2002 Ferrari 360 Spider F1

If there was one car manufacturer whose image was inextricably linked to one colour it has to be Ferrari. However, it would be vaguely interesting to see what proportion of Ferraris produced were actually not painted in Rosso Corsa.

The significance of the choice of red by Enzo apparently lies with the emergence of  ’country colours’ in the early days of motor racing. Green for Britain, blue for France, yellow for Belgium, silver for Germany and of course red for Italy.  But yellow is the colour for Modena and hence the background colour of the Scuderia shield and don’t Ferraris look nice painted in Giallo?

Anyway with enough money and kudos you can have the factory paint your new car in any colour you wish (within reason and as long as Enzo did not consider it tasteless). Eric Clapton is one of those people that is well known in Modena. Not so much for his guitar-playing skills but he just loves Ferraris and he doesn’t always order one in Rosso Corsa.

Take the 360 Spider that we are selling on behalf of the current owner. The shade of metallic grey (grigio) on this car is unusual because it wasn’t a standard colour for the 360. Eric decided he liked the colour so much from a previous Ferrari he had owned that he asked for his new 360 Spider F1 purchased in 2002 to be painted with the same colour and the factory duly obliged.  The following year he bought an Enzo painted in yellow, so there!

Today the same car is up for sale and has now done just over 30k miles. The interior is finished in Beige leather and the service history is impeccable. Lancaster’s have just carried out the 31k service and the cambelts have been changed at the same time. Give us a call on ++44 1474 854490 or click here for more details.

In the meantime click here for a slideshow of images.

Old Flames – The Rover P6

Anyone remember when the first European Car of The Year award was held? Well, it was 1964 and it was won by a bloody Rover! Now those who only know Rover from the past decade or so will find that quite astonishing since the latter day image of the company is far less flattering than it probably deserves as a whole. 

You see Rover used to be up there with Jaguar and when the P6 was launched in 1964 it leap-frogged the leaping cat as far as automotive technological developments were concerned.

Rover had a reputation for building decent, solid cars back then and the P5, particularly in V8 mode, was a truly desirable carriage. In fact if you are looking to purchase a decent, restored P5B Coupe you will now need deep pockets. But more of that another time.

The P6 was intoduced to complement the succesful P5 and to see off those lairy Mk2 Jags and its upwardly mobile cousin, the Triumph 2000. From a technology point of view the P6 had them all licked. Bolt-on body panels, all-round disc brakes (inboard at the rear), De Dion rear suspension, and syncromesh on all gears.

The styling represented a move away from the trad British-look of the time with its four-headlamp set-up and ‘eggbox’ grille. There was something Citroen DS-like about the way the roofline tapered towards the rear and some of the subtle design details suggested that Rover’s engineers had been quite infatuated with the French Goddess.

Passenger safety was never a high priority for designers back in the early 60’s but the P6 came along and won all sorts of awards long before Volvo became the Health and Safety kings. The P6 pioneered run-flat tyres for goodness sake!

So there you have it. The Rover P6 was a well-deserved winner of the COTY award in 1964 and that is forever inscribed in automotive history.

So what is the car like today? Well if you opt for the 3.5 litre Buick V8 engined version you get a mighty impressive car that is comfortable to drive and sounds delicious too. The cockpit is surprisingly modern particularly where the instrument dials sit. OK the steering wheel is the size of the London Eye but that is all part of the car’s period charm along with the chunky rotary dials for lighting etc.

The P6 will be remembered fondly by the Police too. In fact if there was a poll for ‘Best Police Car of All Time’ the P6 would romp home. It almost became as iconic as red Routemasters and black Taxi cabs. The goodies in the Rovers chased the baddies in their Jags and Ford Zodiacs. Life was much simpler then. No plain clothes jiggery-pokery, SWAT-teams or helicopters – just screeching tyres, revving engines and nee-naw sirens.

Trying to find nice original one today is not an easy task. The P6 could rot badly eventually and the task of restoring one can be a very expensive one. There is however a thriving owner’s club and spare parts, particularly engine bits, are still obtainable.

And so we need to tell you about a Monza Red 1974 3500 V8 that has done less than 23,000 miles and is currently up for sale. The car is completely original and has never been restored or welded and was once part of a Rover collection. If you would like further details of this totally stunning P6 give us a call on ++44 1474 854490 or send an email to sales@thecarspy.net.

In the meantime click here for a slideshow of images. 

Brand New Porsche Design 3 Cayenne GTS

TheCarSpy.Net are delighted to announce that we have a cancelled order for a UK delivery of the fantastic Limited Edition Porsche Design 3 Cayenne GTS! These cars have a limited production of just 1,000 examples worldwide and are finished in Lava Grey metallic. Our example will be available from the end of June 2009.

This car has a massive specification as follows:

Black leather and Alcantara Interior Trim
Heated Seats
Sports Seats
Embossed Porsche Logos on Headrests
Porsche PCM Navigation
Light Comfort Pack
Universal Audio Interface (iPod Connection)
Panoramic Roof
Powerlift Tailgate
Six Disc Autochanger
Cruise Control
Air Suspension
Porsche Entry Drive
Sunblind on Rear Windows
Porsche Composite Ceramic Brakes
Four Zone Climate Control
HomeLink
Magnesium Gear Selector
Seat Belts in Guards Red
Porsche Rear Seat Entertainment
TV Tuner
Porsche Dynamic Chassis Control
Reversing Camera including Park-Assist
PCM Telephone Module
Tyre Pressure Monitoring System
Porsche Vehicle Tracking System

Please note:  these are options in addition to the standard spec!

For additional information about the Cayenne GTS Porsche Design Edition 3 please click here

This car has almost every conceiveable extra totalling £85,611.62!

If you wish to know more about this particular car please call us on ++44 1474 854490 or email mark@thecarspy.net

Old Flames – The Ford Capri

Happy 40th birthday Ford Capri! ‘The car you always promised yourself’ according to Henry Ford back in 1969 has come of age so time for a little nostalgic reflection.

It is hard to grasp both the relevance and importance of the Capri’s arrival to a gobsmacked public back then. In 2009 not a day seems to pass without the announcement of yet another ‘Sports Coupe’ to add the burden of choice faced by the modern car purchaser. Back in the 1960’s, however, the car-hungry public were fed a monotonous diet of sensible, dullard four-door family saloons.

OK by the late sixties the Mini had arrived to offer a little bit of light entertainment but it was Ford that sensed the market’s desire for something a little more ‘dangerous’. Their marketing bods therefore gave us the two-door Cortina, Cortina GT and the Lotus Cortina. Spot the recurring theme?

But in 1969 the Capri was launched and it melted a million hearts. Everybody wanted one. For slightly more than the price of a Cortina the public were being offered the European interpretation of the American Dream. No other manufacturer had offered such a stylish car aimed specifically at the mass market.

Many of the car’s design cues were taken from the US Mustang with its aggressive long bonnet (totally phallic in those days), fake air intakes and sports interior. But where the Ford boys had really pulled off their master stroke was in the massive range of options that allowed the purchaser to virtually customise the car to their own specification.

Nowadays, of course, you could do the same with a Chevrolet Matiz but back then choosing from a list of options was a revelation. Metallic paint, vinyl roof, Rostyle wheels, 1.3, 1.6, 2.0 or 3.0 v6 litre engine in L, XL, GXL or GTXLR permutations left the purchaser slack-jawed and goggle-eyed.

And so the scene was set for a car that was to survive until 1987 having passed through Mk1, 2 and 3 incarnations. Yours truly had bought three of them – a 1.6XL, 1600 GT and a 3.0S in Daytona Yellow.

The Capri’s demise, however, seemed like a funeral that nobody had bothered to turn up to. The car had been a real victim of its own success and there were just too many of them. The car was no longer special in the mid-eighties and a more affluent society moved its affections to anything with the letters B, M and W in its name.

In spite of the Capri’s all-round ability on the road and the track – Jochen Mass won the 1972 European Touring Car Championship in one – the car was no longer to be further developed by Ford who by now was playing with Cosworth and turning its Sierra into a dragon-slayer.

The Capri will be remembered fondly as a star in The Professionals and of course as the car that Del Boy had always promised himself in Only Fools and Horses. Sadly that was the knife in the back as far as the street cred was concerned. 

But the very last cars are interesting to the point where especially in 2.8i guise they are comfortable, fun to drive, pretty to look at and the ‘Del Boy’ image seems to have all but disappeared. Many of the 1.8 million built have either been crashed or left to rot so there aren’t many good examples left. Ergo values are increasing.

The 2.8 litre fuel-injected V6 produces 160 bhp which doesn’t sound impressive at all by today’s standards. But packaged with a rear-wheel drive chassis and no traction control you can see why stunt drivers used them with such rubber-burning visual effect in the cops and robbers TV programmes of the 70’s and 80’s.

If you can find the limited-edition Tickford version then snap it up quickly because it is believed that less than 100 examples were sold. The Tickford Capri was a highly modifed version of the 2.8 and was fitted with a turbocharger to boost the output to 205 bhp. Laden with luxury extras such as leather trim and Wilton carpets the car came with an excessive price tag that virtually priced it out of the market. The modified bodykit also made the car look a little bit lardy.

Today, however, we know of an extraordinary original 1987 2.8i Capri in black that has covered only 19,000 miles from new with one owner! The service book is fully stamped and every MOT certificate is available. Give us a call on ++44 1474 854490 for further details.

In the meantime click here for a slideshow of images.

For Sale – Mercedes McLaren SLR Roadster

When you think of Portsmouth it is quite likely that images of the sea, HMS Victory and possibly a football team that has managed to escape relegation this season all spring to mind. The Mercedes McLaren SLR however, wouldn’t.

But Portsmouth is where the body of Merc’s supercharged lightweight champion was crafted in carbon-fibre at McLaren Composites before being shipped off to the parent company in Woking for final assembly.

The boys from Pompey done good and since they have now built 3500 bodies for the SLR, Mercedes have called time on the car and the carbon-fibre wizards are probably hard at work on the forthcoming P111 project. Isambard Kingdom Brunel, another Pompey lad, would have been proud of them.

In the meantime feast your eyes on the SLR because it is indeed a thing of beauty and its status as a future classic is virtually guaranteed. All the boxes are ticked as far as the performance stats for the Roadster version are concerned. 626 bhp, 0-60 mph in 3.8 seconds and a max speed of 206 mph.

Mercedes claim that you can still have a natter with your mate in the passenger seat at speeds up to 124 mph with the roof down! But then who wants to talk when the glorious sound of the  5.4 litre supercharged V8 is wailing in the background.

Top Gear likened the noise to that of a Messerschmitt ME-109 fighter plane. Awesome. Carbon-ceramic brakes and trick-spoilers creating downforce help bring the beast to a halt in seconds. The brakes even self-dry in the wet! This is indeed a clever car.

It is also another rarity that will not appear too often in the classified ads but we know of two, that’s right two, black new unregistered Roadsters that have come up for sale. Please give us a call on ++44 1474 854490 for more details or click here and we will contact you.

For Sale – Lamborghini Reventon

It must be quite good fun working for Lamborghini. Not necessarily because they make nice cars but being part of the team that pick the names has got to be a real hoot.

Take the word ‘Countach’ for instance. If you live in an area called Piedmont in Northern Italy you might recognise the word as being a way to describe a beautiful woman. Specifically it translates more accurately as ‘cop a load of that!’

How about ‘Reventon’ then? This time it’s Spanish and it means explosion, burst or blow-out. Maybe one of the team was on his way to Sant’ Agata and shredded his tyre on the Autostrada. This gets him all inspired for coming up with a new name for their new project.

The Piedmontese for blow-out is probably not very glamorous and may not lend itself well to Lambo’s new baby. Luckily somebody in the team speaks fluent Spanish and remarks that his colleague probably had a ‘reventon’ on the way in.  And there you have it, job done. On to the next name-creation meeting.

That’s the easy part. Making a car to live up to the name, however, is a whole new bowl of pasta. It was always going to be an extreme styling exercise. How can you go one further than the sharp-looking Gallardo or the muscular Murcielago?

Well, they did it and the Reventon would not look  out of place in any sci-fi movie of the future. It is stealth-like. It is probably invisible to speed radar guns and it looks like it carries an armoury of nuclear weapons. This car wouldn’t overtake you – it would just vapourise you. If you did manage to get a glimpse of the car before you became one with the atomic particles of the universe you would be happy to know that you had indeed been very privileged.

You see Lambo only made 21 of them. 20 were sold to customers spread all over the globe and one has been put aside for the Lamborghini Museum. 

So what makes this car so special? Well performance is very simlar to the Murcielago so it ain’t no couch potato. 640 bhp, 0-60 mph in a shade over 3 seconds and a top speed in excess of 200 mph tells the story. But the body is made entirely of carbon fibre and they all came in one finish, a sort of satin dark grey. The interior is finished in black leather with brown alcantara plus chunks of aluminium laced with more carbon fibre.

The LCD instrumentation includes a ‘G-Force Meter’ which measures the dynamic forces of acceleration and braking  just like Lewis has in his McLaren plus there are switchable modes for those who prefer an analogue-style presentation.

A car this rare is unlikely to come up for sale very often but we know of one with delivery mileage that is now looking for a new owner. Needless to say a sale of this kind would be very discreet but any serious enquirers should get in touch with us directly on 0845 643 2047 (or ++44 1474 854490). Click here if you would like us to call you. The picture at the top is the actual car for sale.

2004 BMW 645Ci Sport

Fancy a 645ci Sport? We’ve just taken in a stunning Titanium Silver example of this long-legged cruiser that has done only 22k miles and has just been serviced at BMW. The car has the particularly attractive Chateau Red leather sports interior which makes a pleasant change from some of the gloomy tints of greys and blacks out there. We’ve spoken at length before about the 6-series and the tremendous value for money these cars now offer. There is something almost Aston Martin-like about the car with its GT styling and laid-back torquey performance. There is plenty of grunt when you need it but you feel more inclined to savour the relaxed nature of the driving position while listening to the rather pleasant V8 soundtrack as background music. A trip to St Tropez would be a breeze in this car.  To find out more about this lovely 645 just click here.

Old Flames – The Triumph Stag

As cars go the Triumph Stag is a bit of an enigma. By rights it should have been consigned to the dustbin at British Leyland labelled ‘Failed Projects’ by the time the first engine blew up. But here we are 40 years later talking about a car that seems to get more desirable as the decades roll by. The problematical early days are well-documented but no longer seem to matter. It is believed that up to 9000 examples out of the original 25k made are still on the road today and after MG the Stag has one of the most active owner’s clubs around. 

So how could such a problem-child turn into a classic icon?

Just park one up in the street, stand back and watch. Wager a bet with your mate that nobody will be able to pass the car without even a slight sideways glance. Giovanni Michelotti created a masterpiece. He was a bosom pal of Triumph’s boss, Harry Webster, and he was responsible for most of the company’s designs during their heyday. The Stag was his best effort and today it looks stunning.

Although the engine is the bit that most negative commentators tend to focus their attention on it is also one of the best bits. It is true of course that BL should have taken more care in its development but that doesn’t mean it is anything like an old nail. Just check the coolant regularly and change the oil every 3000 miles. There are plenty of original V8’s that have never been rebuilt so don’t believe all of the scare stories. We should know – we ran one for two years without any issues. RMK 922R where are you now?

So why is it also one of the best bits? Well, stroll back to your parked-up Stag and fire it up. The kids will drop their bikes and run up to the car begging you to give it some throttle. The noise gives you goosebumps. The tight bass-line ‘woofle’ of the V8 sounds like it was built yesterday. If you were wearing a blindfold you would never guess the car you were listening to was built in the 1970’s and the aural sensory pleasure it gives will make you want to drive the car all day with the roof down while looking for tunnels.

If BL had not skimped on important design and build issues then this V8 could have been an all-time great and it is without a doubt a perfect compliment to the super-smooth looking Stag. Forget all of the Rover V8, Ford V6 and 2.5 six-cylinder conversions - they are naff. The engines are all fine of course but the Stag’s chassis, suspension and brakes are set-up for its own V8 so weight distribution is perfectly balanced. Converted Stags are cheap for good reason so buyer beware.

The basic design was so good that the car needs very few modifications to make it a perfectly useable every day car. How about this for a specification? Front disc brakes, fully independent suspension with MacPherson struts up front, power assisted brakes, power steering, electric windows, front headrests, optional aircon, a choice of Borg-Warner automatic or 4-speed manual gearbox with overdrive and alloy wheels came as standard on the Mk2.

Over the years most owners have opted to switch to electronic ignition, polyurethane bushes and larger capacity radiators with electric fans to aid cooling. Many have installed new hoods, leather interiors and walnut veneer dashboards which only add to the car’s appeal. Don’t be tempted to fit low profile tyres though because the ride will suffer and gearing will be affected adversely.

A properly cared-for Stag should be an absolute joy to drive. Although a sprited set of performance figures are on offer – 145bhp, 0-60mph in less than 9 seconds and a top speed close to 120 – the Stag is a comfortable cruiser and a four-seater convertible to boot! The hood folds away neatly and completely under a hide-away cover and the clever ‘T-bar’ support ensures that the car remains tight with little noticeable scuttle shake. As with any classic you tend to get what you pay for and well-sorted examples fetch the best prices.

Stag’s seem to have a bit of a reputation in the film industry too because ever since the car was launched it has been a firm favourite with film producers to this very day. Diamonds Are Forever, Straw Dogs, Randall and Hopkirk, Murphy’s Law, Hazell, Second Sight, Dracula AD 1972, Carry on Emmannuelle, New Tricks and more recently on Ladytron’s ‘Ghosts’ video. Not all timeless classics granted but it just goes to show the effect of the Stag’s ‘cool car’ status.

OK, so now you want to buy one we know of a stunning, restored, two owner Pimento Red example showing only 23,000 recorded miles which even comes with the original dealer pack and ‘Passport’ to Service’ book. Click here for a Slideshow of images. Give us a call on 0845 643 2047 to find out more.

2001 Audi RS4 B5 Avant

It’s RS4 time again and this time we have another B5 Avant to sell on behalf of the current owner. Seriously sought-after in Avus Silver this RS4 has been carefully maintained all through its life by Audi and comes with a manufacturer’s warranty until January 2010. Stainless- steel roof-rails, SatNav Plus, 18″ RS4 alloys and electric sunroof are all part of the kit. If you can’t stretch your budget to a B7 RS4 then these B5’s will still fill your boots if it’s stormimg performance you are after for less than £20k.  How does 375 bhp and 0-60 mph in less than 5 seconds sound? There are not many cars with such all-round ability and practicality that even come close to the RS4. If you would like more details of this particular example just click here.

2006 Audi RS4 Quattro Avant

If you have read earlier posts on this blog you would probably have guessed by now that we rate the RS4 very highly indeed. It is always a pleasure therefore when we are presented with an opportunity to sell one and this time the lady wears black. Phantom Black Pearlescent to be more precise. Only one owner from new this lovely example has covered a tad over 13k miles with a perfect history and the balance of an Audi warranty to boot. All the usual toys including SatNav Plus but with the addition of the slightly more rare (and expensive) option of a solar panel sunroof. Very handy on a black car in the middle of summer cos it keeps the air circulating while it’s parked up to save you from stepping suited and booted into a Turkish sauna. For once an option that is both clever and desirable. Click here for further details on this stunning RS4.