday 19th March 06:01

[Bispal]

1998 I went to view a 230 pagoda and a 911 E at a well know London Classic car dealer. Both cars were runners with MOT but needed some work. Was offered a straight swop with either for my 1990 MX5. Turned down both.

2002 offered a straight swop on my 1992 525i for a 1966 mustang fastback. Turned it down.

2012 a neighbour offered me his immaculate 993 c4s manual for £30k. I had a 996 and thought that was way to much for an older car.

2015 sold my M635csi for £10k

My 1st car an AE86 sold for £700

My dad turned down a straight swop in 1973 for his brand new Capril 3.0 GXL For a 300SL gullwing

My uncle in the 80's scrapped his DB6 because it needed all the brakes overhauling at £3k and car was worth same so it was sold for scrap.

I wish i had kept my mclaren 12C one of the first 100 cars and i rekon will be worth something one day.

Thats why i am keeping my 675LT and Exige 430CUP.....

[cgt2]

I'm also reminded of the EB110 (an SS no less) that was in bits at a certain Ferrari specialist in Hayes for many years. I only ever saw it with the engine out but imagine it is now out there and extremely valuable. I can't remember if they ever advertised it but memory suggests so.

[cgt2]

Nick Cartwright ad from 2003

[willy wombat]

There's nothing that I wake up crying about, but there are two that come to mind. 1/ In the 1990s I'd promised myself that if I made some reasonable money I would buy a 355 spider which I had lusted after for years. Late in 1999 colleagues and I sold a company but by that time the 355 spider was no longer in production. I really wanted a brand new one (it was my first Ferrari) and by luck Maranellos had a canceled order (the story of which is almost worth another thread but in a nutshell it had been ordered and spec'd by a guy whose wife had won the lottery but by the time it was to be delivered she had buggered off with the money and he couldn't complete the deal. There then followed various attempts by other parties to export it to India etc etc). When we went to Egham to look at it there was also an F50 in the showroom for not a lot more money. My wife was very taken by it and thought it might be a better bet than the 355 but I was set on getting the 355 so declined her suggestion. In some ways "stupid me" but on the other hand I never regretted buying the 355 Spider.
2/ I used to get my 599 serviced at Joe Macaris and one day, probably around 2009, when I was picking it up they had a cobalt blue Zonda Spider in which I thought was quite the most beautiful car I'd ever seen. Sadly it had just been sold for somewhere in the £300k area otherwise I would definitely have had it.

[Crazy4557]

Around 2009'ish I was offered a 20k+ mile F40 for £100k, genuine car from a friend of mine. He sold it elsewhere, we both regret not buying it/keeping it.

[davek_964]

Bispal said:

2012 a neighbour offered me his immaculate 993 c4s manual for £30k. I had a 996 and thought that was way to much for an older car.

Similar thing for me.

Early 2000s, I had a 964 C4 - that was back in the days when the 964 was still the black sheep of the 911 world. At the time, somebody was selling an immaculate, red 964RS. I thought the asking price of mid-20s was a tad high..........

[rat rod]

Looks like this is going to be a busy thread.

[rat rod]

Crazy4557 said:

Around 2009'ish I was offered a 20k+ mile F40 for £100k, genuine car from a friend of mine. He sold it elsewhere, we both regret not buying it/keeping it.

Think your mate who owned it will be have bigger regrets than you.

Not to bad if you replace it at the time with something equally as valuable and exciting.

For me it's more what i sold rather than what i missed, They say it's better to have loved than not to have loved at all, not so sure about that.

Did hear about a guy who went into Maranello's back in the 80's to buy a new Testarossa ,

In the showroom was a 288 GTO for around the same money,

Was tempted by the GTO but thought it looked to much like the 308 GTB so went ahead and ordered the Testarossa.

Can't remember where i heard the story, think it was on here.

Edited by rat rod on Friday 19th March 11:58