A classic Triumph Herald with just 20 miles on the clock is set to fetch a fair few thousand pounds when it goes on sale at auction this Saturday.
The car has had one very careful (it’s never been driven) lady owner since it was sold in 1961. It will form part of a private collection that also includes two Triumph Dolomites with an equally impressive lack of miles on the clock of around 80 miles each respectively.
Tales like this are the thing of legend in the classic car fraternity, everyone dreams of finding the classic car of their dreams that is simply gathering dust in pristine as-new condition, probably languishing in a dry garage somewhere in the depths of the countryside that will be sold for peanuts to the first person to make an offer.
Well it’s not as far-fetched as you might think. Indeed in 2010 I myself was introduced to a very low mileage classic 1972 Beetle, the same year and colour as mine, when I popped to my local specialist garage for some parts.
I was beckoned over to a corner of the garage where the Beetle proudly sat. It looked like it had just rolled out of the showroom and had been stored in a lockup garage in Essex for many years, only discovered once the owner had passed away.
In this case, the family wanted it made roadworthy again and were not entertaining any offers to sell. Sad as I might have been at hearing this, I also found it satisfying that it would stay within the same family that had originally purchased it in 1972.
It might sound curious, but all I wanted to do was to roll the windows down and up again. Both my front windows had seized almost entirely shut a long time ago, something I was prone to forgetting until I had to receive or hand over a ticket – a comedy of errors as you might imagine if it wasn’t possible to do the deed through the ragtop roof. Needless to say, this Beetle had winder mechanisms that worked flawlessly.
Finding an as-new classic car that has barely seen any bad roads or bad weather is a treat; it gives those lucky enough to get up close to (or eventually own) the automobile in question a chance to almost experience what it must have been like to walk into a car showroom in days gone by.
This particular Triumph even still has it’s original tax disc (£15 in 1961) fixed to the windscreen. The auctioneer Mr Tristram Belemore-Smith (pictured) said that the Triumph had been kept in the private collection of the car dealer that originally sold the Herald back in the sixties.
The dealer was surprised to be contacted some years later asking if he wanted to buy the car back after the owner had passed away. He found that amazingly – and rather inexplicably – it had not been driven since the day it was delivered to it’s new owner on the back of a trailer all those years ago for the princely sum of £700.
The auction will take place at noon on Saturday and is being overseen by East Anglian Motor Auctions of Wymondham, where the beautiful Herald is expected to sell for between £12,000 and £15,000 to one lucky individual.
Images telegraph.co.uk, independent.co.uk
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