has long since decided to limit production to just 7,000 cars a year to maintain its exclusive appeal. It is the opposite dilemma for Aston Martin. The com-pany is hopeful, under the direction of recently appointed CEO Andy Palmer, to double its annual production from the current 3,500 or so: an essen-tial increase if the company is to survive. At least, with an already bulging order book for the recently released DB11 (no, I’m not acquiring one — stun-ning, but dubious investment potential), the imme-diate future for the company begins to look rosy.

Yellow streak There is one particularly well-known car in my col-lection, namely a Bahama Yellow Aston Martin DBS

(the only one made in this col-our). This is the car with which I helped make actor Phil Glen-ister’s ‘boyhood dreams come true’ in the Channel 4 series For the Love of Cars, screened in April 2015. The DBS, the ‘impossibly sexy motor’ accord-ing to the advertising blurb at the time, was launched in 1967. Mine is the actual car driven by Roger Moore (before he obtained his licence to kill) when he played Lord Brett Sin-clair in the iconic TV series The Persuaders.

I bought the car in 2014 at the Bonhams Aston Martin Works auction, which is held annually at the Newport Pag-nell factory. My successful bid-ding took place over the phone from the studio of an artist I

was visiting for the purpose of adding to my art col-lection. Not such a success for the poor artist — it rather blew the art budget for that month!

I view myself less as the owner of this screen-star vehicle and more its current guardian. I also concede that it is not just the rarity or the manufac-turing quality that makes ‘the Yellow Peril’ such a joy, but it is its sheer fame that makes it so valuable.

Classic cars may be my passion, but it is a love affair with an eye firmly on the financial potential. If chosen well and bought with insight, a collection can also be a shrewd investment. Spending one’s money on high-value collectibles is not new but it has begun to have its own special terminology. Classic cars are a relatively new entrant into the ‘passion investing’ class and the tag highlights some of the pitfalls of combining love with money. One of my main regrets was selling a Ferrari Dino when I was in

A clAssic dilemmACollecting classic cars involves a tug of war between heart and head — but if you get it right then you can profit both financially and emotionally

July // August 2016 99

j e r e m y L e v i s o n

is a founding partner

of Levison MeLtzer pigott

soLicitors

hugely interesting and attractive part of my practice. As a keen collector of both (and having my own art gallery based in trendy Bermondsey Street), I believe I have more of a feel for these type of assets than many of my peers.

My own car collection ranges from a 1963 Ferrari to a 2015 Aston Martin (one of six built specially to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Newport Pag-nell factory) with many in between.

I tend to find that with advancing age, my taste has changed. In the Seventies it was all Porsche; in the Eighties and Nineties, bling Ferraris. Now, for the most part, it’s Aston Martin. The principal rea-son for the love affair? Their beauty and elegance. But, at the back of one’s mind, also the possibility, if one gets it right, of profitable financial investment.

There is one perhaps surprising statistic to aug-ment the reasons Aston Martins are so special: they are still rare. In the whole of its 103-year history, Aston Martin has produced, in total, 80,000 motor-cars. Porsche produces 200,000 every year.

Readers may not be surprised to hear that Ferrari

in the good old days, an embarrassed husband (usually) under a legal obligation to make a ‘full and frank’ disclosure of his financial position would ask his divorce lawyer whether he needed to come clean to his unsuspecting wife about the

modest (of course) Ferrari which he had purchased a few years before. Or could he continue to keep it under wraps (figuratively as well as literally)?

How things have changed. In the past ten years, such has been the phenomenal growth in the value of exotic automobiles that his purchase would no longer need to be concealed. (‘But darling, it is such

a fantastic investment.’) As a lover of art and classic cars (which themselves can be works of kinetic sculpture), I am only too aware of what an impor-tant part a car or a collection of cars may play in any divorce case. Not all cars, of course, but at least if I am acting in a case where there is a car collection, I will be able to spot the difference between a marque on the one hand, which is fine, valuable and likely to appreciate, as against run-of-the-mill mediocrity on the other. Even in the classic car market, the gap can be the size of a chasm. What fun it is — as recently happened in a case in which I was involved — to stumble across a cheque in a husband’s bank state-ments for £350,000 and to learn, in answer to the relevant request, that it represented the 5 per cent import duty for a particularly valuable piece of Ger-man exotica. At a stroke, another £7 million added to the matrimonial pot for division.

The existence of classic cars and fabulous art collections in divorce cases is a

My taste has changed. In the Seventies it was all Porsche; in the Eighties and Nineties, bling Ferraris

jeremy

Levison’s

coLLection

incLudes a

ferrari 250 Gte

(above) and

a host of

aston martins

(top), incLudinG

the yeLLow dbs

of persuaders

fame (Left)

the good life // motoringthe good life // motoring

recently as February, amid growing gloom in the wider economy, a Ferrari 335 Spider Scaglietti was sold at auction for a whopping £25 million. Some investment for the lucky vendor. And all (as privately sold classic cars still are) free from capital gains tax.

I am often asked why, when such profits can be made on cars, they escape payment of this tax. The answer is that for every car which is sold at a profit there must be 10 million sold at a loss. One cannot

really see the government giving capital gains tax relief in those circumstances.

emotional gainsIt would be wrong, however, to assume that having a garage full of classic cars is only about beauty and investment. For me, classic cars are also great fun. Living in central London for the working week, I look forward to weekends in the country and the opportunity to motor through the lanes in one of my collection, my only disappointment being that I have not yet mastered the art of driving more than one at the same time.

There have been numerous trips across the Channel to enjoy the roads, race circuits (where I am comprehensively outdriven by my far better half, Kathryn), and hospitality of Burgundy, Champagne, Rioja, the Pyrenees and even a poignant visit to the battlefields of Normandy, where my father landed on D-Day. A future plan is to take a 1989 Aston V8 Volante (a true ‘gentleman of the road’, now under-going a full restoration) across the pond to pootle around New England in the fall. Who knows? If the price of classic cars continues to rise at its present rate, the holiday will have paid for itself in the month of its duration.

my forties. It was not that long ago that the Dino was considered the cheap ‘not really a Ferrari’ which you could buy for a few thousand pounds. These days good Dino 246GTs range from £250,000 to £350,000, with the very best GTSs topping out at around £400,000. I wince at the thought of what I sold mine for. Then again, four years ago I sold a DB6 Volante. Price now? Probably double. Still, mis-

takes are made and lessons learned. The businessman and car enthusiast

Simon Kidston produces an excellent and invaluable website for the classic car lover. It is called ‘The Kidston 500’ — or, in short, ‘K500’. Kidston and his Geneva-based team track the auction sale prices of a wide basket of classic cars, ranging from 1920s Bugattis to 2000s Astons, Ferraris, and much else besides. They then produce a graph reflecting the change in prices from quarter to quarter, both of the market as a whole and also of individual models. Since 1995 the index has risen from 300 to just under 1,800, a six-fold increase.

Individual cars have, of course, fared far better (or far worse) than this. As

jeremy Levison

with his

‘yeLLow periL’

(Left) and out

for a spin in a

newer modeL

(beLow)

Having a garage full of classic cars is

not only about beauty and investment.

For me, classic cars are also

great fun

the good life // motoring

s