Pick an orange in Florida

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Appreciation for Japanese classics is in the lift for a while now and Bonhams offer a chance to buy what could be the most interesting one of them all: Mazda’s 110 Cosmo. With just a handful of them residing in Europe, none of them in this unusual colour, it is so much more exclusive than most sports cars. Toyo Kogyo built it in its hometown of Hiroshima. They’d shown its wacky prototype in 1964, with its slim lines and rather extreme overhang at the rear. Beautiful, yes, but remarkable too. It had independent suspension, twin spark plugs, dual distributors and… a dual rotary engine with 110bhp, hence the name. They launched the car three years later after 80 prototypes had been wrecked. Even the brochure was outrageous, saying: “We hope by now you’re wondering just who the heck we are. We, meaning Toyo Kogyo, the manufacturers of the Mazda 110S and the engineers of the dual rotor engine. After all we live way off in Japan. Nor have we any rich uncles in Detroit, Stuttgart, etc. That is to say, we’re not “affiliates” of anybody. Nobody else owns or operates us. We’re ours, we belong to us, for better or worse.” Brilliant.

Prefer the safer side of motoring, but like an oddball never the less? How about this Morgan +4+? The model ‘greeted by a chilly silence from the Morgan faithful at its introduction in 1964’ as the auctioneer writes in its blurb. 26 Of them were built before Peter Morgan returned to its traditional models to avoid bankrupcy. Still undervalued, this one comes in ‘Duck egg blue’, was originally sold (in red) to an American Foreign Service employee in New York and looks just superb to us.

Still too obscure for your tastes? Prefer a metal bodied car that’s made in big numbers by a well-known manufacturer? Then consider this gorgeous BMW 2000 CS. It may be one of the lesser-known models although still over 13,000 were built between 1965 and 1970. This one is said to have been sold to Italy originally but went to Sweden and the US later, which may say something about the availability of a clean example these days. Mark our words: this will be a sought after BMW within a decade’s time.

(Words Jeroen Booij, pictures courtesy Bonhams)

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