"Good grief," we said, while trawling through the classifieds when we should really have been doing some proper work on Monday afternoon. "It's a Facel Vega for sale in the UK."
You might reasonably have expected us not to be too surprised. After all, we had selected 'Facel Vega' from the search menu of one of the foremost UK-based classifieds sites. But we had done so purely as a bet to ourselves; surely there wouldn't be any for sale?
Well, in fact, there were four. But the one that grabbed our attention was here on these sceptred isles. Usually, they aren't. In fact, just 62 are known to remain in the country, according to the Facel Vega Car Club UK, and they change hands less often than pandas indulge in a spot of aggressive cuddling.
If you haven't heard of a Facel Vega, we'll forgive you. Relatively few people have, after all. But this is one of the great forgotten glamour cars of the 1960s, sitting alongside Jaguar E-Types and Ferrari 365s as the transport of the stars.
Facel, or 'Forges et Ateliers de Constructions d'Eure-et-Loire', was founded by Frenchman Jean Daninos, as a metals manufacturer and fabricator. After the Second World War, the company began building car bodies for other manufacturers, before Daninos decided to follow a long-held dream, and branch out into automotive production himself.
His vision was for an opulent grand-tourer in which space and comfort were just as important as power and speed. His company's automotive division, Facel Vega, has been described as the French Bristol, and that isn't too far from the truth.
Its cars' grand styling, opulent interiors, unending comfort and mighty pace made them the perfect vehicles for crossing continents at then-legal three-figure speeds, and those attributes won Facel Vega a host of famous owners.
Stirling Moss used his to blast from race to race; Ava Gardner used hers to turn up to the most fashionable night spots while she lived in Spain; Dean Martin had one shipped to his home in Beverly Hills. The Facel Vega was, in other words, the car of the stars in the 1960s.
Initially powered by a 5.4-litre Chrysler Hemi engine in its earliest 'FV' form, the Vega grew more powerful and more spectacular with each iteration and styling revision, until the ultimate Vega, the HK500, arrived with a 365hp 6.2-litre Hemi mounted beneath its prow.
Inside, you'd find swathes of leather and all the latest automotive mod cons including air conditioning, electric windows and a stereo radio system, along with one surprise: a dashboard constructed not of wood, but of aluminium, meticulously painted to look like a slab of burr walnut. Then again, what else would you expect from a metals specialist?
This example is enormously tempting - just look at that tan leather, for goodness sake. But the advert is also notably short on the detail - there's no mention of mileage or history, for example, or of any record of that evidently impressive restoration it describes. That's curious, given the provenance and rarity of these cars.
But we'll give it the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully, the important bits are all there, just unmentioned. A car like this is certainly worthy of further investigation on any buyer's part, and could turn out to be a wonderful thing to own. And the price seems about right too. Time to become more personally acquainted with the work of Facel, we reckon.
FACEL VEGA HK500
Engine: 6,279cc V8 petrol
Transmission: Three-speed Chrysler automatic, rear-wheel drive
Power (hp): 360@5,200rpm
Torque (lb ft): 398@4,000rpm
MPG: N/A
CO2: N/A
First registered: 1961
Recorded mileage: N/A
Price new: ~£3,500
Yours for: £144,950
See the orginal advert here.