Equipment
4 speed, skirts, sunroof, blackwalls. Barn find, sound but aged and tired. Seat coverings torn and tattered. This is a reprehensible old rat, presented at the auction with all its barn find dirt carefully preserved and largely intact. Its not something calculated to give potential buyers shivers of anticipation, at least not in an old Jaguar sedan, and it had the expected effect. John W. Straus Collection. No Reserve.
Market commentary
On the other hand, this and the rusty, rotten and thoroughly scrofulous XKE from Mr. Strauss barn reinforced the provenance of the star of the show, the Bugatti Type 57C Atalante, which brought a positively huge price nearly double Christies already generous high estimate. It and the E type did their jobs as marketing tools and this largely sound and relatively rare Mark V is a reasonable project with this price as a starting point.