XJ220 Found in Cardiff Carpet Shop
Discussion
A rare sports car which spent years bricked up in a carpet shop is set to go to auction this week, it was revealed today.
The Jaguar XJ220, which was delivered in June 1993 and has just 111 miles on the clock, was kept in a special room at the Marlborough Carpets store in Cardiff.
Now the car, with a top speed of 200mph, is for sale as the main asset of the firm, which went into liquidation.
Chris Hall, vice president, Europe, of international valuers and auctioneers Dovebid, which is advising the liquidators, said the car was unusual because it was unregistered and right-hand drive.
"The car has not been used since it was bought - it has been mothballed," he said.
Peter Bache, president international of Dovebid, said it was believed the car's owners had bought it and then kept it so safely because they thought it would be a sound investment.
With just 350 produced, the Jaguar XJ220 came with a price tag of £400,000.
Now the Marlborough Carpets car number 172 is due to go up for auction in Oxford in the very factory where it was made. It has an undisclosed reserve price, and Mr Bache said it was a difficult car to value.
The sale, which will include bids made via the internet, is set to start tomorrow, with the Jaguar expected to come up on Thursday. Other lots include items from the Arrows Formula 1 racing team.
"We have had a lot of interest," said Mr Bache. "We kept it back for this auction because it was the right place to sell it.
"In the last week we have had people registering interest from Australia, the USA, Holland, Japan and France."
The XJ220 made its debut as a concept car at the 1988 Motor Show, and later went into production in 1991 when Jaguar Sport created the purpose-built factory in Bloxham near Oxford.
The only car to beat it for speed since has been the McLaren F1 supercar.
Bloody hell, just saw this in the paper. It was bricked in & they had to knock a wall down to remove it. We even bought a carpet from the shop a while ago. Horrible dingy place, would never have guessed they had one of these out the back.
www.dovebid.com/Auctions/AuctionDetail.asp?auctionID=1621
Heard about this a while back in Classic Cars Magazine. This happened quite a bit in the late '80s, though not perhaps to this extreme. Testarossas were a favourite for storing away by speculators, which is why the market is now flooded with extremely low-mileage Testarossas, Countaches and the like. A word of advice -Don't buy them, they're not properly run-in yet and they'll be full of 5-litre V12-sized teething troubles. The only things of the era which really held their values were the hard-core supercar-racer material - XJ220s, 959s, Ferrari F40s and 288GTOs and Lotus Esprit X180Rs. The others will pick up in value over time, but, like the Ferrari 275GTB alongside a 250GTO, will never be as valuable.
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