July Collectors’ Cars, Motorcycles & Automobilia

19 Jun

Our July Collectors’ Cars, Motorcycles & Automobilia catalogue is online now and presents a rich offering of vehicles, each telling its own unique story. Specialist Chris Wiseman introduces the catalogue.

During my tenure telling the rich stories of Collectors’ Cars here at Webb’s, many a time colleagues and clients have remarked that: “everyone loves a good story.” I knew it to be true then, and having curated this July catalogue I certainly know it to be so now. Cars and motorcycles—much like art and objects—are ultimately assigned special value if imbued with a rich and tangible heritage. Regular readers of the catalogue and its forewords know that this is a point I have highlighted in previous issues; however, on this occasion, I intend to make it my main concern, and perhaps on a more personal level.

I came to Webb’s from a degree in history and a tenure at Archives New Zealand, and have always enthusiastically immersed myself in the historically significant. It was this that first attracted me to what we do here at Webb’s.

You’ll see why, then, this catalogue has struck a chord with me, featuring as it does several lots which emphasise the power of history from a broad array of backgrounds. Where trends and fleeting aesthetic preferences may disperse and lose the hold they have over the market, provenance does not. Where new groups of people come to the fore in collecting, others may leave the obsession, but all collectors love a story.

Chris Wiseman
Specialist, Collectors’ Cars

+64 22 187 7693
chris@webbs.co.nz

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Collectors’ Cars, Motorcycles & Automobilia
Sunday 13 July, 2.30pm

View Catalogue

As this July offering shows, a story can come in the form of a long-lived and opulent Packard (lot 5), a veteran of nine decades, three continents and two concours wins. Equally, a story can come from more local avenues too, through sporting excellence and ground-level motorsport enthusiasm. I am, of course, referring to legendary Kiwi sportsperson Ivan Mauger’s last mount, the well-known ‘Stamp Bike’, or Jawa 889, offered as lot 12.

At lot 4, more than just an early bubble car and delightful oddity, the Messerschmitt KR200 is fundamentally a car which, in its engineering and unique contours, marks out the shape of a particular zeitgeist, unique to an era now in the past.

Even where a car’s heritage is not attached to something broader, it still exists in the context of what came before it. Neo-classics like the 2006 Bentley Continental GT (lot 45), 1990 Range Rover CSK (lot 40), and 2001 Mini Cooper Sport Mk VII (lot 41) have lived comparatively short lives but were injected at conception with a touch of the heritage their manufacturers boast. Indeed, they and many like them are homages to storied models and shapes which preceded them.

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Even the ‘usual suspects’ and typical stars of collecting cars in this catalogue benefit from the legacy associated with them, but are crucially endowed with unique provenance as well. The 280SL ‘Pagoda’, a car offered as lot 43 which needs no introduction, is more than likely the most comprehensively archived right-hand drive example in New Zealand, whereas a 1987 Bentley Continental at lot 3 was once owned by Sir James Fletcher.

Automobilia too can constitute a powerful avenue for history to flow. Look no further than lots 37 and 38; objects commonly associated with Webb’s other esteemed departments, but in this case with desirable and poignant Formula 1 provenance.

Time and time again, tangible history has been rewarded in Webb’s Collectors’ Cars offerings. In April of this year, the most comprehensively documented E-Type Webb’s has had the pleasure of offering sold for $184,000, and in August 2024, a Rolls-Royce used in two royal tours of NZ for $172,500.

I know from speaking with collectors every day that they share my passion for a car with history. The brief microcosm of results I mention above speaks to this emphatically, and that enthusiasm is the very same which leads me to enjoy the curation of these catalogues so much, and makes it my pleasure to present the story of this July Collectors’ Cars, Motorcycles & Automobilia auction to you.