Car Auctions - Brightwells - Stondon Collection Goes To Auction

The Stondon Collection Auctioned at Brightwells

Earlier this year I read that Brightells, the Leominster based Auctioneers, had been retained by the Saunders family to sell the whole contents of the Stondon Car Museum.

I saw that there was Jensen Interceptor III in the collection and I wondered what price that would achieve. I had been to Brightwells Classic Car one before in 2009 and thought that it was about time I went again. What better occasion to go than the sale of the Stondon cars which, included a Jensen Interceptor as well as many other interesting cars.

So, early in the morning of the 10th June a friend and I set off for the lovely town of Leominster in Herefordshire. It was cool and cloudy when we set out but we arrived at our destination in beautiful warm sunshine, ideal!

Brightwells is a very well organised outfit. Everything is to hand, car parking is easy staff are pleasant and efficient, it is a real joy to be there even if, as in our case, your intention is just to enjoy looking at the cars rather than bidding for any of them.

Most but not all, of the cars to be auctioned where located in one large building so that prospective buyers could have a good look at them. As I was looking at the Interceptor I noticed someone else looking at in a far more intense manner than myself. i asked if he was considering bidding for it. He told me that he was from Jensen International Automotive (JIA) creators and builders of the Jensen ‘R’ model and that he was looking at the Interceptor as a potential ‘donor’ car. I don’t think that he was too impressed with what he saw.

I must say I was very surprised that most of the cars in the ‘collection’ were in pretty poor condition. Poor paintwork, damaged panels, missing bright-work and seals, pitted chrome (especially bumpers) and lots of rust.

Despite this when the the Auction started at 12.00pm bidding from the floor, telephone and internet was keen from the start. Obviously I am not a dealer or a restorer but I know enough about cars to have a rough idea of what might each model might have gone for.
I will have to say that with just a few exceptions most of them went for more that I would have thought reasonable. A good example of that is the Jensen Interceptor. In the condition that it was in I would have thought £12,000 would have been absolute tops. The JIA man’s estimate was less than that. In the end it went for £16,000.
Having said that Jensen Interceptors in good condition have increased in price enormously in recent years and can fetch between £30,000 & £40,000, so even at £16K it would be a cost efficient project for a skilled amateur. Less so for a professional outfit like JIA.

For me the outstanding price achieved (i didn’t stay right to the end) was £21,000 for a 1938 Ford V-8 Pilot ‘Woody’ Station Wagon. It was in reasonable but not outstanding condition.

Here are some photos of others cars at the auction. Some of them are not ‘auction’ cars (identified in the captions as NinA)they belong to people who were visiting. Nevertheless they are worthy of note: –