Ludovic Parayre

LAP63 Bicester, UK

LAP63 OPENED only five years ago, but it was always inevitable that I would end up in the classic car business: I spent my childhood in France playing with Matchbox toys and reading about cars for hours on end, and even as I made a career in the oil industry and then in new car sales, I found myself laying the groundwork for LAP63.

It’s a joy to be able to offer to customers some of the cars that knocked my socks off as a kid – the 1970 Citroën SM that I have in stock at the moment, for example. I remember sitting in an almost identical car at a very young age and being told by the driver as we approached 200km/h: ‘Hold on tight! The car’s about to li off!’ I didn’t doubt him.

I’ve lived in the UK for 29 years now, and there are certainly some differences between the classic car scene here and the scene across the Channel. Here in the UK, classic car ownership is much more a lifestyle choice, and bad weather tends not to deter people from driving their classics, which is great to see.

Although I have useful contacts in France, the UK is my local market, and I don’t import a huge number of cars; there are still opportunities around if you keep your eyes peeled. Many of my customers, however, are based outside the UK, and 50% of my stock ends up overseas.

Ferrari, predictably, is the marque about which I receive the most enquiries, but there’s also a growing appetite for Alfa Romeos, and it’s not hard to see why. A 1750 Bertone Giulia, for example, offers classic styling, one of the most rewarding four-cylinder engines of the 1960s, and superb handling for a reasonable price. There’s lots of interest in barn finds, too; people want originality, so I don’t expect the enthusiasm for dusty old cars to wane.

I sell motorcycles as well, and try to pick out those that represented a real leap in engineering at launch, such as the Honda CB750 – arguably the first superbike. I have always felt that a ‘complete’ car collection should include a few carefully chosen bikes – the experience of riding is vastly different to that of driving – and increasingly it seems that buyers agree with me.