Starting your own classic car collection? There's a checklist you could go down. You'll want a Gullwing Mercedes, an original 911, an E-Type Jag... maybe a Miura, an early DB-series Aston, and a Ferrari 250-something, if you have the means. Or you could go a different route.
That's certainly what the owner of this collection did, focusing almost exclusively on the “weird and wonderful.” Now he (or she) is liquidating at least part of his collection, and if you dig his take, his loss could be your gain at RM Sotheby's upcoming sale in London next month.
The collection includes some standard (if impressive) items – like a Lamborghini Murcielago, a 1962 Maserati 3500, a 1942 Cadillac Series 67 sedan. But we're more intrigued by the more... well, intriguing. Like this yellow 1974 Zagato Zele 1000. As unusual as some of Zagato's creations have been, the Zele was stranger – a tiny electric vehicle (loosely) based on a Fiat 500 but squarely coached and fitted with four 12-volt batteries to give it a humble range of 50 miles, an even humbler top speed of 25 mph, and a prescient arrival, a year before the global oil crisis.
Even more unusual is the 2008 Sbarro Espera Genesis, a one-off concept that bridged the gap between hot rod and track car. It packs a PSA V6 engine into an angular shape that might look at home on a modern supercar today, a decade later.
There's an old Tuk-Tuk used in the Bond flick “Octopussy,” a (relatively) new Peel Trident, a single-seat '75 ACOMA Mini Comtesse three-wheeler, and a '63 Fiat 600D Multipla that makes the accompanying 500 Jolly seem rather “ordinary” by comparison. They're all set to cross the auction block on September 5 in Battersea Park.
