What's in a name?
Minters. No, I don't mean one of those sweets you used to chew
at school to cover up that quick fag behind the bike sheds; I'm
talking old cars that are like new cars -or better.
Just lately, a few of these have come out of the woodwork and
I've had to assess their agreed value.That's not as easy as it
sounds, because where do you find an equivalent example on which to
base your price?
Take the first one - a 1966 Rover 2000 MK1; resplendent in old
English white with unmarked red leather, she looked like she had
left the factory that very morning. A car like this is wonderful to
behold and with just 11k genuine miles under the wheels, you have
to marvel at the owner's tenacity in storing the old girl for so
long.
But what about the value? The new keeper had just paid £12k to
the original octogenarian owner and asked if it could be insured
for the same. Of course, the answer was yes, because the fair
market value had been set by the purchaser.
Often, it's not that simple. Sometimes someone will bag a
genuine bargain and will require a higher value than the purchase
price, but that's exceptional. More likely, the correct market
price will be paid and that's the only value that will be
insurable. However, often the new owner will try to add on at least
a third for 'insurance purposes' and then inevitably gets upset
when this is rejected as not reflecting the true fair market
value.
This happens all the time when they perceive their new motor to
be rare, which in the eyes of the non-seasoned buyer must in turn
mean the thing is valuable. I've heard the words, "but it's one of
5 ever made", more times than I've had hot dinners, usually
followed by: "the bloke I bought it from says I should insure it
for £20k". When we're talking about a badly rebodied Triumph Herald
of dubious parentage, it's laughable. Or it would be if they
weren't so deadly serious.
My general response is that they made only 5 for a good reason:
nobody wanted the bloody thing when it was new in the first place
and even less want it now. A Bugatti Royale may have had a similar
production run, but at least it was the very pinnacle of
engineering at the time, rather than an over-egged project
assembled by a dewy-eyed father and son team in a garden shed. You
get the picture.
On the other hand, a genuine mint example of a now-extinct
volume production model is a truly rare beast and deserves to be
treated as such. Hot on the heels of the Rover 2000 came a
delightful 1964 Humber Super Snipe; two owners and only 19k miles,
I actually doubt if there are more than 5 left in this time-warp
condition, the cost of restoring one to an equal standard not being
an economic proposition.
The chap wanted to insure it for an agreed value of £10k and who
was I to argue? After all, it was half what the bloke with the
dodgy Herald wanted - and a damn sight more appealing. In the end,
there's rare and there's rare - and there's an awful lot of
difference between the two.
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