Price of a Dream - Classic British Sports Car

I thought I’d muse on how much it would cost me to realise one of my dreams, to own and run a classic British sports car.

I love old British sports cars, yes they’re unreliable, badly put together and slow, but they have so much charm and character. For my 30^th my wife hired me an Austin Healey 3000 for a day, it wasn’t quick, had no power steering or servo brakes and a stiff gear change, and it leaked in the rain, but the roar of that straight 6 and the heads that turned never failed to put a smile on my face. I’m smiling now, just thinking about it.

So, I decided to find out how much it would cost, now compare the meercat was a little too searching when I just wanted a vague costing in insurance, so I’ll foolishly leave that out. I have however factored in a basic mechanics course, which run for around £200 as any sports car like this needs regular maintenance.

So, a quick search on the Austin Healey reveals that to buy one would cost £50,000, ouch. I could get an MGB, but they seem to vary between £3000 and £30,000, I’m guessing on quality and how late a model (the 1980s models aren’t nearly as nice as the older ones) Finally I looked at a Triumph TR6, surprisingly this came in with a more reasonable bracket of £12,000-20,000. That’s damned reasonable, and gods if I had 20,000 burning a hole in my pocket, you may just see me barrelling about in my own TR6

While this was mostly an exercise in pipe dreams, I’m actually surprised how affordable this is on the basic outlay, obviously repair costs are higher and all these cars are thirsty beasts. I would also need a secure place to keep them as a council estate near Johnston would see me loosing said car fairly quickly. Still, I am surprised at how cheap it is. What does surprise me is that people may have 50,000 or even 20,000 and will buy a BMW, or a big Chelsea tractor. Why? You want fun; you want what driving really is, ditch these big soft modern cars and drive a classic.