We have mentioned this auction of an entire museum before, and now the results are in.

The amazingly eclectic collection ran from the 1938 Maybach Zeppelin DS8 Roadster sold for £1 million and the 1911 Rolls-Royce 40/50 HP Silver Ghost Roi Des Belges Tourer sold for £600,000 down to an Austin Cambridge saloon sold for £140.

One of the highlights was a Rolls Royce Phantom II delivered to Lord Louis Mountbatten in 1930, with a body by Barker (at the time Rolls-Royce never made its own bodies – the buyer would commission them from one of a number of coachbuilders). If it looks slightly familiar, it is very similar to the Rolls-Royce Phantom used by Goldfinger in the Bond film of the same name, which had an almost identical body on a later Phantom III chassis. This one sold for £150,000.

One of the striking things about the auction, apart from the sheer weirdness of some of the cars (how often does an NSU Wankel Spider, the world’s first rotary engined car, come up for sale?) is the variance in prices for cars that were once direct competitors. For example, a Rover P5 from the 1960s fetched £8000, a typical price. However, a Wolseley 6/110, which was a direct competitor to the big Rover at the time, fetched £500 and a third rival, the Humber Super Snipe, managed under £250. That was not because of differences in condition – it is simply that Rovers are respected and the other two are now forgotten.