Author: John Mayhead
Images: Bonhams
Last weekend, a 1934 MG sold at the Bonhams Goodwood Revival sale for £525,000 inclusive of premium. Two years previously at the same sale, an almost identical car sold for £117,300. Both had a 1086cc six-cylinder supercharged engine and a K3 ‘Mille Miglia’ style body, both had been restored by very well-known pre-war MG enthusiasts, and both presented in excellent condition. If raced today, both could probably match each other on the track.
The element that made one car worth more than four times the value of the other was that the vehicle sold last weekend was understood to have been the K3 racing car that in 1933 won the gruelling 1933 RAC Tourist Trophy driven by Nuvolari and took a class win in the Mille MIglia, piloted by George Eyston and Johnny Lurani. The other was a KN, originally with a saloon body, which MG built around 200 to capitalise on their racing success.
Racing is so important to value because it stirs emotions. Since the earliest cars and motorcycles took to the cart tracks of the late-19th century, you can be sure that two owners lined them up and raced each other. As cars became faster and more reliable, so the distance and speeds of the racing increased. By the 1930s, when the MGs were new, racing was a huge spectator sport, with a massive international network of racetracks, road races, hillclimbs and sprints. Nuvolari, Eyston, Lurani and the other top drivers were as famous as Lionel Messi and Roger Federer are today, each representing both their team and their country, and displaying bravery as well as skill.
Racing cars seem to bring a little of that glamour with them. I own a car that was used to test run speed records back in the 1940s and when I drive it, I feel a connection back to that place. It feels special, knowing that my car was once involved in an extraordinary event, driven by Goldie Gardner, one of the most prolific record breakers there has ever been. It’s as if a little of Goldie’s energy lives on in the car. Racing cars have this in spades – they seem to soak up some of that danger, that excitement. Buyers want to sit where the greats once sat.
But racing cars are also hard to value. Their nature is to be chopped and changed, engines replaced when broken and bodies adapted for each race. Proving what is ‘original’ or even correct for a certain period of time in the car’s life can be almost impossible. Above, I wrote that the car sold last weekend was ‘understood’ to have been a K3. Many years ago, Reg Jackson, MG’s competition head in the 1930s, said that a German customer wanted to buy the successful TT and Mille Miglia-winning car, but it was away on tour so the factory built another one with the same chassis number. The original car had its number ground down and was sold for parts and It’s this one that has been built back up and today wears the original numberplate of the works car. But the element of confusion, of broken history and possible shady shenanigans by MG before World War 2 may have made potential buyers a little reluctant to bid as high as they would if the lineage had been continuous from day one. £525,000 is a lot of money, but it was under the pre-sale estimate and is a well short of the price put on another K3, with more detailed history, that has recently been offered for sale.
Enjoying John’s valuation articles? Keep your eyes peeled for his article within our first issue of the Hagerty Drivers Club magazine.