We have enjoyed a fantastic Spring here at Classic Heroes and aside from enjoying the sunshine we have had some great projects to prepare for the summer, interesting cars to sell and a treat for ourselves to add to the collection.
Collection
One of the missing slots we have long been looking to fill in the Classic Heroes Collection was a low mileage E30 M3 Sport Evolution. We already have a very early Alpine White 200 bhp example plus a very rare UK supplied 32,000 mile Misano Red Evolution II. But the king of all M3’s, the Sport Evolution has so far been elusive. Having spent a fair few months chatting to a customer of ours about his plans for his collection of RS Porsches and rare Motorsport BMW’s, a deal was done and an exceptionally fine, 60,000 mile Sport Evolution entered the Classic Heroes Collection.
This black Sport Evolution is an exceptionally high specification example with air conditioning, black leather, electronic damping control, on-board computer, BMW sound system and rear blind. Although the car has been much loved and with the last owner for nearly 19 years, it is now time to take the car to the very highest standard possible before being displayed in The Collection. A full age related mechanical rebuild and a bare metal re-spray will be carried out over the next 12 months.
Storage
Our storage facility continues to be fully booked. A new building on site is currently in the course of construction and will be finished later this summer and will provide some much needed extra capacity. When I walk round the Classic Heroes HQ with Zak making our daily checks and inspections, it makes us all very proud that we are trusted with some of the most special cars in the world. BMWs, Porsche’s, Ferraris, Aston Martin’s, Mercedes, Lotus Cortina’s, and RS 2000’s to name a few. It is easy to take such rare sights for granted but a sneaky peek under the covers always puts a smile on our faces and reminds us how lucky we are.
Sales
For all the reasons we understand, there still remains a shortage across the whole industry of truly high quality stock. We continue to live by the same values that were taught to me by my Dad twenty six years ago. “Only ever represent a car that you would be prepared to own yourself”. This philosophy does of course mean that at least 8 out of 10 cars we are offered get rejected as they simply do not meet our criteria.
This year we have already helped some exceptional examples find new homes; several E30 M3’s, an Alpina B3 Bi-Turbo, a lovely E28 M5, a rather special M635 CSi , E9 3.0 CSL and E9 3.0 CSI restoration projects, a Clio Williams 1, our own MK 2 Golf GTI, and an Alpina B3 S Convertible to name but a few. We have some exciting cars being prepared for sale at the moment which will be available later this year. These include a white M1, a Fjord blue E9 3.0 CSL, a Polaris silver CSL, a super rare low mileage 3.0 Si, another 1 owner 205 GTI, plus a R32 MK5 Golf an E28 M5, a Mercedes 500 SLC and finally a one owner, 9000 mile, as new, 911 3.2 Carrera, Super Sport, Convertible.
We will keep you posted about these exciting cars. If you have a car that you really do feel meets the criteria of the most deserving of collectors please get in touch as we would be delighted to help.
Workshop
The workshop has been the normal hive of activity over the last few months preparing cars for the summer. On top of the normal day to day more routine type service work that we are always undertaking on classic and performance cars, we are also carrying out the following:- The full restoration of a Fjord blue 3.0 CSL and correcting the car back to its original City Pack specification, a full restoration including bare metal re-paint of an E30 325i Convertible, numerous 5 speed gearbox conversions to 2002’s, E3’s and E9’s, and a full suspension rebuild on a Z8. Five M88 engine rebuilds and four S14 engine rebuilds have already been completed this year. We also have four E30 M3’s in at the moment for major age related mechanical rebuilds and three M635 CSi’s.
The big change this year has been with E31 850i and 840i’s, and 80/90s hot hatches (205 GTI, VW Golf GTI and Clio Williams). These cars are finally falling into the hands of owners who can afford to restore them to the standard they deserve. We are also finally seeing people starting to do far better levels of due diligence when purchasing these classics. The panic buying is now not so common.
We are now booked for virtually every Saturday for the next three months doing full inspections and reports on cars prior to purchase. This means we can stop people making terribly expensive mistakes and guide them through the next few years of ownership without nasty surprises. We have made a start on the next phase of our Group 2 CSL project and this should be painted by the end of the year and work to our own M3 Sport Evolution recently added to our collection is now in progress ensuring all age related issues are rectified, including a set of original electronic dampers which we sourced, to convert the car back to 100% factory original specification.