The Bonhams Harrogate 2012 auction was held 14th November at the Great Yorkshire Showground in Harrogate, UK, resulting in nearly £1.1 million in total sales and an 97% sell-through rate from 65 motor cars, 100 motorcycles and more than 300 lots of automobilia.
In the motor car section, a ‘barn-find’ 1965 Ferrari 330GT 2+2 Coupe restoration project exceeded expectations to sell for £68,700, more than double its pre-sale estimate. Other lots that sold well included a 1950 Delahaye Type 135M Coupe for £55,200 and a 1933 MG Midget J2/J4 Sports that brought £44,850. Meanwhile an eight-seater 1931 Rolls-Royce 20/25hp Shooting Brake once used as an ambulance sold for £35,667. Among the more unusual lots at the auction, a c.1945 Military Field Kitchen beat its top estimate to sell for £2,300, and a 1951 Guy Otter Pantechnicon Panel Van complete with livery from the Silentnight Company realised £12,075.
Tim Schofield, Head of the Bonhams UK Motor Car Department, said, “This was one of the busiest Harrogate sales I’ve witnessed over the past 10 years or so: we must have had more than 1,000 people attending. It was a great success. There was something for everyone with nearly all the 477 lots finding new homes during a marathon auction that took over 10 hours.”
In the motorcycle section, the top-selling lot was an original 1950 Vincent-HRD 998cc Rapide Series C with only two recorded keepers from new, which exceeded its pre-sale estimate to sell for £28,750. These included a 1959 Velocette 499cc Venom (£7,475), a 1922 New Imperial 347cc Sports (£6,900) and a 1983 BMW 798cc R80G/S (£5,175) – the latter generating a lot of interest at auction. A number of trials machines also did well on the day, including a 1956 Ariel 499cc HT5 Trials Motorcycle, which realised £6,440.
Automobilia was an almost complete sell-out success, with the top-selling item an original RAF operations room Sector clock, which – after a tenacious bidding battle between two determined bidders – sold for nearly seven times its top pre-sale estimate at £10,250.
For more information and complete auction results, visit Bonhams Harrogate.
[Source: Bonhams]
