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CPP buys Bowler Offroad

Bowler Nemesis - Now made - and owned - by CPP Goodness, CPP Manufacturing are busy little bees at the moment. No sooner do we learn that CPP has bought Spyker Cars (well, strictly speaking it’s CPP Global Holdings Ltd who are hoovering up with Vladimir Antonov’s money) than we discover CPP has also acquired Bowler Offroad. For the uninitiated, Bowler are the makers of bonkers offroad vehicles that can probably be best described as Land Rover Supercars.

Bentley SUV (Falcon) to be built in Slovakia?

Bentley says it has 2000 pre-orders for the Bentley Falcon SUV and that it is possible the Bentley won’t be built in Crewe but in Bratislava. January’s news was that the Bentley SUV was close to being signed-off for production (we’ve heard that once or twice) and in February we learnt that Bentley have gone back to the drawing board to produce a new design under the watchful eye of Luc Donckerwolke, Bentley’s Chief Designer, which we expect to be a more dynamic one with cues from the Continental, rather than a square truck with Mulsanne headlights. So now it’s time for the March instalment of ‘Bentley SUV News‘, and we have Bentley boss Wolfgang Schreiber telling us that Bentley already has 2,000 pre-orders for their SUV (we’re guessing ‘expressions of interest’ may be closer to the truth) before the new design is shown, and before Bentley has decided whether they want to pitch their SUV just above the new Range Rover at around £150k, or do what Bentley dealers want which is a Bentley SUV costing north of £200k.

McLaren F1 sells for $8.47 million at Gooding & Co’s Pebble Beach Auction

McLaren F1 chassis #66 (pictured) has sold for $8.47 million There’s been an inexorable rise in the price of classic cars in recent years as rich men realise that certain classic cars not only have huge appeal, but appear to be going only one way in price. Add to that – certainly in the UK – that any profits made on the sale of a classic car you’ve bought for your own enjoyment are tax free, and it’s no shock that values keep rising, and the rarer the car the more they rise. So with only 64 road cars made, the McLaren F1 can be considered a sound investment, with values rising since it first sold in the 1990s for around £640,000 to a new world record auction price set last night of £8.47 million (around £5.42m).