Five highlights from Hong Kong’s first major classic car auction
Models from the 1950s onwards are worth between HK$300,000 and HK$4 million and are aimed at new and younger collectors
Hong Kong’s classic car world could receive a boost on June 11, when newly established RL Neo Classics offers more than 25 collectibles for sale at The Repulse Bay hotel, in the city’s first major auction of vintage vehicles. The cars – models from the 1950s onwards – are worth between HK$300,000 and HK$4 million and are aimed at new and younger collectors, according to Richard Lee, a former Ferrari distributor and the Hong Kong-based auction house’s chairman.
“For this inaugural auction, it took about a year to source our cars, all from local owners and collectors,” said Lee, the former chairman and chief executive of Italian Motors and Auto Italia.
Lee highlighted five of the auction’s finest models.
The first is a 1994 Chevrolet Corvette C4 with a Pininfarina conversion to right-hand-drive that carries an estimated selling price of HK$$300,000 to HK$420,000, which the auctioneer described as “entry level” to encourage classic car ownership. “This is a special Corvette, unlike the Corvette C4 you can find on Sunset Boulevard in California,” Lee said. The car is “from a royal family in Asia.” The collectible is also a former Hong Kong Chater Road concourse winner and has only about 6,400 kilometres on the clock, RL Neo Classics said.
A 1977 Maserati Khamsin is publicised in the auction catalogue as “a time-capsule example with only 307 miles from new” and has an estimated sales range of between HK$1.8 million and HK$2.2 million. The Khamsin is rare because its production was limited to just 430 units, of which 335 had five-speed gearboxes and only 95 were made in right-hand drive, the auctioneer said. “They were, and indeed are, great cars with a layout considered classic for a grand touring motor car,” Lee, a Maserati authority, said. “A claimed top speed of 170 miles (272 kilometres) per hour is nothing to sneer at, either.”
The Khamsin being sold belonged to a world-renowned Maserati collector who keeps more than 150 classic cars as investments, and was the star of the show at Maserati’s 2014 centennial event held at Beijing’s Forbidden City, the auctioneer said. Maseratis are “generally undervalued” and are viewed as good investments right now, “especially a clean, low-mile example such as this one”, Lee said.