BUYER'S GUIDE · MAY 2026

The R107 paradox: why a tired 380SL still asks for £18,000.

Dominic Rossi · 6 min read

The R107 SL — built from 1971 to 1989 — is the longest-running Mercedes roadster ever made. Almost 240,000 of them exist. Scarcity, in other words, is not why it commands the prices it does. The R107's value lives in three things: a body that has aged the way Karl Wilfert designed it to age, a V8 that sounds correct, and the kind of provenance that survives on paper.

Here is what to look for, what to walk away from, and what the South African market gets — and the UK market doesn't — about this car…

MARKET COMMENTARY · MAY 2026

SA→UK arbitrage in 1973–1989 Porsche 911s: the FX has eaten the spread.

Marcus Reinhardt · 4 min read

Twelve months ago, a tidy 1985 Carrera 3.2 in Cape Town landed in West Sussex for forty percent less than a comparable UK-market car. The trade was real. The shipping was material but knowable. The duty was a known unknown. The only unknown unknown — as always — was the rand.

This month, with the rand sitting near R23.5 to the pound, the arithmetic has tightened. Below: the same trade, run through current FX, current shipping, current import VAT…

PROVENANCE · APRIL 2026

A W113 Pagoda, three owners, four decades, and the file that closed the sale.

Sir Edmund Hartfield-Walsh · 8 min read

The chassis was correct. The motor was correct. The paint was correct, more or less. What sold the car was a lever-arch file: thirty-eight years of service slips, a 1986 letter from the original supplying dealer in Lausanne, and a hand-written log of every tyre fitted since 1971.

This is the difference between a £62,000 Pagoda and an £88,000 Pagoda. Not the car. The paperwork that surrounds it…

BUREAU NOTES · MAY 2026

What we look for, on your behalf, in 2026.

The Bureau · 3 min read

Our brief, on a single page. Five disciplines. Two markets. Pre-1996, always. Patient, never anxious. The cars we will not source, and the reasons.