DK Engineering | PH Meets
PH goes behind-the-scenes at one of the UK's pre-eminent Ferrari specialists
Have you ever been to a really expensive restaurant, one that you've been looking forward to visiting for years, and then realised at the end of the first course that you're already full?
That's how your humble scribe felt about half an hour into his 'ten-bob tour' around DK Engineering. Multiply that ten bob by a couple of hundred million and you'd be a lot nearer to the value of the DK premises and stock - and even that might be underselling it.
James Cottingham is director of the whole business and, along with Harvey Stanley, responsible for DK's sales and acquisitions. Son of DK founders David and Kate Cottingham - who still work for the company on a full-time basis, along with their other son Justin - James is the 'face' of DK. He played a big part in turning a farm near Rickmansworth into a breath-taking showroom, servicing and storage empire.
'Empire' doesn't really do justice to this place, though. It's more like an automotive version of the lost city of Atlantis, so low-profile that unless you know where to look you might never realise it was there. DK's awe-inspiring diaspora of facilities lie within two or three miles of the unassuming barn that houses the main showroom. This contains eight vehicles, all of them easy seven-figure cars. There are thirty-six more cars in three other showrooms, roughly another fifty in the workshops at any one time, and 250 or so in DK's storage facilities. Over forty members of staff are fully engaged in the restoration, fettling, safeguarding and sales of blue-chip classics from all the key marques, but principally those bearing the Ferrari badge.
"We're the only people in the world who specialise in every aspect of Ferrari, in terms of age and service provision," says James. "Nobody else stores, services and restores the number of Ferraris that we do. There may be dealers that sell more cars, but in terms of turnover we're probably one of the highest."
Was it a conscious decision to specialise in Ferraris? "Mum and Dad were originally into Jaguars. Dad had a low-drag E-type, works XK120s, and lots of other very important Jaguars. In the early 1970s he found there was a bit of a gap in the Ferrari market. His full-time job was as a research physicist at Kodak, but in his spare time he was working on his first Ferrari, semi-restoring it before selling it and doubling his money. At that point he realised that Ferraris were a bit more interesting.
"When our doors opened in 1977 we were pretty much immediately Ferrari specialists because there were more projects out there and more variety."
We gawp at a superb 288 GTO in the first showroom. It's done 55,000km but is in amazing condition. "We've sold this car three times," says James. "We first bought it in 2012 from America, UK-registered it and did a big service on it before selling it to a French owner. We bought it back from him and sold it to the current owner who's had it for about four years." Value? Around £2.1 million.
F cars - F40s, 288s, F50s, Enzos - are a sub-speciality of DK. "We're probably seen as the world number one in that area, especially F40s. We've sold more of those than anyone else. We'll always have at least one here. At the moment we've got five in stock. One of them is a 480 miles from new car.
"Generally we only focus on non-cat, non-adjust F40s, unless it's an exceptional example like that 480-mile car which is a cat-adjust two-owner UK car that's absolutely like new."
What about the old complaint from us common folk about these great driving machines not being driven? You can tell that James has dealt with this question before. He bristles slightly. "It's a lot more difficult to use the cars now because they are more valuable, our roads are busier, and the law enforcement is heavier. Not everyone is the best or the most confident driver in the world. Hesitation about using them is only to be expected.
"I also think that people appreciate cars more than they used to. They get enjoyment from cars as works of art sitting in a beautiful garage. I can totally understand that.
"It gets me down when we advertise a fantastic example of a car that's unmolested and that hasn't been crashed, repainted, or retrimmed, it's a true time-warp example, and all the keyboard warriors can do is say 'it's such a shame that someone hasn't driven it.' Maybe the owner was disabled, maybe he was having to work abroad, maybe he was working in Africa for charities, you just don't know the story.
"If you want a car that's done lots of miles, fine, but some people will want to have an example that's as close to new as possible - and you can't buy a new F40 today."
Selling rarefied cars like this is not as simple as you might think. The risks are high. As DK's lead Acquisition Consultant, James has been responsible for more than his fair share of world-record deals involving not just Ferraris but also McLaren F1s. "Cars are a lot more complicated and a lot more valuable than they ever were, so you've got to be a lot more careful about what you're buying. We're not going to make decisions based on short-term gain. It's all about the long term for us. It's really important to me that people can come to us knowing we've got this massive wealth of experience and knowledge of individual cars."
We're half an hour into the tour, but we're still in that first eight-car showroom, trying to pretend that the sight of a factory-fresh short-wheelbase 275 GTB/4 - one of only eleven steel RHD cars, and the joint-first brand-new Ferrari to come into Britain via Col Ronnie Hoare's Maranello Concessionaires - is somehow normal. "I was offered that car two weeks ago by someone I knew of but didn't know well," he says. "When he told me which car it was, I remembered I'd seen it twelve years ago when it was being restored, eight years ago when it was still being restored, and after that when it was sold to someone. You end up knowing these cars inside out.
"It's really important for people who buy cars like this to know that we've known of, serviced, restored or sold them in the past and have an in-depth knowledge of their history. That's another appealing aspect about low-mileage cars. If the quality and condition of the car supports the mileage, you know that it hasn't been messed about with. Although many buyers want a car with an interesting history, there are just as many who will want one with no history whatsoever.
How has the classic car scene changed in James's time? "The biggest change has been in values. I've been in the family business since 2002 and seen Ferrari 250 short-wheelbases go from circa £500,000 up to $13 million three years ago. That was for a steel car that we sold. Today, those steel short-wheelbases are $8.5 million." The 250 GT SWB that sits alongside the 275 GTB in DK's showroom was auctioned in 2015 for £7.7m including commissions, all of which went to the owner's nominated charity, the RNLI.
"We had a 6-7 year period of consistent 10-15 per cent annual growth, but there have been a number of situations in the global economy since that have caused people to want the car market to slow down slightly. People pumped negativity into the market by talking it down, saying it's a bubble that's going to burst. Fortunately, what actually happened was that it slowed down. It did regress in certain areas, but that was very model-specific.
"Another big change has been the growth in the breadth of the classic car market. Now we've got pre-war, classics, veterans, modern classics from the mid 1980s to about 2005, and modern cars. Over the last couple of years limited editions of modern cars have been making huge premiums. If you're a retail buyer who was lucky enough to get on the list, you could get a LaFerrari for about a million pounds. At its peak that car was worth £2.6 million. Today it's still worth two and a quarter.
"Now all the manufacturers, even Ferrari, have cottoned on to this and are releasing too many cars. There's not enough money or demand to satisfy that requirement in the premium market once the car's been delivered, that is, for the next guy to pay the 25, 50 or sometimes 100 per cent premium on top of what the original purchaser paid for the car. The McLaren Senna has shown that. It's a fantastic bit of kit, but it's not necessarily the most appealing car to all buyers."
What about the growing manufacturer interest in releasing recreations of their own classics? "I think factory-built recreations are great. It's not a new concept. Richard Williams and Victor Gauntlett did it in the early 1990s with the DB4 GT Zagatos. They make the classic car world accessible for the modern buyer." Relatively speaking, of course. "All these manufacturer-built recreations are expensive. I could supply you with a replica D-type built by someone in the UK who knows exactly what they're doing for probably £400,000. A new car from Jaguar is £1.75 million plus VAT. An original '55 or '56-built D-type has got to be more than that, so the recreation trendwill help increase the values of the older, more original cars.
"The thing with these recreations is that you know exactly what you're getting. If you buy a D-type today from Jaguar, it's a brand-new, 1 of 25, 2019-built Jaguar D-type. There's no confusion. Whereas if you buy a D-type from the 1950s, half the cars from that era will come with a really nasty story. You might think you've bought something that's more original than it actually is.
"I would say that the £6 million pricing of the new Aston DB4GT Zagato, the one that you have to buy with a new DBS Zagato, that's nuts. The Jaguar D-type project though, I think they've got that right."
We walk through DK's engine and machine shops, where F40 and D-type engines, transmissions and parts are arrayed on the spotless workbenches. "The only things we don't do in-house are metalwork, paintwork and trim," says James. "Everything else is done by us. The client is only dealing with us, safe in the knowledge that we're managing every aspect of it, and that everything has to meet our quality control measures. If we're doing a 275 GTB and it's at the bodyshop, we visit it probably on a bi-weekly basis to make sure we're happy with how things are going."
We don't see DK's controlled-environment 1,000hp rolling road, but we do stumble across the Prodrive Ferrari 550 GTS race car that was taken to third in class by Colin McRae, Rickard Rydell and Darren Turner in the 2004 Le Mans 24 Hours - quite a result given that McRae was on painkillers for much of the race as his legs wouldn't comfortably fit into the 550. James is more than handy behind the wheel himself and has raced this spectacular car.
DK doesn't just do full factory-spec restorations. They also do sympathetic restorations, too, like the short-wheelbase 250 in the showroom that still has a scratch on its driver's door. "We haven't done anything to that cosmetically. Mechanically it's perfect, but we haven't made the mechanical components look too fresh.
"In the first 30 years of business there were so many more cars to restore. My parents spent a lot of time in the States in the 1980s buying worn out racing Ferraris with broken engines that had been replaced by V8s and then put away into barns. They were brought back to the UK and restored and a lot of value would be added.
"Fast forward to 2005 and pretty much everything had been done. To find a full restoration project '50s sports Ferrari, that's tough. There's probably only a handful left that haven't been restored. But then there's the re-restoration side for cars that were done maybe thirty years and fifty thousand miles ago, or perhaps weren't so well restored by someone else. Then we'll have a go at them."
We gaze at what many consider to be the world's most important Ferrari, the 166 MM Touring that won the Mille Miglia and Le Mans in 1949. It belongs to an American collector and hasn't been in Europe for 30 years, but it's been here this year to help celebrate the 70th anniversary of those wins that put Ferrari on the map. Dealing with that car in two sentences seems a bit heinous, but that's the kind of place this is. Before James rushes off we ask him to nominate his favourite classic. He prefaces his answer with some company philosophy. "This was founded as a hobby business. Everyone here is passionate about cars." A sneaky look into David and Kate's personal garage confirms that. Here's the Bristol-powered AC Ace that 77-year-old David still races, and over there a lovely late-1930s BMW 327 coupe that Kate regularly goes out in. They're genuine enthusiasts still.
For James however it's the F40. "It's a standout car in so many respects. It burst onto the scene looking like no other car, and there's a racing element to our passion that's very much reflected in the F40. It's very much a race car for the road, with stunning performance even by today's standards if you can excuse the terrible brakes. It appeals to all generations. The F40 is the line in the sand for my Dad in terms of the appeal of modern cars."
What about an affordable model for anyone looking to start their own classic Ferrari journey? "The 308 GT4 is a fabulous little car. The 355 is a great car too, but it's tougher to find a good one." And other marques? "There are some really good deals to be had on McLaren 675s and 720s. They're a great all-round package."
James hands us over to Luke Gilbertson, a new member of the sales team who joined the company earlier this year with a strong background in photography and social media. Owners have had to acknowledge that social media is a constant and pervasive presence, and it's a very important means of notifying clients of new stock and services provided. For its own part DK acknowledges that owners have privacy rights too, and as such they have put strict employee rules in place to guard against unwanted exposure. "The internet actually supports the stability of the market," says James. "If someone makes a mistake, or a car is right or wrong, people are very quick to let you know about it. Our stock has to be the correct quality. If a car is described as perfect, it has to be perfect and not a rot box."
Luke is a big lad, 6 foot 8 to be precise, a frustrating thing for him as it means he can't fit into much of the most iconic Italian metal for which he has a clear love. He does have a soft spot for one car though, and it's one he fits into as well: a yellow Ferrari Mondial. A Mondial? Is he sure? By way of an answer, Luke flips up the engine cover to reveal a 430 Challenge motor with flappy-paddle 'box. The cabin has been subtly 'raced up' inside too. "The owner loved the car but felt it needed a little more performance," says Luke. "It's a fabulous drive." This special Mondial cost around £400,000 to build. It's now for sale at around £120k.
Luke takes us to meet Sam, who manages the storage facility a few miles down the road. This has been a big area of growth for DK. From the outside it's a regular industrial unit. On the inside it's every little boy's dream. Of the 250 cars DK now stores, probably 50 per cent are foreign-owned. Europe is perceived as the number one destination for car events, so a London-based storage facility makes perfect sense for overseas owners who come over for a couple of weeks each year.
Sam has the look of a man who gets to curate and organise the movements of around £40 million worth of classic cars. It's not hard to imagine what that look is. "I'm quite fortunate in that I get to drive all these wonderful cars without having to put my hand in my pocket," he smiles.
We wander down the ranks of cloth-covered classics - mainly Ferraris - before going upstairs to the new mezzanine level. There are around 65 cars here and they all hit the desirability bell hard. Sam shuffles the pack more often than you might think. Besides the owner's requirements, manufacturers issue recall notices all the time. Getting cars to dealerships for those is quite an exercise. Sam is the point of contact for everything to do with all these cars, whether it's storage, servicing, MOTs, race preparation, or documentation. Cars in storage here can change ownership many times without moving.
What are the owners like though? Are they normal people? "The majority of people you can have a conversation with and you would not realise that they are worth millions, if not billions," says Sam. "Some will happily admit to not knowing what a head gasket is. Others are just car nuts who will stand here and chat to you for three or four hours." As Luke says, there are so many different ways to enjoy a car.
We started off ogling at a 275 GTB. By the end of our DK tour we've seen three. It's that Mr Creosote feeling. When a Ferrari 275 GTB becomes just another car - well, sort of - you know you're in a very special place indeed.
Search DK Engineering's stock here
https://www.dkeng.co.uk/ferrari-sales/1069/prestig...
Well spotted!
https://www.dkeng.co.uk/ferrari-sales/1069/prestig...
king money. https://youtu.be/NJtdCuX4dpY
I live 10 mins away and drive past their premises quite regularly....look quite innocuous from the road...need to find a good excuse to pop in!
Gassing Station | General Gassing | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff