After a strong May and June (featuring RM's £20m Villa d'Este and Bonhams' £7.18m Festival of Speed sales) the local provincial auction industry has had to work its gavels to bring home the bacon in what is a traditionally (in the run-up to the heady results from Monterey week) a fallow period.
Six auction houses put 470 cars under the hammer but their respective results were tempered by a string of near 50% sale rates that meant barely one out of every two cars found new homes.
Brightwells was first up with its 13 July sale at its Leominster base, where it took £650,000 from 59 cars. Top seller was a Jaguar XK150S Roadster at £78,100 (one of just 93 Roadsters built in right-hand drive form), closely followed by its successor - a nut-and-bolt restored 1961 Jaguar E-type Roadster - at £58,300.
An equally pristine and freshly-rebuilt 1970 Porsche 911S 2.2 made similar money at £51,500 but Brightwells struggled to get a 1972 T variant (below) away at £13,500 - with bidding dampened by the car's Sportomatic semi-auto transmission.
Other bargains extended to a 1991Ford Sierra XR4x4 (below) that had bills for £11k of upgrades yet sold for just £1350 and a humble1990VW Golf Driver in automatic form made a mere £650. More buoyant was at a pre-production1980 Triumph TR8 Convertible with 37,000 on thew clock that made £6950.
Talk of the sale was Brightwells barnfind1948 Invicta Black Prince Drophead Coupe that sold for £20,000 to a French buyer while a BMW Isetta (£6500) was another novelty.