Me an Gandy embracing the american culture! Loving in and out burger, on route to the post ranch inn, the big sur!
via @sammysamwebb
Thursday, 31 March 2011
Good Morning!
Tuesday, 22 March 2011
W London-Leicester Square Premiere 'W London Calling'
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| Model David Gandy (L) and actor Nick Moran attend the W London-Leicester Square premiere 'W London Calling' at W London-Leicester Square on March 16, 2011 in London, England. (Photo by Dave M. Benett/Getty Images) |
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| (L to R) David Gandy, Hamish Jenkinson and Nick Moran attend the W London-Leicester Square premiere 'W London Calling' at W London-Leicester Square on March 16, 2011 in London, England. (Photo by Dave M. Benett/Getty Images) |
Friday, 18 March 2011
Thursday, 17 March 2011
W London Leicester Square - Launch Party Arrivals
David Gandy arrives for the opening of the new 'W' Hotel in Leicester Square at W London Leicester Square on March 16, 2011 in London, England.
Sunday, 13 March 2011
The tailors putting Savile Row back on the map
Television presenter George Lamb is lounging in the attic headquarters of men's outfitter A. Sauvage, just north of Oxford Street, fingering sample neckties and ruminating on his wardrobe epiphany a couple of years ago. 'I'd made a lot of sartorial mistakes,' he sighs. 'Many of them on television.'
Enter Adrien Sauvage. A lean and lanky ex-England basketball player, he's wearing spectacles and Dr Martens boots. An out-stretched hand is offered by way of introduction. 'Sauvage,' he says. The Ghanian-born 27-year-old had been working as a stylist and personal shopper for wealthy private clients from the Middle East and Russia when he met Lamb three years ago and the pair became business partners; self-taught designer and dish-about-town respectively. They launched a collection of clothes cut for artistic sorts with a nod to the elegant Sunday best attire you see promenaded by elderly West Indian gents on Harrow Road: short double-breasted jackets, long slim pants in Loro Piana cashmere, fitted white shirts. The customer base was immediately stellar including Arctic Monkeys, Mark Ronson and Bill Nighy, and fashionable comparisons were made to Rick Owens and Lanvin. Matches and Harrods stock the line (with suits from £875 to £1,500 for a mohair tuxedo), and in May there will be a pop-up at The Shop at Bluebird on the King's Road.
But Adrien Sauvage desires not to be merely a designer but a menswear polymath; a pre-cocious auteur who, like Lagerfeld before him, fancies his chances as a photographer and film-maker also. He's pretty good, too: there are offbeat, black and white shots of well- known A. Sauvage customers; a promotional campaign called 'This Is Not A Suit'; a short film that got shown at Sundance; and an arch clip posted on YouTube espousing the fine art of 'D.E.' (Dress Easy, that's 'never having to wear a belt', 'no cufflinks, no nonsense', 'not constrained by seasons or trends'). The film borrows liberally from Danish director Jørgen Leth's 1967 film The Perfect Human and is narrated by an aurally unrecognisable Larry Lamb (aka George's 'housewives' favourite' dad) doing an American accent.
Unlike, say, the chaps at Ede & Ravenscroft or Maurice Sedwell, Adrien and George hang with the new pop aristocracy, they tweet, blog and Facebook. This is, one suspects, the future of British menswear. Could any other city outside London have nurtured and embraced a multimedia menswear conceit such as A. Sauvage so openly and quickly? It's doubtful.
London, now more than ever, with the likes of Stella McCartney, Christopher Kane, Anya Hindmarch and Matthew Williamson involved in or announcing men's lines, is the world's menswear capital. From Chelsea to Shoreditch via Savile Row and Oxford Street, London's open-minded men swing their pants and shoot their cuffs with a swagger that is unlike any other city's. Topman's design director Gordon Richardson, a supporter of new menswear talent, agrees. 'No other city's men have such an appetite for fashion and for fashion information,' he says. 'London men have an instinctive and educated understanding of what looks good, what the parameters of menswear are and how best to break out of its constraints.'
In 2005, Patrick Grant was at New College, Oxford, studying for a Masters in Business Administration, writing a thesis on luxury brands (with particular focus on Burberry's recent phoenix-from-the-flames revival) when he saw an advertisement in the Financial Times: 'Bespoke Tailor for Sale.' Norton & Sons, established in 1821, had a reputation as outfitters to explorers and outdoor types, its owner once having been granted the freedom of the City of London 'for services to rugged tailoring'. But by the mid-2000s, next to the newly revamped Kilgour down the road and the upstart likes of Spencer Hart opposite, it looked old-fashioned and distinctly unadventurous. Grant, now 38, sold his house and car, persuaded a few friends to invest and found himself, with no formal training in fashion, the owner of a bespoke tailor. He painted the walls white, stripped out all the carpets, uncurtained the window and polished the floors. The tailoring was stripped down to beautiful basics, with each suit hand-cut and hand-sewn using British materials, and costing from £2,980 for a two-piece suit. Today, Norton is once again a Savile Row success story, making over 200 suits a year, and counting Amanda Harlech as a champion.
It was a brave move for the Scot, who had previously worked in manufacturing and technology, as well as playing rugby to an international level and being a modern pent-athlete. That said, all through his adult life Grant had been a bona fide clothing obsessive. While at school at Barnard Castle, Durham, for instance, he had enjoyed an almost daily corridor walk-off against his classmate Giles Deacon as to who could have the nicest shoes and best trousers. 'When I lived in Edinburgh, my friend used to walk a few steps behind me to avoid being associated with a man wearing a big Panama hat with a silk scarf tied around it,' he recalls. The wider allure of men's clothes became all too evident to Grant while he worked at the Princes Street Gardens café and watched Italian tourists get 'taxed' for their pristine Stone Island by local scallies.
Like George Lamb, Patrick Grant believes in the notion of a wardrobe epiphany; that moment around 30 - post-youth, pre-midlife crisis - when a chap decides to start dressing in mature and proper gear. Grant's friend and Norton & Sons' customer, the Dolce & Gabbana model David Gandy, has just been through it. 'I turned 30 and suddenly the idea of wearing really nice suits seemed right and very natural.'
During his career Gandy has noticed that home- grown tailoring isn't talked up by his compatriots. 'The British are the only people in the world who think that if you go British it's old-fashioned, stuffy and unsexy. To everyone else - Americans and Italians - British clothes are cool and desirable.'
Gandy, who recently launched his own Style Guide app, admits that some of his jeans-and-leather-jacket model pals weren't sure about his new English gent style (he is currently more famous for swimming trunks than suits). 'But after a while they were like, "Where did you get your suits done?" Most of the time men know what they want, but they just have a problem verbalising it. They need someone to help them say, "I don't want anything too weird, I just want to dress in a simple, grown-up and elegant way." '
Coming to Savile Row provided Gandy with a gentle counterpoint to the madness of the catwalk. 'It's so civilised, here,' he says.
Grant, who has also successfully revived the sleeping heritage label E Tautz, which was part of the Norton & Sons portfolio and famous for making luxury sporting goods for Edward VII and Winston Churchill, was talking to the restaurateur Mark Hix recently about the reputation of the Row. 'We agreed that our professions are actually very similar; the right ingredients, simple preparation and careful presentation... it's all about the execution really. But with Savile Row it is as if all the best two- and three-Michelin-starred restaurants are on the same street, which means that it's very important that you have a very strong sense of who you are.'
The new simplicity? Celebrity clients? Media-friendly proprietors? Richard James and his business partner Sean Dixon invented all that back in 1992. With £10,000 and a bargain deal on a condemned Savile Row shop 'the size of a changing room', they started off selling mainly ready-to-wear: nice jumpers, dashing silk ties and off-the-peg suits in slightly outré colours. Early customers included American Vogue's European editor-at-large Hamish Bowles and David Linley. Hugh Grant and Elton John followed. Suddenly Savile Row was chic and sexy again. Well... sort of. James is at pains to point out it wasn't any new generation of tailors that suddenly made Savile Row fashionable. 'Throughout the 1960s and 1970s it always had been so,' he insists. 'This is where The Beatles had their Apple office. Tommy Nutter made suits for Mick and Bianca Jagger. Savile Row was the destination for fashion-conscious men… until Armani came along in the late 1970s. Armani changed everything because they made these sexy suits that had a sort of multi-practicality. Pretty soon, fathers weren't bringing their sons to Savile Row any more.'
Richard James's customers, those thirty-something men who had grown out of the shapeless chic of 1980s minimalist Nipponois-erie and certainly hadn't been recommended to Savile Row by their fathers, were different. 'We had one customer come in and order 30 suits. He didn't have much of an idea of the style or cut he was after, he just told us that he wanted suits not like his father had.' So the Richard James silhouette - sharp but un-spivvy - began to take shape. 'We wanted a slimming, flattering cut, so we got rid of anything that added unnecessary bulk.'
Richard was the anointed tailor of the Cool Britannia set; Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit were customers, as were Madonna and Guy Ritchie. A decade and a half on, the customer base continues to evolve with younger customers such as Calvin Klein model turned Britain's Next Top Model presenter Charley Speed, a former Richard James 'fit model' and the face of its advertising campaigns, now enjoying his first taste of bespoke. There's a new store in Tokyo and James is pleased to report healthy sales on the menswear website Mr Porter, which launched only last month and hopes to do for upscale menswear what its sister site Net-a-porter did for womenswear.
'The 1980s were all about labels,' continues James. 'It was considered a huge compliment if someone said to you, "Is that Comme?" or "Is that Gaultier?" We were finding that when customers wore one of our suits people would come up to them and say, "You look good" or "You've lost weight." The silhouette and the skill of the cutter... English tailoring, not the designer, is the story now.
Source: www.thisislondon.co.uk
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| David Gandy and Patrick Grant wear clothes by E Tautz (etauta.com) at Patrick Grant's Saville Row studio. |
Enter Adrien Sauvage. A lean and lanky ex-England basketball player, he's wearing spectacles and Dr Martens boots. An out-stretched hand is offered by way of introduction. 'Sauvage,' he says. The Ghanian-born 27-year-old had been working as a stylist and personal shopper for wealthy private clients from the Middle East and Russia when he met Lamb three years ago and the pair became business partners; self-taught designer and dish-about-town respectively. They launched a collection of clothes cut for artistic sorts with a nod to the elegant Sunday best attire you see promenaded by elderly West Indian gents on Harrow Road: short double-breasted jackets, long slim pants in Loro Piana cashmere, fitted white shirts. The customer base was immediately stellar including Arctic Monkeys, Mark Ronson and Bill Nighy, and fashionable comparisons were made to Rick Owens and Lanvin. Matches and Harrods stock the line (with suits from £875 to £1,500 for a mohair tuxedo), and in May there will be a pop-up at The Shop at Bluebird on the King's Road.
But Adrien Sauvage desires not to be merely a designer but a menswear polymath; a pre-cocious auteur who, like Lagerfeld before him, fancies his chances as a photographer and film-maker also. He's pretty good, too: there are offbeat, black and white shots of well- known A. Sauvage customers; a promotional campaign called 'This Is Not A Suit'; a short film that got shown at Sundance; and an arch clip posted on YouTube espousing the fine art of 'D.E.' (Dress Easy, that's 'never having to wear a belt', 'no cufflinks, no nonsense', 'not constrained by seasons or trends'). The film borrows liberally from Danish director Jørgen Leth's 1967 film The Perfect Human and is narrated by an aurally unrecognisable Larry Lamb (aka George's 'housewives' favourite' dad) doing an American accent.
Unlike, say, the chaps at Ede & Ravenscroft or Maurice Sedwell, Adrien and George hang with the new pop aristocracy, they tweet, blog and Facebook. This is, one suspects, the future of British menswear. Could any other city outside London have nurtured and embraced a multimedia menswear conceit such as A. Sauvage so openly and quickly? It's doubtful.
London, now more than ever, with the likes of Stella McCartney, Christopher Kane, Anya Hindmarch and Matthew Williamson involved in or announcing men's lines, is the world's menswear capital. From Chelsea to Shoreditch via Savile Row and Oxford Street, London's open-minded men swing their pants and shoot their cuffs with a swagger that is unlike any other city's. Topman's design director Gordon Richardson, a supporter of new menswear talent, agrees. 'No other city's men have such an appetite for fashion and for fashion information,' he says. 'London men have an instinctive and educated understanding of what looks good, what the parameters of menswear are and how best to break out of its constraints.'
In 2005, Patrick Grant was at New College, Oxford, studying for a Masters in Business Administration, writing a thesis on luxury brands (with particular focus on Burberry's recent phoenix-from-the-flames revival) when he saw an advertisement in the Financial Times: 'Bespoke Tailor for Sale.' Norton & Sons, established in 1821, had a reputation as outfitters to explorers and outdoor types, its owner once having been granted the freedom of the City of London 'for services to rugged tailoring'. But by the mid-2000s, next to the newly revamped Kilgour down the road and the upstart likes of Spencer Hart opposite, it looked old-fashioned and distinctly unadventurous. Grant, now 38, sold his house and car, persuaded a few friends to invest and found himself, with no formal training in fashion, the owner of a bespoke tailor. He painted the walls white, stripped out all the carpets, uncurtained the window and polished the floors. The tailoring was stripped down to beautiful basics, with each suit hand-cut and hand-sewn using British materials, and costing from £2,980 for a two-piece suit. Today, Norton is once again a Savile Row success story, making over 200 suits a year, and counting Amanda Harlech as a champion.
It was a brave move for the Scot, who had previously worked in manufacturing and technology, as well as playing rugby to an international level and being a modern pent-athlete. That said, all through his adult life Grant had been a bona fide clothing obsessive. While at school at Barnard Castle, Durham, for instance, he had enjoyed an almost daily corridor walk-off against his classmate Giles Deacon as to who could have the nicest shoes and best trousers. 'When I lived in Edinburgh, my friend used to walk a few steps behind me to avoid being associated with a man wearing a big Panama hat with a silk scarf tied around it,' he recalls. The wider allure of men's clothes became all too evident to Grant while he worked at the Princes Street Gardens café and watched Italian tourists get 'taxed' for their pristine Stone Island by local scallies.
Like George Lamb, Patrick Grant believes in the notion of a wardrobe epiphany; that moment around 30 - post-youth, pre-midlife crisis - when a chap decides to start dressing in mature and proper gear. Grant's friend and Norton & Sons' customer, the Dolce & Gabbana model David Gandy, has just been through it. 'I turned 30 and suddenly the idea of wearing really nice suits seemed right and very natural.'
During his career Gandy has noticed that home- grown tailoring isn't talked up by his compatriots. 'The British are the only people in the world who think that if you go British it's old-fashioned, stuffy and unsexy. To everyone else - Americans and Italians - British clothes are cool and desirable.'
Gandy, who recently launched his own Style Guide app, admits that some of his jeans-and-leather-jacket model pals weren't sure about his new English gent style (he is currently more famous for swimming trunks than suits). 'But after a while they were like, "Where did you get your suits done?" Most of the time men know what they want, but they just have a problem verbalising it. They need someone to help them say, "I don't want anything too weird, I just want to dress in a simple, grown-up and elegant way." '
Coming to Savile Row provided Gandy with a gentle counterpoint to the madness of the catwalk. 'It's so civilised, here,' he says.
Grant, who has also successfully revived the sleeping heritage label E Tautz, which was part of the Norton & Sons portfolio and famous for making luxury sporting goods for Edward VII and Winston Churchill, was talking to the restaurateur Mark Hix recently about the reputation of the Row. 'We agreed that our professions are actually very similar; the right ingredients, simple preparation and careful presentation... it's all about the execution really. But with Savile Row it is as if all the best two- and three-Michelin-starred restaurants are on the same street, which means that it's very important that you have a very strong sense of who you are.'
The new simplicity? Celebrity clients? Media-friendly proprietors? Richard James and his business partner Sean Dixon invented all that back in 1992. With £10,000 and a bargain deal on a condemned Savile Row shop 'the size of a changing room', they started off selling mainly ready-to-wear: nice jumpers, dashing silk ties and off-the-peg suits in slightly outré colours. Early customers included American Vogue's European editor-at-large Hamish Bowles and David Linley. Hugh Grant and Elton John followed. Suddenly Savile Row was chic and sexy again. Well... sort of. James is at pains to point out it wasn't any new generation of tailors that suddenly made Savile Row fashionable. 'Throughout the 1960s and 1970s it always had been so,' he insists. 'This is where The Beatles had their Apple office. Tommy Nutter made suits for Mick and Bianca Jagger. Savile Row was the destination for fashion-conscious men… until Armani came along in the late 1970s. Armani changed everything because they made these sexy suits that had a sort of multi-practicality. Pretty soon, fathers weren't bringing their sons to Savile Row any more.'
Richard James's customers, those thirty-something men who had grown out of the shapeless chic of 1980s minimalist Nipponois-erie and certainly hadn't been recommended to Savile Row by their fathers, were different. 'We had one customer come in and order 30 suits. He didn't have much of an idea of the style or cut he was after, he just told us that he wanted suits not like his father had.' So the Richard James silhouette - sharp but un-spivvy - began to take shape. 'We wanted a slimming, flattering cut, so we got rid of anything that added unnecessary bulk.'
Richard was the anointed tailor of the Cool Britannia set; Liam Gallagher and Patsy Kensit were customers, as were Madonna and Guy Ritchie. A decade and a half on, the customer base continues to evolve with younger customers such as Calvin Klein model turned Britain's Next Top Model presenter Charley Speed, a former Richard James 'fit model' and the face of its advertising campaigns, now enjoying his first taste of bespoke. There's a new store in Tokyo and James is pleased to report healthy sales on the menswear website Mr Porter, which launched only last month and hopes to do for upscale menswear what its sister site Net-a-porter did for womenswear.
'The 1980s were all about labels,' continues James. 'It was considered a huge compliment if someone said to you, "Is that Comme?" or "Is that Gaultier?" We were finding that when customers wore one of our suits people would come up to them and say, "You look good" or "You've lost weight." The silhouette and the skill of the cutter... English tailoring, not the designer, is the story now.
Source: www.thisislondon.co.uk
Friday, 11 March 2011
Shoes, Weddings And Wipe Outs!
I'm writing this before I attend a close friend's wedding in Ireland, so I think my quotation this week should be dedicated to marriage and my friends, Tony and Kelly.
"A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person"
Germaine Greer
Everyone's advice and encouragement for my marathon training is very much appreciated. There is one piece of advice that everyone seems to have forgotten though - and that was NOT to crash at approximately 50mph down a ski slope in Italy last week. Thankfully, and I have to say luckily, apart from quite a bit of bruising and aggravating a constant back injury - I clipped my skis back on (once the people at the top of the slope had brought them to me), collected my poles (one snapped into two pieces), and carried on down the slope. I think I must have been lucky that I landed on my head! After a 12-mile-run on Sunday my knee is not in great condition (I had this niggle before I went skiing and I thought a rest from running would remedy it, but unfortunately not). Physio here I come!
I'm going to talk about something that may surprise a few people on this blog - women's shoes. Not unusual in the fact that women's shoes should be spoken about on VOGUE.COM, but from the fact that I usually talk about men's cars, style and fashion. However, I have really been taken aback by the design language and astonishing style of this particular shoe company. The design, branding, attention to detail (even down to the logo and marketing), has struck me as something rather special and I find myself really admiring it immensely. Founded by Jennifer Portman and Natalia Barbieri in London, Bionda Castana produce luxury footwear for women who see shoes as more than accessories; they place them at the very heart of their wardrobe. Designed in London and 100 PER CENT handmade in Italy, Kate Moss, Chloe Sevigny and Rihanna have already spotted the talents of the brand and these TWO very talented designers. See what their work here: http://www.biondacastana.com
I have to admit to being a little worried at first of my admiration for, of all things, women's shoes! I had to go and slip into three-piece-suit and take a quick drive in my Jaguar to feel a little more masculine again. Then I remembered something that Carlo Brandelli explained to me whilst I was with him in Paris (mentioned in a previous blog). He was talking about his clothing design, architecture, his newest art work and future projects and I asked him how he had such an interest in what to me were very different industries and mediums. He went onto explain that design inspirations should, and can, come from anywhere; that if one has an eye for style and design, why should this be limited to fashion and clothes? Design directions for fashion can be influenced by architecture and vice versa and if you have an eye for colour, shape and design then why shouldn't this be expanded to art? My interest in fashion, car design, interior design, style, architecture and even my A level in art and design suddenly seemed to make much more sense to me in a way like never before. Just from that one conversation with Carlo, I am inspired like never before.
Source: http://www.vogue.co.uk/blogs/david-gandy/110310-shoes-weddings-and-wipe-outs!.aspx
Wednesday, 9 March 2011
David Gandy for ShortList Magazine >> The man and the model!!!
David Gandy only began his modelling career in 2002, but has quickly built up a reputation as one of the best male models in the world.
Here we take a look at some of the exclusive shots he did for MODE, as the magazine's first cover star.
Photography: Ram Shergill Fashion: Adrian Clark Source: shortlist.com
MODE Launch - Hot off the press
If you didn’t already know (where have you been?), here at ShortList we’ve been celebrating the arrival of our new bi-annual men’s fashion magazine, MODE.
Last night, the MODE team celebrated the launch in style at the new London Sky Bar, located in the Millbank Tower.
The evening saw MODE editor Adrian Clark, fashion editor Barnaby Ash, and editor-in-chief Terri White say thank you to all the contributors, who had worked hard on the magazine over the past few months.
While sipping on Laurent Perrier champagne, guests could have their picture taken with the larger-than-life poster of the magazine cover on the wall, or simply marvel at the 360 degree view over London.
The night was completed with the arrival of cover star David Gandy, who turned up early in the evening and stayed the whole night, along with last year’s BFA menswear designer winner, Patrick Grant (also chosen by Gandy as one of his style icons – read it here).
Read MODE online here Images: Antony Jones Source: shortlist.com
Sunday, 6 March 2011
Friday, 4 March 2011
Thursday, 3 March 2011
Gandy drives: 300SL Mercedes Gullwing Coupé.
During my last visit to Mercedes-Benz World in Surrey to review the new SLS AMG for GQ.com, the team had to pull me away from the original model that it was based on, the stunning 1955 300SL Gullwing Coupé. After I explained that it was one of my dream cars, they kindly invited me back to drive it...
The model
After suffering two weeks of saturation bombing in 1944, the world's oldest automobile company "ceased to exist". Just ten years later and after victories at Le Mans and the Nürburgring with a car called the 300SL, Mercedes turned that race car into the world's first supercar. The 300SL introduced many pioneering feats which are still used to this day: the complex space frame and fuel injection producing an then unheard-of 215bhp, to name but two.
The looks
For me the 300SL is just one of the most heartachingly beautiful cars ever built - powerful without being brutish. The styling (there were no Italian design studios involved) came from practical engineering solutions. Built as a coupé with gullwing doors so that it could be faster on the straights, it had no protrusions, no door handles and no outside rear-view mirror. Its round shape and small flares helped keep the air clean, all to make the car go as fast as possible. The 300SL was an expedient and, at two to three times the price of the top sports cars at that time, the preserve of the rich and famous.
The drive
There is a (possibly apocryphal) story about a groupie who spent a wild night in bed with Mick Jagger. Asked by her friend the next morning how it was, she replied, "Well, he's no Mick Jagger." Therein lies the problem when someone or something has a reputation which proceeds it by so such. My expectations of driving one of my dream cars were so great, I almost didn't want to spoil the fantasy I had built up in my mind. So, what happened?
Well, getting into the Gullwing is an event in itself. Clambering over the sill onto the bright red seats (with matching luggage) and closing those famous doors sent shivers down my spine. The dashboard, with its milled metal, numerous switch gears (none of which anyone knows how to use, so best not to start playing around), ivory steering wheel and gear stick, is like a work of art. I can't begin to explain the feeling of nostalgia and history. For the lucky few who own one of these cars, the sense of occasion every time you drive it must be beyond anything you feel not only in modern cars, but also in many classics.
Reading up on the 300SL beforehand, I discovered the following: "a suspect swing axle needed an expert to tame it". Well, if they needed an expert, boy had they chosen the wrong guy. Along with a left-hand steering wheel so large I think it once helped drive the Titanic, pretty much non-existent brakes, tyres so thin a basic Fiesta would have had better grip - oh, and the cold, wet Mercedes-Benz World track (and did I mention the car is worth £500,000?) - to say I was cautious would be an understatement. I was not going to be the guy who pranged the 300SL while on test. Actually, Miss Daisy would have been perfectly happy sat next to me as a passenger.
When people have asked me about the experience, I've told them I felt like I'd just been on a date with the most beautiful women in the world - and I can't have her again. I found myself looking back at the 300SL in a rather embarrassingly longing way, knowing I would probably never get to own or even drive one ever again.
You need to know
You might think me a little mad for saying that I think £500,000 is a bargain. However, with only 1,400 units built (but obviously far less surviving on the road today) and some classic Jaguars and Ferraris going for anything between £3m and £10m, the arguably more beautiful and unarguably more historic 300SL seems like a steal. It will almost never lose money - not something you could say about "supercars" nowadays.
So, a sound investment? Well, that's the pitch I'm going in to my bank manager with. Just imagine yourself out for the evening, dinner suit on, beautiful woman next to you and arriving to an event in a 300SL. Bugatti Veyron? Ferrari Enzo? Pagani Zonda? Oh, please! These cars would merge into one tasteless, characterless lump of machinery by comparison.
Yes, £500,000 is a little beyond most people's budget. There was, however, a Mercedes built and sold alongside the 300SL in the Fifties and Sixties. Of course, it isn't as famous, or as historic, but I think you get 75 per cent of the 300SL for a tenth of the price. I would tell you the name, but I'm currently looking for a good example myself and don't need any more competition, thanks very much.
Engine
6-cylinder, 215 bhp
Peformance
Top speed 160mph (depending on gearing)
Price
£500,000 (approximately)
Read more: http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk
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