Rare vintage Bentley found tucked away in old barn for 30 years is set to sell at auction for staggering sum
The luxury motor from the 1950s was hidden in a barn and will finally see the light of day again hen it goes up for auction.
7
7
The chic car is a Charlie Watton A rare vintage Bentley which has belonged to its owner's family for six decades.
The 1950 Bentley Mark VI relic was capable of 100mph in its prime, thanks to its powerful 4257cc OISE straight-six engine.
Although it needs a major restoration to make it viable, much of the original interior is still intact.
It still has its original leatherwork and veneer, and has a chic, dark grey paint-job.
However, moths have ravaged the original wool inside the car
First developed in 1946, the car was the first Bentley to be equipped with factory-designed coachwork.
Pristine versions of the designer car often sell for anything from £15,000 to £150,000.
As a true vintage relic, its sellers are hoping to get as much as possible in the auction.
According to Luxury Auto News, the car was acquired by the seller's late father in the 1960s.
It was used for its former owner's wedding and was passed down to his daughter in 2023, when he sadly passed away.
Watch moment car thief boy, 9, sneaks into uninsured £135k PORSCHE to go on daring joyride - but it doesn't end well
The Mark VI was the first car to be assembled in Rolls-Royce's Crew factory, instead of Bentley's site in Derby.
Now, the car is heading back to Derbyshire, where it will go on sale as part of the H&H Classics Pavilion Gardens auction in Buxton.
Bidding will be closed on July 30.
Ahead of the event, a spokesperson for the auction site opened up about the luxury car.
The spokesperson said: 'Now offered without reserve and presenting a dilemma for any would-be purchaser as to whether to preserve its years of patination or restore it back to its former glory.
'The Bentley is offered with a current UK V5C, owners handbook and a handful of old MoT test certificates and tax discs.'
The news comes after a pensioner's car collection went on sale for £1 million.
Frank Loft began adding cars to his Moretonhampstead Motor Museum in Devon in 2008 and eventually managed to acquire 120 vehicles.
7
He has a mix of high-end and more affordable cars in his collection, with the high end motors including: 1930s Rolls-Royce worth £26,000, a 1959 Jaguar XK150 worth £50,000 and a 1970 Ford Cortina Lotus Mk II, worth £30,000.
After years of collecting motors, Frank decided to switch gear and take advantage of his retirement.
He said: "It's a hobby gone out of control. Museums aren't a business you go into thinking you're going to make a fortune.
"I have enjoyed more or less every moment, it's been a great experience. It's been a pleasure to welcome tens of thousands of visitors over the years.
"My body's telling me it's time I had a break.
"I haven't decided what I'll do now but I'll probably find another project, I've always been a bit of a workaholic.'
7
7
7
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Times
38 minutes ago
- Times
How drivers were sold a car finance compensation fantasy
Britain has narrowly avoided a costly car finance compensation free-for-all after a landmark court ruling derailed chances of a payout for millions of drivers. Claims lawyers had been bombarding consumers with adverts suggesting they may have been entitled to thousands of pounds in a scandal over hidden commission on car finance deals. The scandal had been expected to rival the mis-selling of payment protection insurance, which cost banks more than £38 billion. It was thought that nearly 15 million drivers could be entitled to payouts worth as much as £44 billion in total — although Friday's Supreme Court ruling means the numbers are set to be far smaller. Questions have now been raised over whether those using car finance really lost out and how many of them deserve compensation at all. The chancellor, Rachel Reeves, had tried to intervene ahead of the ruling — arguing that a colossal compensation bill for the industry would damage the economy and consumers. The Supreme Court ruled on three cases where consumers bought cars on finance and argued that they had been treated unfairly because they had not been told about commission involved in their deals — which ranged from £183 to £1,651. The court rejected two of the three cases, but upheld a complaint by Marcus Johnson, a factory worker from south Wales — because in his case the £1,651 commission in his loan was 55 per cent of the fee (including interest) on his loan over five years. 'The fact that the undisclosed commission was so high is a powerful indication that the relationship between Mr Johnson and the lender was unfair,' the court's judgment said. It leaves the door open to claims for compensation on deals that contained large amounts of commission, or where the commission model influenced what they paid. How much would be needed for a deal to be unfair is something that is likely to be decided by the City regulator, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), which said it would confirm if it would introduce a redress scheme before stock markets open on Monday morning. The FCA had been investigating finance deals that had used a model called discretionary commission, which incentivised dealers to give customers a worse interest rate on their loan. However, a judgment by the Court of Appeal last October opened the door to compensation claims by millions of motorists who had bought cars on finance, regardless of the commission model. Lenders appealed to the Supreme Court over the ruling. About nine in ten cars are bought on finance and £39.7 billion was borrowed on more than two million cars in the year to May, according to the Finance and Leasing Association, a trade body. The Court of Appeal had ruled in October that car dealers had a duty to make clear the nature and value of any commission paid to them to ensure that borrowers could give 'informed consent' before agreeing to a deal. Reeves was among those concerned about a claims free-for-all, with the Treasury reportedly drawing up contingency plans to shield lenders from having to pay out billions of pounds in compensation. The Treasury attempted to intervene in the Supreme Court case, arguing that a ruling had 'the potential to adversely affect the United Kingdom's reputation as a place to do business, with a consequent impact on economic growth'. In the meantime complaints about car loans to the Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS), a body that solves disputes, have risen from 4,130 in the first three months of 2023-24 to 37,230 in the last three months of 2024-25. Most of these have been brought by claims companies and no-win, no-fee law firms that file complaints on behalf of consumers in return for up to 30 per cent of any compensation. These companies have swamped radio, social media and television with adverts that tell consumers they could be owed thousands of pounds. On Thursday the FCA said it had required 224 adverts from claims firms about car finance to either be taken down or changed. There had been highly speculative figures advertised for how much consumers could get back, it said, including compensation figures that did not make clear they covered multiple car loans and misleading claims that refunds were guaranteed. It said companies had been signing up consumers without their consent after they clicked on adverts. Philip Salter, a former FCA regulator now at the consultancy Sicsic Advisory, said: 'I haven't liked a lot of the claims company advertising. You've had a lot of companies arguing that time is running out, but the clock hasn't even started. It's been a bit of an unseemly scramble.' • Common sense has triumphed over compensation culture If there is to be compensation for consumers, it is expected that the FCA will announce a free redress scheme where lenders will contact those eligible, meaning consumers should not need to use a claims company. Gary Greenwood from the investment bank Shore Capital said: 'It's one of those things where if you go by the letter of the law of the previous Court of Appeal judgment, you're almost coming to the conclusion that commission is bad. But the problem is that if you look at the reality of what had happened, there doesn't seem to have been a lot of consumer harm that's gone on. 'So any sort of redress has got to come down to: has there been any consumer harm here, or are people just trying to claim money back on a technicality?' Greenwood said. Charlie Nunn, the chief executive of Lloyds Banking Group, which runs Britain's biggest car finance lender, Black Horse, has denied the scandal was on the same level as PPI. 'Some 80 per cent of people need finance to buy a new car, and a large number of second-hand car buyers do as well,' he told The Times in January. 'We need a well-functioning motor finance industry that supports consumers.' The National Franchised Dealers Association, a trade body, told the Supreme Court that 'nobody goes to a car dealer with a reasonable expectation that it is acting without self-interest in relation to any of the products it sells'. The Supreme Court's judgment could have been the difference between lenders facing a compensation bill of £11 billion — for complaints about a specific form of commission — and £29 billion, according to Royal Bank of Canada Capital Markets, an investment bank. It could also have led to compensation claims about the sale of other financial products such as insurance where commission was involved but not properly disclosed. Consumers in turn could have had to foot the bill. Stuart Masson, the editor of the advice website The Car Expert UK, said that if lenders have to pay compensation to millions of people, car finance could get more expensive in the future as the industry tries to 'claw back' that money. 'That's not money they're going to find down the back of the sofa,' he told the BBC. 'They're going to have to get that back from increasing the costs of future lending, which won't just be on car finance. It could be on credit cards, it could be on personal loans, it could be on mortgages.' In January Reeves told bankers at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland: 'There is nothing pro-consumer about making it harder for people to buy an affordable car for their family.' Before the courts widened the scope of possible mis-selling, the FCA had been investigating a specific model of commission called discretionary commission. This is where the cut that lenders paid dealers was linked to the interest rate consumers were charged, incentivising dealers to charge borrowers more. This model was used in about 35 per cent of car finance deals, according to the FCA, before it banned the practice in January 2021. The FCA said consumers could have paid about £1,100 more in interest over a four-year £10,000 car finance deal because of this commission model — which is being used as the basis for many of the estimates around possible compensation. Salter, who worked on the ban when he was at the FCA, said: 'That previous Court of Appeal ruling surprised me. I think everyone knows that if they're buying a car the salesman's getting commission, don't they? But discretionary commission never felt right to me.' The FCA began its investigation in January last year on whether consumers had been properly told about the link between their repayments and the commission. The investigation was kicked off by two rulings by the ombudsman against Lloyds and Barclays last year, which ordered the banks to refund two consumers more than £1,000 each. The FCA is expected to set out its next steps, including whether there will be a redress scheme, within six weeks. Any scheme would be free and easy for consumers to use, it said, while the FOS is also free for consumers to appeal to. Rob Lilley-Jones from the consumer group Which? said: 'It's vital that finance firms are held accountable for mis-selling and if a large number of motorists are eligible for compensation consumers are likely to be bombarded with ads from claims firms offering to take on their case. 'Affected customers should be careful when enlisting the services of claims management companies as the wrong choice could lead to their case being poorly handled, losing a significant portion of the compensation in legal fees — or both.' Coby Benson from the law firm Bott & Co, which helped win the ombudsman's case against Lloyds, said the experience from PPI was that consumers could sometimes recover more money by going to court than through a redress scheme. He said: 'We would support a proactive redress scheme if it fairly compensated consumers. But we have doubts over the effective implementation of a scheme, because our data shows that about half of clients have a different address now to that which the lender had from the time of the agreement.'
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari: no podiums but a new culture in going ‘the extra mile'
Success breeds expectation as Lewis Hamilton, who has enjoyed both like few other drivers in Formula One, knows only too well. Having set himself the task of returning a title for Ferrari, anticipation for his first season with the team was off the scale but success has been far from forthcoming. As the Scuderia have struggled the seven-time champion has been drawing on every bit of experience in what may be the defining challenge of his storied career. At the Hungarian Grand Prix this weekend Ferrari announced they were extending their contract with team principal, Fred Vasseur, backing the Frenchman who was instrumental in bringing Hamilton on board to complete his mission of reforging Ferrari into a championship-winning outfit after underachieving for so long. However as the season approaches its summer break, with 10 races to come after Budapest and Ferrari winless, Vasseur still has much to achieve. Hamilton has been outspoken in his support for Vasseur since he made the switch after 12 years with Mercedes but, during a season of acclimatisation and adaptation to a new team, the British driver has appreciated that he must do more than drive. Rather it seems, as Michael Schumacher managed to such great success with Ferrari, to take a leadership role. It is believed Hamilton was somewhat taken aback at the team's organisation and methodologies when he began working with them and that he felt the decision making process was ungainly. He has repeatedly stressed he is convinced they have the talent in personnel to succeed but it has become clear he thinks they must be utilised better. At Belgium last week he was unusually candid in revealing he had held a series of meetings with the key players at Ferrari: Vasseur, the chair John Elkann and the chief executive, Benedetto Vigna. Moreover he had gone as far as compiling two documents detailing suggestions for the progress he believes is needed to turn around Ferrari's fortunes, an admission that caused no little stir. One of said submissions was about the car, where he thought it could be improved and more crucially where they might take it under the new regulations next year. This might be considered the due diligence of any committed, ambitious and thoughtful driver. However of more significance was the second aimed at the operational approach at Ferrari, the 'structural adjustments' he believed were required. 'It is a huge organisation and there's a lot of moving parts, and not all of them are firing on all the cylinders that [they] need to be,' he said. 'That's ultimately why the team's not had the success that I think it deserves. So I feel that it's my job to challenge absolutely every area, to challenge everybody in the team, particularly the guys that are at the top who are making the decisions.' For the 40-year-old Hamilton there is urgency to this task. Ferrari is surely his last shot at claiming a record-breaking eighth title that would end the team's drought stretching back to 2007 for a drivers' championship and 2008 for a constructors'. He is more than aware that since then the Scuderia has come close but still failed to deliver even with former world champions Fernando Alonso and then Sebastian Vettel at the wheel. Over 11 seasons between 2010 and 2020, there were many wins for Alonso and Vettel but still ultimately the team could not seal a championship. Hamilton's actions and attitude reveal a determination that if he too is to fall short it will not be through a lack of effort on his behalf. 'I refuse for that to be the case with me, so I'm going the extra mile,' he said. 'I've obviously been very fortunate to have had experiences in two other great teams. And while things for sure are going to be different, because there's a different culture and everything, I think sometimes if you take the same path all the time, you get the same results. So I'm just challenging certain things.' That the best use of the human resource in F1 can be gamechanging could not be better illustrated than with the extraordinary resurgence Andrea Stella has wrought at McLaren in just over two years. Moreover there are also indications that internally Hamilton is already making a difference. 'The response has been amazing to the steps that we've taken in all areas,' he said in Hungary. 'The passion and the desire to continue to do better is what's the most amazing thing.' On track there is a sense that for all that Hamilton has struggled with the car this year, without a podium for 13 races, the longest period of his career, he remains as sharp as ever. His recent drives at Silverstone and Spa were proof enough of that and his call to switch to slick tyres in Belgium evidence that his instincts remain finely honed. Hamilton is then putting the building blocks in place, confident that if the team can deliver he will too, having already done the hard yards behind the scenes this season. In first practice at the Hungaroring Hamilton and his teammate Charles Leclerc continued to work with the new rear suspension Ferrari brought to Spa and which they hope will develop into a serious improvement for the car. They finished fifth and third respectively in a session which was once more dominated by the McLarens of championship contenders Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. In the second session McLaren were once more on top, with Norris again leading Piastri by two-tenths. Leclerc was third and Hamilton sixth, with Max Verstappen in 14th, very much struggling with the balance of his ride. The Dutchman's difficult afternoon was further compounded as he was investigated for throwing a towel, left in error in his car, from the cockpit while on track and issued with a warning for an unsafe release. Norris on Friday looked to ease the pressure on the title race, saying that it does not matter if he fails to beat Piastri to the world championship because 'in 200 years we will all be dead'. Asked if he needs to get under the Australian's skin to land his maiden F1 title, Norris replied: 'I don't enjoy that. In 200 years no one is going to care. We'll all be dead. I am trying to have a good time. I still care about it, and that's why I get upset sometimes and I get disappointed and angry at myself. And I think that shows just how much I care about winning and losing. 'But that doesn't mean I need to take it out on Oscar. I just don't get into those kind of things.'
Daily Mail
5 hours ago
- Daily Mail
DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Keir Starmer must fight for UK drug firms
The life sciences industry is among the brightest jewels in the British economy, generating £100billion a year and employing more than 300,000 people. At its heart is the development and manufacture of pharmaceuticals, notably by AstraZeneca, which spends vast sums on research and is worth £167billion. So, if this hugely successful company were to relocate to the US, it would be a disaster both for the London Stock Exchange and the wider economy. Worryingly, this is not out of the question. AstraZeneca already sells 40 per cent of its drugs to America and, following President Donald Trump 's tariff threat, is ramping up research and production there. While there are no immediate plans to desert the UK, chief executive Pascal Soriot is said to be 'flirting' with the idea. Mr Trump's latest demand that foreign drug companies cut prices to US customers or face penalties may be an added incentive. The Left has always been highly critical of 'Big Pharma', accusing it of profiteering on the backs of NHS patients. Under Jeremy Corbyn, Labour planned to create a state-owned drug manufacturer with the power to override the patents which enable firms to make profits from their research. Only last year, Sir Keir Starmer refused to help fund a new vaccine plant in Liverpool – while pouring public money into our ailing steel industry. This Government must understand that failing to nurture AstraZeneca, GSK and others would be a catastrophic mistake. And Sir Keir should realise that while they say they want to remain in the UK, they may yet change their mind. Car lenders off hook Banks and credit providers will have heaved a huge sigh of relief yesterday after the Supreme Court ruled they will not have to pay compensation to millions of motorists who bought cars on finance without being told the dealers were receiving commission on the loan. The Treasury was also delighted with the result. Had it gone the other way, damages could have been comparable to the PPI scandal, which destabilised the financial industry for more than a decade. The court decided that dealers did not have a duty to act solely for buyers and that commissions were not a form of bribery in the legal sense, as had been alleged. However, it was not a total exoneration. Court President Lord Reed also ruled that excessive commission payments were unfair and ordered one buyer who had been charged 25 per cent of the value of the car to be repaid with interest. This opens the way to further claims. Many brokers and dealers were paid behind-the-scenes commission by lenders to sign buyers up to car finance deals, a practice deemed 'unlawful' by the Court of Appeal in October last year - a decision that was successfully appealed by lenders at the Supreme Court The dealers and lenders have escaped their worst fears, but they do not come out well. They have certainly been guilty of sharp practices even if not illegal ones. The Competition and Markets Authority must now force them to clean up their act. OAPs feel the cold In September, Rachel Reeves promised she would 'put more money in pensioners' pockets'. What she didn't say is that she would take even more out. Research shows pensioner households are an average of £800 worse off after a year of Labour thanks to higher bills – mainly owing to the Chancellor's £40billion Budget tax raid. With more taxes coming down the track to fill Labour's ever-widening financial black hole, the cost of living is set to soar further. For all Ms Reeves' promises, the elderly are in for a bitter winter.
