Nick Whale - Iconic Auctioneers: Dad's Camaro, Brand New Rolls Royces, Aston Martin V8, Gerry Marshall and Vauxhall Firenza. S7E7 Recorded at NEC Classic Car Show

Welcome to my dad's car, Angel.

Welcome to My Dad's Colour, a podcast discussing a personal relationship with automotive discount. And you know what? It doesn't even have to be about your dad's car. It can be your mum's, your grands, your parents, your ideas, or even a neighbour's. If it made an impression, let's talk about it. Welcome along to another episode of My Dad's Car. It's a special one. We're joined by Nick Whale, who's the uh founder of Iconic Auctioneers. So welcome along, Nick. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Um yeah, for the benefit of the tape, we're now sat in the back of a Land Rover Air Street, which is up for auction this weekend at the NEC. Well, I heard you were buying it. That was the only reason I agreed to hold it here maybe next year. Yeah, I'll have to check my numbers tonight. So um, yeah, very plush in the back of here, lots of room, and uh fortunately we've been able to close the tailgate, so we've got a little bit of uh quiet and the hustle and bustle of the show. Hustle and bustle of the show.

Um how long have you been involved in the show? Just before we dive in? Well, I first came here in 2011 with a very small stand with about five cars on it. Okay. And uh met the show organiser, we got awarded something for our stand, and basically he said, Well, what are you going to do from here? And I said, Well, I'd love to start an auction business and come back and hold an auction here, and he said, Well, why don't you do that? And that's kind of where it all began, really. Yeah, um it actually began at Silverstone because I got going first, but the gem of an idea was sold here um 14 years ago. Is this the biggest it's ever been? By a long, long way, yeah. So the last sort of decade we've we've had between 100 and 120 cars here, which has been fantastic. But we've uh built two brands over time. We've built Iconic for the best of breed cars, and we've got a company called Classic Car Auctions for really everything else that's great, but not necessarily the absolute best of breed on Concord's condition car. And uh we've held separate sales at separate venues uh for those businesses. Um but this time we thought, you know what? We've virtually got or we sowed the idea to the organisers we could have the whole of Hall 2 if we had both brands and two days of two separate sales, and that would be 350 cars, which I think is possibly the biggest ever UK classic car auction, 350 cars, and we're very lucky because that's what we've got and put together. Fantastic. Are you on the hammer? No, I would be uh exaggerating if I said I was on the hammer. I used to I'm on the bench, I think, is more like it. Uh, I used to do a bit of auctioneering, but these days, you know, to be honest, I'm customer friendly. I shake hands with the customers, I deal with our sort of bigger collectors and some of our celebrities and what have you. I actually enjoy being off the stage for a bit, and um seeing my team put together a great show gives me a great feeling of pride. So I'm less on the on the auctioneering side and more on the watching it all come together, yeah, doing things like this.

Fantastic. Right.

So, yeah, we'll we'll jump into it. What's your earliest car memory? Well, that's an interesting one. My family was all motor trade. Um my late father was an amazing man, he came from nowhere really, and built up what was when he died the biggest motor group in Britain, so that was quite an achievement. Well, he had 21 dealerships, believe it or believe it not, and about a thousand staff. And I was very lucky because he was he was a businessman, but he was also a petrol head.

Yeah.

And it kind of reflects in the cars that he had because on one hand they were quite boring, on the other hand, they were very exciting. So he had a new roles every year. Because in those days, I'm talking about the 70s and 80s, he died in 1990. Believe it or not, in the 70s and 80s, you could have a new roles and order a new one for the same time the following year, and you would get your money back or even a product. Yeah, and and that's why he did it. He that was the businessman in him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he had a new rolls every year, which sounds a bit flush. But the petrol head in him, and to answer your question rather long-windedly, uh, my first memory, he loved cars that were a bit different. So he was a big Jaguar man, he had SK120s, XK150s, e-types, several, several of every version really. But that was all prior, really, to me being born, the E-type era I was just born. But in my day as a small boy, he came home in a Chevrolet Camaro.

Oh wow.

Yeah, um, which was a really, really cool car. And the rumour going round the office was the old man's gone crazy um because he's he's bought um uh he was running a farm at the time, just to explain, and the rumour in the office was that he'd bought a hundred Chevrolets. And um and so they confronted him and said, uh Mr. Well, we hear you've bought 100 Chevrolets, and he said, What are you talking about? He said, I bought one Chevrolet, and they said, Oh, we heard it was a hundred. He said, I've bought a hundred Charolais, which of course are cows. He bought a hundred cows and one Chevrolet, but the team at work were rather worried he bought a hundred uh Chevrolets. So there we are. So yeah, the long-winded answer to your excellent question is a Chevrolet Camaro was was a big thing. It was a dark green with the slidey headlights that that went back. You might not know about this late 60s, it was. And uh it was a manual car, and um ironically, I've got a picture of me as a small boy next to the car, and I've HPI'd the registration number, and it doesn't exist, which I can't believe. Oh wow. So it must have been either written off or the plate, you know, wasn't the original plate, or some story behind it I'm not aware of. But I've tried very hard to find that car. Was that a business-based purchase, do you think, or was that a petrol head? Yeah, it was a petrol head to explore the American market. He went to the States, he was always forward thinking, and he basically had a philosophy broadly that said whatever they're doing in the States now we'll be doing in three years' time. And at that point, obviously it's way pre-internet, that was probably true. And um he was a GM dealer in this country, so he sold Vauxhalls and Opal's. And GM was in those days the biggest company in the world. So he figured, well, if they've got these other brands, because they owned Chevrolet and Oldsmobile and you know, loads of brands under the GM ownership. So he thought maybe I should be looking at those. So he was trying out a Camaro to see whether to import American cars in under his GM franchise system, which he did do. So a company called Lendrum and Hartman did them in London and Rydell did them in Birmingham, and that was my dad.

Um were the roles was that something you'd go to school in, or did your mum drive?

Do you know what it killed me at school because in those days as as probably today, it was a snobbery thing, you know. And some kids saw me getting out of a rolls with my dad, and of course, in the minute he went, I got bullied like crazy. But that had a kind of sad memory to it. And it was a boarding school, so it was particularly particularly cruel. But the registration number of that car does still exist. It's EOJ22L. And if I could find EOJ22L, I'd I would love to find I was 10, yeah, exactly correct. Uh, when I started at boarding school. But that there's a picture of me sat on my trunk with that car on the drive. Oh, okay. But it was the wrong car, you know, I didn't realise I was naive, but it was the last car we should have gone back to school in because it just pigeon-hole us. Yeah, yeah. Pigeonholed me in the wrong pigeonhole. But there we go. So that car is still out there somewhere. That car is still out there. Every time I see a Rolls Shadow 1 for sale in Sand Gold, I look and see if it's EOJ22L.

Because I guess a lot of those cars would run a cherish plague, so it might not necessarily be on the same.

That I suspect is what's keeping it hidden because these cars tend to change hands, you know. But um, yeah, that was my first memory. The Camaro and then EOJ22L. Fantastic.

Yeah, did your mum drive as well or?

Yeah, uh, my first memory of mum in a car. I mean, dad was also Lotus. Okay. And of course, Lotus, uh like most years of being I mean, my dad was a lotus stealer, my brother is still a lotus dealer. I was a lotus dealer.

Oh well, okay.

And none of us have ever made any money out of Lotus. And for every for every year that we've made a profit, we've had any lotus we've made any money out of Lotus. For every year we made a profit, we had another year the following year that we made a lot. Um so dad used to despair with these lotuses, and he used to try and pretend to mum that it was uh in fact, he just needed the registration to get his target, you know. Okay. But he presented it as a present to Mom. So I used to go around in an automatic Excel and an automatic eclar, cars of that nature, which of course automatic killed the car stone dead, but not to my mum, she wouldn't have known anything. Yeah, yeah. But um, yeah, so so I remember her in those, but the first car I remember dad buying for her that really was genuinely a car that she wanted that we didn't sell, which was a Triumph stag. Okay.

Yeah.

And she loved that, she was very protective of it.

And that wouldn't have been off his lot then, that wouldn't he'd have had to go elsewhere.

Definitely not off his lot. It was uh it was um acquired from a company in Birmingham called PJ Evans. Yeah.

Okay. And did you say you still got it?

No. No, okay. No, the only car I've got nostalgically is uh when I was going to boarding school about eleven or twelve, I went to the launch of the Vauxhall Ferenza Droop Snoot.

Okay, a Jerry Marshall time.

Oh, interesting, you see, so you know the name of the big man, GM. GM of GM, General Motors, yeah. Anyway, I was taken into Ryland Street in Birmingham to my dad's Vauxhall did a ship, which was called Ryland, named after the street, and the theme was a sort of you know, drinks do with customers in the evening, and then an unveil by some lovely ladies, you know, very politically incorrect reveal of a car, and the cover pulled back, and and this Ferenza had this droop nose, and they were all silver, the launch cars were all silver. Uh I think most of the droop snoops were silver, and it just had the most enormous impact on me, that car, and it made me want it made me decide there and then that what I wanted to do was sell cars, you know. Okay, not not just because my dad did it, I didn't didn't want to be mini dad, but I wanted to sell cars because I thought that car was just so cool. And I do own today a Vauxhall Forens of Droop Snoot. They didn't make that many, they only made a few hundred because the car didn't work as a concept particularly well, unlike the RS2000, which it was trying to take on at the time. And so I bought one a few years ago, Droop Snoot, and um you know it's beautifully done, and uh I get enormous pleasure from that car.

Are there any vehicles that your dad had that you would like to get your hands on? Um haven't been able to get your hands on, maybe the the roles were uh I would only get one if it was his, if you know what I mean.

It had a Land Rover um short wheel base, I don't know if it was diesel or petrol, but it was DHA 616K. I can remember that. If I ever came across that, I would buy it. Yeah the rolls have already said EOJ22L. Um the Camaro, as I say, unfortunately doesn't show up as existing under the plate that he had on it. So those are all cars that spring to mind, but um it'd be nice to find one. I'm sure it will one day because we get so many through the auction now. We we sell well over a thousand cars a year through my auction business. Yeah, and I'm sure at some point something will turn up. But I am quite nostalgic. My wife, if she was here, would tell you I'm very nostalgic.

I'm always talking, always talking about the past. Is there a way to track things like that? Like if the vehicle does come back to the surface from somewhere, and is there a way to get an alert? There probably is, but I don't know it.

I think it's it's a bit like the AMPR police type thing, isn't it? But you've probably got to be a policeman to do it, or maybe you're in the in the trade of some description.

I mean you can HPI it, which will tell you if it still exists and various other things, um, but it won't tell you where it is or who it's registered to. But um that's an interesting thought. I'm sure somebody out there might know who knows.

I'm a sort of private investigator for the problem is data protection, isn't it?

That like it's then can they tell you who it's got to be a bit like ancestry where they send a letter to that person and if they agree, then uh yeah you then get a letter back saying they're prepared to meet you.

I've had a couple of old BMWs that I sold, and then I'll check in a year's time and they're gone. But they were good cars, you know, with no issues. I just sort of think they must be tucked away somewhere. So you you mean they're not being retaxed, is that what you mean when you sort of not MOT or anything? Where have they gone, you know? Yeah. Maybe they'll turn up again one day and when I can no longer afford them.

Probably that's uh that's the risk, isn't it?

So do you recall any, apart from going kind of to school in La Rolls or say the Camaro, any memorable journey? So would you take holidays or whatever in the car or we did have a holiday in one of Dad's roles.

We went down to the south of France. I remember the holiday more for uh reasons as I met my first girlfriend.

Okay, yeah. That's not this podcast.

The hat in the window story. She she used to look after the sunbeds at on the beach at the hotel, and uh my mum spotted that when I went into the room where she was storing the sunbeds, occasionally a hat would appear in the window to block the view. I can't remember, I can't remember why that was cool. But anyway, how do we get into that? Yeah, so we went to the South France in a rolls, and that was special. Yeah, that was a great trip, and it's probably the only one I can recall going on holiday in a car. Dad was a flyer rather than a driver. But yeah, that was a that was a super trip. Because the rolls are quite reliable on a yeah, Shadow's a great car, you know, it's a it's a simple thing. That 6.75 litre V8 is really a Chrysler, don't tell anybody, but it is really just a Chrysler engine from the States that was invented in the 1950s, you know. Um so it's been around forever. So even in the 70s it was 25, 30 years old. It's a very reliable, simple unit, and um therefore I can't remember dad ever breaking down or you know, you you hinted um that they were kind of fairly new as well, though, that that he was buying the role.

He was buying new, yes.

To be fair, he was buying new, that is correct. Well, certainly at one stage I think he had seven or eight on the bounce, yeah, and then I think it uh backed off a bit. By the time the spirit came out, which he also had, it was also in his lifetime, uh, they weren't worth what you paid for them, you know, they were a depreciating asset. So I think he was more selective when he bought a spirit.

Would he would he mix it up with the colours, or was he always go for the same colour on those?

No, no, he'd mix it. He was a mixer. He used to in those days you used to get a thing through the post uh with a sort of drawing of a Rolls-Royce, and you'd insert that it had like inserts that you put in so you could two-tone it, or put an Everflex roof on it, or you know, and and put the different colours and sit see what it looked like. And him and Mum, I remember, would you know, sit at the kitchen table and play around with that, such as the luxury of life that they had. But no, it was it was good, and his colour choices were were of the day. Yes, yeah, yeah. I wouldn't say that today you'd go, wow, that's that's but in the 70s or 80s they were they were cool things.

What was your dad's background in terms of getting into cars? Was it something that he picked up from?

Yeah, from his dad a little bit. Yeah, his dad was a truck man. So he sold lorries and trucks in Birmingham, um, set up a company in 1937, and uh effectively that company got into a little bit of difficulty actually towards the end of its life, and dad got involved, he was selling furniture in Birmingham as a young man, married young man, and he went to help his dad out because the company was in trouble, and part of that process he effectively bought his own dad out, okay, um, eventually. Uh, and he used that company to springboard into car franchises, so he didn't pursue the truck route particularly, but he did pursue the the car route, and um some of the truck dealerships did last for his lifetime, but most of the new businesses that he created were were cars, okay. So that's where he got it from.

Is it gonna keep going down? Have you got children of your own?

Is it gonna Yeah? I've got five kids, um, three grown up in their thirties, and two little ones who are 16 and 14. And um interestingly, we've got all extremes, so we've got a third. Yeah. We've got a 36-year-old who loves the car game and works for the business for iconic auctioneers, which is fantastic. We've got a 33-year-old who hates cars, doesn't drive, teases me rotten, says, Are you still going around in circles? Because I race, you know. Are you still going around in circles, Dad? And he doesn't drive at all. He's a he's a political uh writer, just launched his second book, but he also writes for newspapers, a journalist, political journalist. So uh he's great fun, but he lives in Seville in Spain, and then I've got Lucy who is now 30. She's just passed a test last week, which is fairly unbelievable. And she started to drive at the age of 30, and I've just bought a 20-year-old mini, the new shape from first of the new shape minis, an HRC1. Quite the market for those now, isn't there?

The first gen of magic.

It's a cool thing. And then so she's just joined the petrol head brigade, but she's not working in the business or particularly bothered about cars. Uh Chloe, who's 16, is yet to evolve uh and show her colours, but William, who's 14, he's rallying. Oh wow. Yeah, he he was driving at 10, 11 years old around the field at home, and and I got him a little car to learn to autocross in, which he's done the autocross thing, and now he's doing single venue stage rallying in a uh Skoda City Go 1,000cc, so in what they call the junior rally championship with kids all aged 14, 15, and 16. Yeah. So he's definitely uh following in my footsteps. Sounds good. Showing promise.

Yeah. Do you recall kind of the status of the cars your father had when you were a child? Were you aware that kind of a Rolls Royce was a special thing?

Definitely, it was more even more so than today, really. You know, they were a very statement car. But he, rightly or wrongly, I think it was of the day. You have to bear in mind it was of the day. But his view was that with a thousand employees and twenty-one branches, he was going around the country. I mean, Edinburgh, Northern Ireland, Stoke on Trent, Birmingham, London, you know, he was covering the ground. And when he arrived, he wanted to make a statement that gave staff reassurance. He wasn't showing off, he wasn't a show-off, but he wanted to walk in, you know, immaculately dressed, with the rolls, to say, you know, we're doing well, and you're part of it. That was the sort of underlying message. I mean, it sounds a bit flash, and today I'm not sure it would work, but in in his era it definitely did work. And uh everybody called him Mr. Whale, you know, his name was Bill, but nobody called him Bill because that's not the image he presented or how he operated, you know. He was he was a chap who had um a unique way about him. But that I suppose when you've got a thousand employees, yeah, you've got to communicate in a way you can't talk to everybody, but you've got to give the right message, and I think that's what he was trying to do.

Yeah. Did you have a poster car as a child? Was that kind of your bag or were you?

Jerry Marshall's forenza, Baby Bertha, was my yeah, because of course I didn't say this a minute ago when I was talking about the launch of the Droop Snoop, but I did meet Jerry that night. Oh, okay. And Jerry in later years became a very good friend. And I raced against Jerry. Oh, okay. We did the European Historic Touring Car Championship together. And I I got to know him really well, and I know his son Gregor, who's obviously still around today, and I was at Jerry's funeral, and uh you know, he came to stay with me at home many times, and um yeah, so of course he teases me about all that stuff, you know, or did tease me about the fact that you know I was a little boy when I met him taking his picture and all of that stuff, but um it was good, you know, he was a real character.

Um I remember seeing him race with my dad. I used to go to Brands hatch quite a bit and did a few things at Goodwood, and whether it was at Goodwood or at Brands, but I remember my dad telling me about Troop Snoots and um and kind of seeing him race, and my dad being quite animated about kind of yeah, that's Jerry Marshall.

Well, the the forensic that I own now personally was Jerry's car. So wow, okay. It was a Vauxhall-owned car from New, so it was on their fleet as a press demonstrator. They sold it to Jerry. Jerry ran it in the day for quite a long time, a couple of years. Um, then it passed through various different hands and and I've ended up with it. And it's still got the Marshall Wingfield sticker in the back, which was Jerry's um he wasn't a Vauxhall dealer, but he was a specialist used car. Okay, I didn't know that. And uh I've kept the sticker in his memory in the back there.

And is it in just regular street trim or is it all liveried?

Very, very no, it's not livered, but I've done very slight mods, which I know detracts from the originality a little bit, but I wanted the um suspension to just be upgraded a bit. Yeah. I wanted the brakes to be upgraded a little bit, uh, so they have been, and I've put it on fuel injection rather than carbs, although I've kept the original carbs just to give it a bit more zap. So it's more or less original, but it it it drives beautifully.

Did you get to use it frequently?

Um I don't use it as often as I would like to, purely because it's tucked away in a garage under a cover, and you know what it's like, and you've got to know it's not gonna rain and stuff. But whenever I can I use it, and I I get enormous pleasure from it. You know, it's a it's a special thing, and I didn't buy it to sell it, I bought it to keep.

Yeah. That's quite some provenance. It's just was was his car. You mentioned racing. What do you race?

So these days, uh my dad would turn in his grave because I raced Fords. Um he was BMW in Volkswagen. So um well, I've got a group two Zac Speed Ford Escort Mark II, which is a big wide arched BDG engine race car from back in the day, which is just a special thing which I drive with my son. Cool. But it's very fast, and um at my age it's as fast as I want to go, really, now um are you in a series or you do sort of Yeah, we do the Motor Racing Legends historic touring cars, so that's great. Does that go around the UK? Around the UK, occasionally to Europe, we do spa and things like that, which is cool. Um then I've got a rally escort, another escort, and we do some European FIA rallies with that. Uh and I've also got an MG, which I've just bought literally a few weeks ago, um, for the father and son challenge. So it's a two-driver, one-hour race for MGs only. All the MGs are identical. They're all weighed, so they're the same weight, including the driver. And um, I'm doing that with my son Harry, and uh that's that's a bit of fun. So yeah, I'm very lucky. I've got a rally car, a race car, and then the MG on top. So is the MJ circuit car too? It's a circuit car, yeah. So we go based on what a B? It's just an MGB, yeah. Yeah, they're all identical, FIA spec, FIA papers, and uh It's um it's real fun and they add your ages together, the the father and the son, and the higher the number, the um shorter the pit stop. So in other words, if you've got an older you you can get out of the pits quicker. So that that's a really clever idea.

Yeah, keep it nice and close. Do you remember um cars that maybe neighbours had or other people at school? Perhaps when you were a child?

Well, yes. There is another story. You're very clever. You do you do look at the city? I was gonna say, yeah. Well, here's one for you, which I don't I I'd actually forgotten about this, but you've raised it, so I'll tell the story. So when I was about 12, 13, 14, 15, around that age, a neighbour had an Aston Martin V8 manual in a very cool dark blue, it's a super looking colour. I now know it was a 73 and it was the first of the fuel injections.

Okay.

I didn't know that when I was 10, 11, 12, 13. But the reason I know is that uh Mr. Lionel's name was, Mr. Lionel, and he had a business in Birmingham. And when I was 20 years old, Mr. Lionel put this car up for sale, and he'd done 100,000 miles in a DBS V8. Now, nobody did 100,000 miles in a DBS V8, but Mr. Lionel did, because he used it every day, and he put it up for £5,000. I can even remember the price. And I rushed in to see my dad, and I said, it was in the paper or magazines. I said, Dad, you've got to buy it. I've known that car since I was a little boy, I've heard it drive past, I've heard the noise of the engine, you know, it's a fantastic car. He said, Oh, I don't want to buy a hundred thousand mile carving, I want to buy a hundred thousand mile carving, it'd be a load of trouble. I said, It won't be a load of trouble, it's an Aston Martin, you've got to buy it, Dad. It's so special. Anyway, I didn't win the argument. But about six months later, I was 21. And for my 21st birthday, I got very excited. I didn't know what I was going to get, and it was all, you know, hush hush. Anyway, you can guess where this is going. So I went down to uh the kitchen. The old man said, You better go and have a look in the garage for your present. So I went out to the garage, slid the door back, and there was AOL 3K, which was a DBS V8 that Mr. Lionel had bought brand new, and dad had bought it off him for presumably the five grand or whatever, and that was my 21st birthday present. Incredible. So that was an incredible car, yeah. What did Mr. Lionel do? I'm trying to remember. He worked in Birmingham, but he had obviously quite a successful business because he was running what was then a very expensive car. I can't remember, unfortunately.

Do you remember what he replaced it with?

I don't, because we moved out. Ah yeah, we moved house.

Mysterious Mr. Lionel.

Mysterious Mr. Lionel, yeah.

MI5 or something like that.

Yeah. But that that was a special car, and that was obviously a very special moment for me.

Yeah.

How long did you keep it? Well, it's got a sad end. I was hoping you might not just.

We don't have to talk about it.

It's a sad end. I had it for three years 22, 23, 24. I was engaged to be married when I had it. And I took my first wife to be for an Indian in Henlin Arden, a place called the Aden Tandori. And I parked it on the high street and we went in and we had our Indian meal. And halfway through there was this horrendous noise, and you know, obviously a major car accident had just happened nearby. And and anyway, we kept eating and people were sort of running around, and then ambulance came and then a fire engine or whatever. So we finished our meal and and got up to leave. And unfortunately, some idiot has lost control of his car and hit the central reservation, which had flicked them up in the air, and they'd landed on top of this beautiful Aston and destroyed it, and it was written off. So very, very sad. And I did actually very recently, because I just thought, well, obviously, because it was written off and it was scrapped, I thought, well, that's the end of that. But then I did think very recently, well, perhaps somebody rebuilt it, but I googled the plate and it's it's gone. Yeah, very sad. But it was a great three years.

Nowadays would rebuild, wouldn't they?

Whereas back then, I mean it's valuable. It was a hundred thousand mile car, you know. Yeah. I know five thousand pounds is a lot of money, but it relative to uh to a DBS V8, it wasn't.

Yeah, good story though, nonetheless.

Yeah, yeah, fantastic. Fantastic.

Um, do you recall any music in the cars? Dad had quadraphonic sound system, which was gonna be the latest and next best thing in the world. Okay. The Rolls-Royce put quadraphonic sounds in, and the tapes, which were great big tapes, you know, four inches by six inches. Oh wow, okay. They weren't they weren't tapes, they were cassettes. Yeah. And the old man thought I'll have to get some of these quadraphonic things. And he brought home a list, and there was very few because it was so new technology, there was about ten artists or something. Yeah. But one of them was Pink Floyd. Yeah. Now he was not into Pink Floyd at all, but I was. And so it was seriously cool. So I made him order a Pink Floyd. So he ordered Frank Sinatra and whoever it was, you know, Shirley Bassie, I think, from memory, and uh he ordered uh Pink Floyd for me. So the answer is Pink Floyd was always very special because that quadriphonic system, which was basically four speakers, is in effect what it was, but it was very advanced for the time. The sound quality was was very good, and obviously, listening to something like Pink Floyd on a system like that was was a real experience. So I mean, I used to literally sit in the garage at home with the tape on, you know, it was that good. Better quality than my you know basic record player that I had at the time.

Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, south of France, Rolls Royce, Pink Floyd.

Yeah, here we go.

Most people could sign up for that.

No, no better one until I arrived at school, really, in a roller with Pink Floyd.

I shouldn't have turned the Pink Floyd up when I arrived at boarding school. Perhaps I wouldn't have been so bullied.

Yeah, it's a it's a tricky one, isn't it? We've had that you get both extremes, don't you, with regard to that. Like we had another guy on who came on and he was talking about his parents having a scoda and they had to part around the corner and sort of walked in.

My wife's dad had a scoda and and he she wouldn't let him drop her off at school.

And then the other end of the spectrum, you've got kind of a beautiful car, and for the same reason, kind of yeah, mindlessly bullied over the fact that uh crazy. Your dad's got a lovely car.

I used to get dropped in a sort of mid-80s S class, which then was Oh, best car in the world. Yeah, it was I was selling him.

I was selling him in the mid-80s, yeah. But I think the roller is just like obviously just later with the OVLO had a 500 SEL and I delivered in 1985, something like that. Of course. And it was the most expensive car in the world. It was more expensive than a roller.

Yeah, my dad had an 83, it was a 280 SE for 20 years, and it was the body fell apart, obviously, but the engine was just yeah, they were very well-built cars, yeah.

Yeah, good. Robert Plant had one name-dropping there. I I because I was working in Birmingham, I sold cars to a lot of bands. Right. And Durangeran were my era, and the Rum Runner was just round the corner from where I was working, and they were the house band. Yeah, so I sold cars to two members of Durand Duran. I sold one to Robert Plant and Merck when I was working at the Merck dealership. Uh, Jeff Lynn, as I've just said, uh, Freddy Starr, who was a massive name in those days, yeah. Had at least four or five cars off me. Yeah, it was happy days. Yeah, yeah. Fantastic, fantastic.

Um, any other questions, John?

I was gonna ask one last question. Obviously, you influenced your father on buying the Aston that you recommended. Were there any other vehicles that you sort of influenced him on as you got older, maybe, to buy?

No, I don't think so. He stuck with the roles as he got old. He died at 63, the age of fellow enough I am now, more or less. But he stuck with the roles for his last sort of decade of his life, really. He was very comfortable in that environment. Um, he sort of lost his petrol headedness. Um when the Aston got bumped, I replaced it with an Elan S4 black badge drop head, and he came round and he said, What's that? And I said, Oh, it's the replacement for the Aston. It's an Elan S4, he said, Well, yeah, if you're getting married, you should be saving up for a house and what are you doing by this, you know, silly man sort of thing. He didn't say silly man, but you know, he was he was implying it. Um, but that was when I had become the petrol head and and and he'd he'd he'd hit the sensible stage.

Yeah, fantastic. Thank you very much for joining us, Nick. Thank you guys it's been a pleasure. Yeah, but really good. Yeah, thank you very much. So um yeah, that was a slightly warm but wonderful interview with Nick Well, conducted it in the back of a Land Rover camper van, wasn't it?

Yeah, really nice, and um it was great of him to take the time out to have a chat with us, really, and extremely busy time for him and and his team during the um the show. So um yeah, for him to take out half an hour or whatever it whatever it was was was really generous. And I think we probably could have done an hour easy, couldn't we, or more? It was the stories were just flowing and flowing.

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, the obviously uh yeah, his uh his father was a car dealer, and yeah, there was plenty there. Kind of some uh some attachment to Jerry Marshall with the forensic. Um a special mention actually to Alex who listens to the podcast. Actually, he sort of put us in touch with Nick, and also I think it was Penny who was um dealing with sort of marketing PR on the day. So yeah, both of them sorting us out to making this all possible, and um yeah, obviously Nick as well for for sparing a little bit of time to chat. Um yeah, I really enjoyed that interview. It was it was nice. There was loads loads of stories. Clearly, yeah, he's lived a lived a really interesting life with kind of the racing with the with the car dealing, um and and all the rest. And yeah, as you say, you could have spoken to him for hours.

Yeah, and a lot of emotional attachment to some of the stories as well, which which we often hear, don't we? Um yeah, it's funny to s to so many people a car is just a car, and there is no attachment emotionally, it's just a piece of metal, isn't it, that gets them around. But I guess everyone we speak to, or nine times out of ten, people have got these stories which do sort of strike a chord, don't they, when they sort of start thinking back to it.

Yeah, I think if you get it, you get it, and I suppose, yeah, in the same way that if you went to a different uh type of event and you'd find some people who were kind of switched on by that. But yeah, obviously at that event there's a bit of a mecca for people who are into classic cars and nostalgia and that sort of thing. And yeah, generally, as we've found kind of the reason someone is into it is probably because of a an influence from a a parent or a friend or something like that who who've got a little bit of meaning to them. So um, yeah, without kind of trying to push people to be sort of emotional about it, it's it's quite nice when that sort of emotion comes through a little bit. Yeah, and you sort of feel I guess it's quite nice to feel that we've given people an outlet for that, an opportunity to celebrate kind of the childhood or the upbringing they've had, um, the experiences they've had, kind of because maybe their parents sort of yeah, went sort of above and beyond, maybe in comparison to some other families and gave them those opportunities, or maybe it's just yeah, dad was successful or whatever it was and gave them that chance. But yeah, nice to hear those stories and also really, really nice to hear it when the person appreciates it and can kind of sit back and go, Yeah, I was lucky actually. Yeah, it wasn't this wasn't a given. There's a lot of people who kind of wouldn't have got this, but yeah, I do appreciate it, and because of this, yeah, I've kind of made it my life's work in his sense, but kind of so start providing other people with kind of these amazing cars. Um, so yeah, brilliant interview. Hope you really enjoyed it as well. And yeah, thanks to Nick Whale and everyone at Iconic Auctioneers. So, yeah, if you need a car, go and have a little look and see what they're uh doing. They do pride themselves on kind of putting out best of class vehicles for sale. Yeah. So if you want something very special, then that's the one.

There were some amazing examples, weren't there, on the on their stand there. And yeah, um I think Alex and Penny also we did catch a sort of snippet of them, didn't we, for our other podcast, so you can hear their earliest car memory.

Yes, we did indeed. Yeah. Yeah, on a bonus episode. So that will have gone out, I think, a few weeks prior to this. But um, yeah, very kind of them to to also yeah, get involved and yeah, supportive of what we do, which is great. It does feel like, yeah, we're on a bit of a roll at the moment, so hopefully I may have continued. Yeah. So yeah, cool. Thank you very much, John. Thanks, mate. Cool, we'll uh yeah, wrap this up. Roll the credits.

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