A rare Alvis Speed 20 barn-find made top money at H&H’s latest sale. The car, which boasts a recently-discovered competition history, sold for £77,000 at the Haynes Motor Museum auction. Covered in dust and groaning under the weight of its own patina, the stunning find was unearthed this summer from a Hertfordshire outbuilding after more than a quarter of a century lay-up.

One of just 42 Alvis Speed 20SBs, the 1934 car has retained its original Vanden Plas Tourer coachwork and has a known history for much of its life – apart from a 20-year gap around the Second World War.

Luckily, a black and white photograph of the car competing at the Prescott Hill Climb during this period was unearthed, which holds the key to its racing pedigree.

It also shows that various period modifications to the car survived, including a special oil cooler and fittings for a single ‘aero’ windscreen. Despite the car’s long period of slumber, a small of amount of fettling had it running and driving in time for the sale.

H&H’s pre-sale estimate of £40,000-50,000 was a little bit ‘come and get me’, but their near-£80,000 sale price is huge even with the history considered. At this level of investment, a full restoration may perhaps be financial suicide and that’s no bad thing, as it really deserves to be conserved and used rather than being ripped apart.

Further surprises at the sale included F1 champion Jenson Button’s 1966 Honda S600/800 roadster. The little sports cars took their inspiration from Honda’s Grand Prix-winning two-wheelers with an incredible little 606cc engine that would scream to 8,500rpm. Jenson’s car was even more special: one of the very last S600s, it was fitted with the more powerful 791cc engine and had covered only a few thousand miles from new. At £40,700 it doubled both H&H’s £20,000-25,000 guide and Bonhams £20,000 result for a similar car but without the provenance on September 11 in its Reims sale. Other lots from the Button stable included a late-Sixties split screen VW Microbus that was not affected by celebrity provenance at a market-correct £16,650 – despite the F1 driver throwing in a signed Brawn baseball cap with the bus.

It’s also worth mentioning that the star of this sale was a two-wheeler that blew all the four-wheel lots away by a huge margin. The 1929 Brough SS100 had been restored from a very original ‘matching number’ bike in 2000 and then toured extensively around Europe. And it could have been yours for a jaw-dropping £286,000.