A RARE 90-year-old former Southampton taxi, which cost £895 new but which had not been seen in public for nearly 50 years, sold for £55,200 at an auction in Hampshire today.
The 1923 Vauxhall OD 23-60 HP Kington Tourer was bought for nearly double the sum it had been expected to fetch.
It was a Southampton taxi in the late 1930s after it was bought by Mr Charles Ayscough from Basingstoke.
But it had not been seen in public since it appeared at a garden fete in 1967 having been locked away in a garage, from where it recently emerged covered in grime and cobwebs.
Before the Bonhams auction at the National Motor Museum in Beaulieu this afternoon, the former Southampton taxi had been expected to sell for between £25,000 and £30,000.
The former Southampton taxi was not the only car with a Hampshire link in the Beaulieu auction.
A 1950 Bentley MKV1 four and a quarter litre Barchetta, registration number HUK 21, once owned by the late Eastleigh-born former Hollywood stunt driver Sidney “Skid” Martin, sold for £40,250.
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