The best seller on a Tuesday afternoon in Surrey, selling for a relatively modest £27,500 including premium, was a 1969 Pagoda-top 280SL Merc, one of only 34 of the 75 cars on offer to change hands.

Very much cheaper at £25,300 in the Surrey sale than the Henri Chapron crafted ‘Décapotable’ versions of the Citroën DS, cosmetically poor examples of which have been making at least double this and sometimes very much more, was a former 1973 D Spécial saloon that had been in receipt of a what appeared to have been a well executed transformation to convertible by Dee-Ess Conversions of Malvern.

Also much checked out by traders and Ford enthusiasts was a 1965 Lotus Cortina, a right-hand driver which had been repatriated from New Zealand in 1991. With some of the previously restored lower panels now in need of some corrective refurbishment, though its twin-cam motor had been treated to a £7k rebuild, the MkI two-door still pulled a mid-estimate £17,600. The same money bought a 1967 Rolls-Royce with two-door saloon bodywork by MPW and the provenance of its first owner, a Second World War Distinguished Flying Cross decorated RAF flyer.

Having been rebuilt around a replacement Heritage bodyshell, a 1971 MGB MkII roadster with chrome bumpers, but unlovely steel wheels looked brand new and duly raised £12,870, £4870 more than the guide price. An as yet apparently unrestored 1974 MGB GT V8 with fully charted 39,500 mileage was also really neat for the £10,175 paid. A pre-war Hillman 20/70 Limo with Wizard ‘six’ motor was an unusual sight on the auction block. Stored for 62 years until recommissioned recently, the 1935 example here found £7920. A Porsche 911 cabriolet, admittedly the less collectable 964, appeared to be inexpensive when picked up for £7370, though it had been the subject of a Category C insurance claim in 2000.

Although one of only three hugely potent TVR Chimaeras in the sale, a one-owner 4-litre 16,100 miler, seduced  a buyer with a steady right foot and £10,835, there were benefactors for all three restoration projects, led by a very solid looking 1959 Triumph TR3A left-hooker on wires, though without overdrive, taken on for £7920. An original right-hand drive TR4 on Webers without air filters, but with wires and hardtop made £4675, and an even sadder looking 1971/2 Jensen Interceptor ‘Six Pack’ without paint was swept up for £1320.

By the time the Barons auction book had been shut for the final time of 2011, another £248,875 including premium had been diverted from buying transient baubles on a local High Street in crisis near you, and had, instead, been ploughed into much more substantial old motors. How wise.