Classic Car Dealer, Collector & Writer: Simon Kidston – Classic Cars, Earned Authenticity, & Doing What You Love

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0:43The Gstaad Guy:When it comes to your small business insurance. Thank you. One size absolutely does not fit all. Get a quote or find an agent today at the Hartford dot com slash small business. I hope you were comfortable sleeping on the flight because you are, I don't know if people can tell Not quite as tall as you But I don't think, is it possible to sleep on a is it possible to sleep comfortably on an airplane? I don't think so On Our Majesty's BA it's a little tougher than Emirates Plus the water broke in the bathrooms the electricity fused in the kitchens so no food and we nearly diverted to Istanbul because the crew member was ill This is all the same flight There's never a dull moment with British Airways Never that's fantastic well actually your heart is a great place to start because i often see you in cars that look like they wouldn't fit you but you look very comfortable in them do you get special seats put into your lamborghinis and the vaseline

1:43old cars were generally designed before the days of ergonomics and forums that allowed customers to complain about how uncomfortable or unreliable they were and yeah in back in the day you sold things because they were beautiful not because they had cup holders yeah and yeah people were also shorter once a ton of time you know you're two meters i'm 194 um yeah and if you if you if you like really impractical cars like lamborghinis then you've got only yourself to blame nobody bought those cars because of comfort practicality or reliability it's more of a statement that's true it is and it's a statement that you love life not that you want if you want reliability go and buy a lexus i'll send lexus an invoice after this episode have them on the next

2:43The Gstaad Guy:podcast exactly i've actually only ever seen you in um in beautiful settings i've seen you in St. Moore, it's at the ICE, in Abu Dhabi at Milken, a couple of auctions here and there. Is that the typical Simon circuit now with the life you lead? I'd love to say yes. That's the social media reality. The behind-the-scenes reality is a mixture of easy jet traffic jams uh very normal modern cars and uh yeah and basically all the nitty-gritty that i guess any of your guests would would tell you either in front of the the camera or in private is essential no matter how glamorous the the the outside of our world may seem at least 50 more than 50 of it is made up of just the tough grind to to get stuff over the line and to get stuff done uh i've always said to my colleagues and to my own kids if it was easy, everybody would do it.

4:03And it's not, especially at the moment, because the world is an unpredictable place. It's changing rapidly. And everybody can do things well. But to get stuff done properly requires that extra effort.

4:31The Gstaad Guy:in the know for those who just know. For those who don't know, you are Simon Kittsten. When there are beautiful cars around, particularly beautiful older cars, there's a high chance you're in the room. Whenever I've been to a cool car event, which I can count them on my right hand, you happen to have been there. I've never seen you actually live as part of the auctioneering process, which I know is one of the hats you wear. I know you also have a car restoration business. You're also an author. I've written two books about two different Lamborghinis. You're in the process of your second, right?

5:12The Gstaad Guy:But it all comes from this love and passion for classic cars. Is that a good introduction? I'm wondering who you're talking about. I'm thinking, wow, this person sounds way more interesting than me. That's a fantastic introduction. Thank you very much. it all stems from passion, which I think is important in most businesses or most careers. And in my case, yeah, it's a passion for old cars, for classic cars, cars with stories. And my life revolves around that. If I ever lost that passion, then it would be time to find another job or maybe a more grown-up job. But for now and for some time in the past, that's what I've been doing and that's what motivates me to keep the pedal on the gas.

6:13The Gstaad Guy:Well, it's really cool, no pun intended, or actually maybe very much intended, but the ability to turn a passion into a full-time job is something I think many people wish for. is that something you always thought about as a kid or in your early i know there's a perhaps cliched saying which has been attributed to everybody from confucius to steve jobs i think that if you if your work is your passion you'll never work a day in your life i wouldn't for one moment say that that was the case when i was young i don't think i had any idea what I wanted to do when I was young. I liked cars from a young age, like a lot of people, but new cars, not classic cars.

7:01I had no idea that anything had been built before the Lamborghini Countach, which was the car of my youth. As a teenager, I think my interest pivoted more to music. This was the 80s. So I thought, wow, wouldn't it be cool to be a musician? Because in the 80s they had synthesizers and you didn't actually need to know how to play anything you just programmed it in and something came out and if you had a good hairstyle presumably people wanted to buy it um but then came the realization uh when i left school that uh actually you did have to have a job that was the point at which i i wish that i'd studied a bit harder and uh that if I was going to do anything or if I was going to be successful, it was going to be down to me and nobody else.

7:57So it was a bit of a wake-up call. And the reason I got into old cars was not because, oh, this is something cultural. It was, I got enough money together to buy my first car and I couldn't afford a modern car.

8:14The Gstaad Guy:What was the first car? The first car was supposed to be a very secondhand Aston Martin that back then you could buy for just a few, two or three thousand pounds. The trouble was that when you called up an insurance company to ask for a quote, especially in London, and you gave them the details of the car and didn't have the Internet. So you actually had to call up. And then the last question they would ask you was, how old are you? and then they'd put you on hold for a very long time and come back and tell you that actually either they couldn't insure you or the insurance for the first year was going to be five times the value of the car well so that dream didn't happen and in the end i got a uh an old alpha spider which much more humble than an aston martin uh but i did so many trips in that car drove it all across Europe, polished it.

9:13I can't claim to have fixed it, but you learn the basics of mechanics when your car breaks down all the time that that did. But I've never had a car since then that I've loved as much and had so much fun with.

9:28The Gstaad Guy:I'd like to address a couple elephants in this room. One, you didn't even grow up in London, but you are so English. I think people can tell you're like the true quintessential English gentleman. But you grew up in Tuscany and then lived in Geneva, and you raised your beautiful family in Geneva, but they're all very English. How and why does that work?

9:54I guess I'm a bit of a mongrel because my parents are no longer alive but were English. And my dad was in the Royal Navy, which I guess doesn't get much more British than that. but because because of that he traveled a lot so he was stationed in malta um in the war he was escorting convoys to america his second wife was american uh we had a house in italy a holiday home when i was when i was very small you know the brits loved chianti shire and um and then then in the 70s um we actually went to live in in italy um my dad was was much older and uh let's just say that in england it got very expensive to live in the 70s and he decided to move to take the whole family young family and uh and move to italy whilst we decided where else to go in the world and in the end my parents just decided to stay there so grew up there in a very remote part it's not glamorous it was an old farmhouse with stone walls about that thick i think built in the 1300s the nearest house was a kilometer away the internet didn't exist satellite tv didn't exist so i grew up grew up watching italian tv which is a good way of learning the language and reading italian comic books um and after a year of italian the local village school my younger brother and i got sent to uh i don't know how they found this school i think there's some kind of um fair about schools in florence that my parents went to and they happened upon this tiny school in a place called sanan um an american school the kennedy school

11:49The Gstaad Guy:jfk jfk and um for those who don't know sunnan is it's not too far from your favorite place basically start start is in sun right christmas in sun and land yeah sun and land yeah yeah so we used to get allowed into gestart on saturdays with our two francs or three francs of pocket money to go to uh cadenau to buy stickers what you needed stickers for i have no idea uh or maybe to go to charlie's for hot chocolate which couldn't afford and i couldn't speak swiss german um so yeah i i got to know it a little bit and started skiing there um so yeah we got sent to this tiny school i think we were 30 students at the time uh boarding school i was homesick as hell uh you know i've gone from this really remote secluded existence in in tuscany uh a small family unit my younger brother and two parents and then i'm in this school where one person is from Iran uh somebody else's a couple of Italians I could practice my Italian with but Americans um Swiss some pretty glitzy glitzy people from the local area um and there's little me thrust in thrust into all this so the real lifestyle guy didn't know I definitely wasn't the gestard I was the pale limey, as the Americans would call me, who didn't know how to ski.

13:23Yeah, I definitely felt like a fish out of water there big time. And it all, I mean, gestalt then wasn't like it is now. It was, okay, of course, it's fancier than what I was used to. But it's not, you know, a Hermes shop and all this sort of turbocharged stuff that you do now. So, yeah, that was like, wow, where am I? to come back to your question um that's how i first got to know um son and a little bit of that and then i went to another school after that when i was a bit older in in switzerland just across the over the hill and um you know it's funny how when you when you're in places you often don't appreciate it uh and i didn't can't say i loved school but then you look back you go from the Swiss Alps where you wake up every morning and you see the mountains and the air is fresh okay when you're there you're thinking wow this is so boring um this is in my case I hated I hated studying um but then you get parachuted into London and everything is dirty and there's traffic and there's no mountains when you open the curtains in the morning it's lucky if you can even see across the street rather than just a a wall outside your window and it's not the same thing at all and i suppose i suppose absence makes the heart grow fonder and i soon came to think oh gosh after all it was really really nice in switzerland and that's why then i had a fondness i jumped at the opportunity to move back there but yeah i am fundamentally british but my kids were born in switzerland they were educated initially in Switzerland then England then the States because I wanted them to have an international education and from my own experience I realized that if you can speak languages nobody can ever take that away from you and that's a great being able to communicate with people is a great asset and I wanted the same for them

15:33The Gstaad Guy:when you're talking about that prize lot with the Shah of Iran's car. You also talked about the relationships that you had to nurture around that, all the different languages you had to speak, which makes me think that no matter how amazing the piece is, there's still a song and dance that needs to exist, regardless of how amazing the item is. And I'd love to learn more about how important that relationship building is, no matter how amazing the car is you're trying to sell or auction, and how important it is to really build a relationship with the person you're buying from or selling to. I suppose nobody needs art

16:26or other forms of collectible, whether they have four wheels or whether they're worn on the wrist. whatever it might be so you need to share a passion with people which they have to feel unless it's purely an investment which personally i think is a shame

16:55i'm this is not perhaps a widely held view but in my opinion to be able to sell something you have to be passionate about it. You have to be genuinely passionate about it. You can't fake it. A lot of people might disagree with that. Maybe the person who's selling Lexuses down at the local dealership is not passionate about it, but maybe the person who buys it just buys it as a tool. In our world, people buy these things because of their history, because of their beauty, because of the events that they allow you to take part in and the people that you meet in those events, the like-minded individuals.

17:38I find that unless you have something in common with the person that either you're selling for or to, because ours is mostly a brokerage business, It's not really I'm buying from A and selling to B. It's more you're acting as the conduit between the two and identifying on the one hand which are the best pieces to handle and then who are the most suitable candidates to earn them. And there has to be some common thread there. At the same time, it's fair to say a lot of these individuals, if they can afford to buy, to own what are now, in many cases, quite valuable pieces, it's not uncommon for them to be type A personalities.

18:31And type A personalities, of course, tend to have strong views, strong personalities. Some are more diplomatic than others. And that's where a good agent comes in. I think the same is true, especially in real estate, for example. But also, I know you've had Simon de Puri on your podcast, who I know, fantastic auctioneer, fantastic dealer. And those moments where a seller says to you, I'm never selling it. If I sell it, I'm only selling it for a crazy price. I'll never sell it to that person. And equally, you've got on the other side, a buyer telling telling you that person's a whatever um i'll never agree to those terms tell them to go whatever that's when a good agent earns their keep they're at the same time a punch bag a hostage negotiator um a crisis diffuser yeah and and i guess sometimes a charmer and i think you have to take you have to be willing to take a lot of abuse as i said before if it was easy everybody would do it uh listen to differing and sometimes what appear to be completely irreconcilable viewpoints and find common ground and i always think that the best deals are win-win deals where you look beyond just this is the price and think about what can this person do for the other person that won't cost them anything financially or lose them any face to try and find perhaps a multifaceted deal where both sides can walk away from it thinking i have won and i'd like to buy both the agent and the other side of the deal

20:37The Gstaad Guy:uh a meal afterwards that's nice rather than i never want to hear from that person again and also taking the view that smart business relationships exist over many many deals rather than trying to find one short-term victory which may make you feel that you can stick two fingers up at the person um and go and cash the money um or or park whatever it is that you've bought from in the get from from them in the garage but where's the long-term cleverness in that there is not, that's a very Pyrrhic victory to have just had that short-term satisfaction of telling the guy to go for sure, sling the hook.

21:24The Gstaad Guy:I think this is a perfect opportunity to bring up one lot in particular which had you on the headlines, the famous SLR, not the modern McLaren SLR, which happens to be my favorite modern car. but the I'm sorry I know a lot of car people really don't like that I feel that way about it you're a different generation yeah sorry but the classic SLR which I saw the real the real SLR which I saw I saw one of I think there's only two there are two coupes yes with the gullwing doors yeah and then there There are, from memory, eight open cars. There were nine, but one was destroyed at Le Mans in 1955. Wow.

22:16And the open... So I guess, okay, to step back, take a step backwards. Tell me if I'm boring you. The SLR sport-liked Rennsport or Rennen racing um was mercedes leman type car in the mid 50s basically in 1955 and mercedes came back to racing a few years after the war and like everything they do they did it with total commitment and and a pretty consequential budget and failure it sounds very germanic failure was not an option uh so yeah mercedes had been reduced to the rubble in 1945 waited a few years came back with um a sort of early version of the gullwing uh based on saloon car components uh which was successful won the more in 1952 and that gave the board the encouragement to say okay let's make it a proper, proper race car and win the world championship.

23:28And for 1955, they presented this car, which was basically a version of their Formula One car from the previous year, which had already won everything, but with a sports car body to race in that class. So events like the Mille Miglia, Le Mans, and so on. It was an open car, so no roof, which could either have just a driver or a driver and a passenger for some races where you're allowed to have a navigator like road racing, Mille Miglia. And they also made a closed version. Why did they do that? Because one race in particular in Mexico, the Carrera Panamericana, was very high speed. It was to promote this new Pan-American highway where you could get up to very high, maintain very high top speeds.

24:16So a more aerodynamic car was more suitable. So they made a gullwing version of this car for that race. But because of the Le Mans tragedy, where a lot of people sadly were killed when a car went into the crowd, that Pan American race was cancelled. But Mercedes had already started building these cars. So they had two race cars with no race to race in. And And they basically became almost like company cars for the head of the racing department, who would occasionally drive them on the road, drive them to races to use as a practice car before the race. And he would also occasionally use them to go to meetings.

25:01Anyway, these two cars, Mercedes never sold one of these cars, neither the open cars nor the closed cars. they all were retired at the end of that season which they did they did win the championship they obliterated the opposition and at the end of that season the cars went into the mercedes-benz museum and they have been there since the end of 1955 i've seen one of them there yeah the other coupe sits there yeah i got interested in these cars in the 80s i saw one of them on the the retrospective mille millio i was there with my dad it was the first old car event i'd ever been to in Italy. We're standing by the side of the road, waiting for them to come by.

25:38And my dad had seen the original back in the 50s. And I see this silver car overtakes everything and then roars past us with a really distinctive sound, unlike anything else. I've often described it as the sort of automotive equivalent of the Loch Ness Monster. It didn't bark like a Ferrari. It sort of rumbled in a really eerie way as it passed, but very loud. And it flashed past everything else. And it was driven by Sterling Moss, the guy who'd won the Mille Miglia in record time back in 55. And this was in about 87 or 88. And I said to my dad, what was that? He said, oh, that was a Mercedes SLR.

26:16I thought, well, I have to learn more about what this car is. Bought books and so on. But it was one of those things that you never saw because they were all in the factory museum. Over the years, occasionally one would be loaned or sent to an event. Once Goodwood started, they would send a car occasionally to Goodwood. and I would always try to get a closer look. And I would always want to be there when it started up. And fast forward many years, and I was speaking at a symposium in America at a museum, the Collier Collection. And the new director of the Mercedes-Benz Museum was there. And I chatted to him after the symposium.

26:52And I said to him, by the way, 300 SLR is my favorite car. If you ever start one at the museum, I'll gladly drive all the way up there just to hear it, just to be close to it. He said, oh, thank you, Simon. That's very interesting. I get an email three weeks later from this guy saying, would you like to drive it in Italy after the millimedia? And we've planned two 60 kilometer circuits for you. You can choose which one you'd like to do. Are you kidding? Yes, I'm available. Any day I'm available, please. So I pitch up there. I did take a camera crew because I thought, I can't let this moment go unrecorded.

27:37Of course. And this completely anonymous single car transporter pitches up, back goes down. One, the driver gets out and starts to unload this unbelievable car. And we're driving on the public road. There are Vespas, there are Fiat Pandas or whatever. And they have no idea that what we're in is probably the most valuable car in the world. Wow. and Mercedes has allowed me to drive. They haven't even asked to see my driving license. They've allowed me to drive this thing. Anyway, we did 49 kilometers because the day came to an end. I absolutely loved it. And at the end, gave the car back. The mechanic said to me, oh yeah, you drove very well.

28:21Not true, but just being polite. And I thought, that just reinforced my view that that was for its rarity, for its aesthetics, for its performance, its mechanical specification, which was way more sophisticated than any other car on the grid back in the day, and also its unavailability. People have been trying to buy these for years and years, and the factory had always said, no matter who they were, no, not for sale, not for sale, not for sale, but thank you, very politely. And it just reinforced my view that that was the greatest car in the world. This podcast is brought to you by

28:57The Gstaad Guy:Poubelle, bringing you interchangeable charm jewelry hand-painted with enamel on styling silver, allowing you to celebrate all the things you love and all the things you might question through interchangeable styling silver bracelets, bangles, whoop, charms, mini-charm, bracelets, rings, cufflings, and much more, and all customizable through our 3D builder on poubelle.com that is poubelle p-o-u-b-e-l dot com. Thank you so much for watching and now back to the podcast. I think this is a great segue into the different archetypes of the collector world and the car world which I'm sure you've been exposed to a spectrum of them.

29:46The Gstaad Guy:Can we talk about those archetypes? yeah we can talk about those archetypes i don't suppose i've ever been asked to classify quantify um describe or characterize such such characters um and obviously most people don't fit in one specific box um at the moment you get a lot of what I would call spec electors speculators who think they're collectors but if you were to tell them that their car was going down in value they'd be horrified tell you you're wrong and if they ascertain that you were actually right, sell it quite quickly.

30:44These are the people who ask you what something will be worth in six months time before buying it. The question they never ask you, do you know what that is? What is it like to drive? It's not for me to decide who buys, but I'd be lying if I said it's not more satisfying to sell to somebody. And also, let's face it, frankly, easier to sell to somebody with whom you share a passion. Otherwise, it's just a very cold relationship and not very satisfying. You have the other end of the spectrum would be, I suppose, what you might call the old bufty um typically a brit could also be american um not uncommon for them to have bushy moustaches and drive a vintage bentley and wear a tweed jacket um they drink their beer warm and out of those old um pint mugs they've usually sold some kind of a business often engineering in the midlands they are thoroughly good company they don't give us stuff what their car is going to be worth in the future because they'll keep it until they die anyway they drive it a lot um and they're very entertaining probably don't want to drive a drink drive with them after lunch um but that is the old school um collector of a certain type of car which is usually pre-war.

32:29In between, you have the sort of St. Moritz-type collector. You've been to the ice. I have. Still tweed jacket, but better cut. They're a bit slimmer. Red corduroy trousers.

32:48The Gstaad Guy:Are they part of the St. Moritz-debugging club? They might do the Cresta. They probably have the, what is it, a yellow scarf? A yellow scarf sounds about right. A yellow scarf. Basically, their outfit matches the SMTC logo. Yes, exactly. They're also a good company. They probably hail from some German industrial dynasty, certainly more tanned than the English equivalent. uh they don't have the the ruddy red cheeks from the from the the wind of the bentley or the or the alcohol in their pints um or the yorkshire and rose pudding um but they're they're charming they're more polished they're good company they speak multiple languages they have a beautifully furnished uh chalet with uh with lots of fur throws and they probably do own a vintage bentley But they've also got a 60s Ferrari in the garage.

33:51They probably have a classic styled Range Rover that's been customized to their tastes. And yes, they're interested in the value of their car, but not obsessed by it. And they take part in a wide variety of events like the ICE, probably the Mila Milia. They've definitely been to Goodwood. They've referred to the Duke of Richmond as Charles. And they get the right invitations to all the right places. I'm going to say that's probably more of our typical client.

34:30The Gstaad Guy:For those who don't know, the ICE is an amazing... The ICE is the International Concours d 'Elegance, which is two days of driving on the frozen lake of St. Moritz in a variety of classic cars, ranging from the pre-war Bentley up to modern hypercars, even something like a Pagani, if you can fit studded tires on it. And that's an event that Ronnie Kessel is behind, who you've had on this show, which has gained a lot of traction in the four years, five years since it has existed. I've taken part in every edition, including the prologue, I think they call it, and I've had a ton of fun. It's very cool.

35:14So I'm as guilty as anybody, by the way, of the red trousers and the tweed jackets and all the rest of that.