HOW TO COLLECT F1 CARS

The market for collecting Grand Prix and Formula 1 cars has exploded in the past few years

- DUNCAN QUINN

I want a road-registered Porsche 917 to blast through Europe. Stopping at every beach bar along the French and Italian Riviera, playing the hero à la Steve McQueen. But some guys want even more than that. They want a Formula One car. That they can race. On a track. Against other fanatics who think they are Fangio, Hunt, Senna, Schumacher, Hamilton-rolled into one. So let's take a look at this rarified sector of the car collecting community; because of course the truth is we all want one.

There was a time when buying and owning an F1 car was relatively inexpensive. Peter Haynes, a Consigning Specialist at the world's top collector car auction house RM Sothebys, tells us that "the market for Formula One cars has traditionally been very niche and a market where values haven't always been commensurate with the historical significance of the cars." He points out that cars from the 1940s, '50s and even the early '60s are more commonly referred to as Grand Prix cars; technically the first Formula One race was at Silverstone in England in 1950.

"Although Formula One machines are exotic by any measure, cars from that earlier Grand Prix era have always been relatively easy to own and race because they are, at least by the standards of more modern machines, technologically simple," he notes, "and there are many places where owners can race them." From the 1970s onwards however, "the cars became increasingly technical and aerodynamics began to play a significant part. By the late 1980s through to the modern day, these cars rapidly became computers on wheels with highly sophisticated engineering, electrical and hydraulic systems, sensors, and very advanced engines and transmissions."