Jaguar buys largest private British classic car collection in the world

One of the most renown collectors in the classic car world, James Hull has sold his entire British classis car collection to JLR for an undisclosed sum. The Hull collection was the largest privately owned British Classic car collection in the world. A dentist by profession, James Hull was recently plagued by health problems, after which announced his intention to sell the 543 cars, plus a plethora of pedal cars and memorabilia, a couple of months ago. He made clear though that he would have wanted his collection to stay together and intact as far as possible and to stay in the United Kingdom.

The Hull collection features some extremely exclusive and rare Jaguars like the LeMans dominating XKSS and a host of equally desirable and rare C and D-types. His collection also holds a large range of pristine Jaguar E-Types, including one owned by legendary motorcycle rare, Mike Hailwood. His collection also holds unique celebrity owned cars like Lord Mountbatten's Mini Traveller, Winston Churchill's Austin and a Bentley formerly owned by Elton John. Apart from full sized cars, the James Hull collection also includes 365 pedal cars and over 300 pieces of automotive and non-automotive memorabilia, including model aircraft from the two World Wars.

Although what JLR intends to do with this huge collection of classic cars, 130 of which are classic Jaguars is uncertain at this point, it would be lovely to see JLR build some sort of museum that can showcase this large spectrum of British motoring history under one roof. Jaguar’s special operations will take custody of these rare and historic beauties and have announced that they will continue working with James Hull for their future historic car and heritage activities.

Last year, for the exclusive Cartier Concours d’elegance show held in Mumbai, Jaguar flew down Sir Stirling Moss’s LeMans Jaguar C-Type, now owned by Richard Frankel to India thereby making it one of the stars of the show. With such a large collection of cars now within JLR’s reach, what they bring around next time could very well be better, rare and even more exclusive than ever before.

Source: Classic and Sports car magazine UK