The 1955 Jaguar D Type copy, yours for $900,000
Just by buying The Weekend Australian today you’ve saved $28 million. That’s enough to buy a house in Bathurst in Sydney’s outer western suburbs, two houses in Melbourne’s Moonee Ponds and all of Launceston including the Mowbray Golf Club where the directors have just announced a $600 saving on membership fees deal.
Here’s the trick.
Last year RM Sotheby’s sold the 1956 Le Mans-winning D Type Jaguar for $28.9 million. This Monday at Shannons at Heatherton (see you there) you can buy a 1955 D Type for about $900,000 drive away no more to pay. There’s a $28m saving straight away.
Here’s the drawback. This D Type is not registered, doesn’t have aircon and I can’t see the radio. Oh, and it’s a re-creation. Or, to put it another way, it’s a copy. But it was built by Ian Cummins and Steve Sulis.
Although he owned just about every great historic car at some stage of his life, Ian “Frosty” Cummins was a Jaguar fanatic. Born in Griffith in 1938, there are two stories about how he got the Jag virus. One he tells is seeing a Jag with huge headlights on the main street of Griffith when he was six and the other was that he got Jaguar XK120 swap cards in a cereal box when he was 10.
Anyway, by the time he was 18 he had enough money to buy a damaged and repossessed XK120 roadster for about $800. Like many of us, he could afford the car but not the petrol, so he could only muster up enough gas to do a few laps of Griffith’s main street to impress the girls. He later rolled the XK 120 on the way to watch the Bathurst races in 1957.
Ian and Steve began building the D Type for Melbourne real estate agent and collector Warwick Anderson but it ended up going to South Australian car fanatic Ian Ross. Also for sale is another Ian re-creation, a 1953 Jaguar C Type ($200,000), a 1967 Shelby Mustang GT 350 ($500,000) and a real 1964 Mini Cooper S ($50,000). And, of course, the editor said to point out that there are six two-wheelers in the auction for those temporary Australians among you. There’s a beautiful 1948 Indian Chief 1200cc for $45,000, a 1974 Vespa 150 Super Scooter with sidecar so you and your bestie can go together and the 1880s Penny Farthing where the motor appears to be missing.
Let’s have a bet.
The luxury car tax will never go away despite the fact that we don’t have a car industry to protect.
In August our representatives in what passes for the government in Canberra announced they would extend the tax for another year. Buy a car costing more than $65,000 (not much luxury there) and you will pay Scotty Morrison a special tax. Since Peter Costello introduced the punish-the-car-owner tax in 1999 (no other luxury thing — plane, helicopter, boats, pearls, diamond rings and caviar — gets hit) the government has Hoovered up $9 billion from car buyers.
The Australian Auto Dealers Association says: “Government taxes and charges comprise approximately 20 per cent of the price of any new vehicle, are cumulative and include: import duty, GST, LCT, stamp duty, registration and CTP. Apart from LCT of $650 million, the government will also take $500 million in customs duty.” Basically, buy a serious luxury car and a third of the price goes to your friends in Canberra in taxes. And this is a pro-business government.
Now what happens if, like Ian Cummins, you bought a luxury car (and now is the time to buy a super luxury car because there’s a temporary downturn in the market) but your bank card has reached its limit? Roddy Sims and the rest of his Untouchables team at the ACCC have a good section on their website that shows you the cheapest and most expensive days to buy petrol. Melbourne and Brisbane drivers have been stung with the highest prices recently (up about $1.50). As Rod says: “Price cycles are the result of deliberate pricing policies of petrol retailers, and are not directly related to changes in wholesale costs.”
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is working hard to get the IPO of Aramco away next year. Basically, MBS sees that over the long term oil prices will stay in the toilet and he wants to sell 5 per cent of the Saudi oil company before that happens. Given more than 80 per cent of the country’s economy is based on petrol, it’s not a bad plan. Naturally the way to maximise the value of the IPO is to push prices as high as you can.
And today’s Mazdagate story: Rosemary bought a new Mazda 3 in February 2016. “I often experience a sudden slowing down and loss of control without warning. I was told at my first service at Essendon Mazda that it was ‘the computer slowing up when talking to the engine’ and that it would fix itself.
However, it still happens and I feel quite unsafe with the sudden loss of power. I would be interested to hear if others have this problem and what further action to take as I consider it quite dangerous.” Worth remembering there are 14 recalls on Mazda 3s just now. We’re on it.
This is a shortened version of the original article – read the rest at The Australian
