This exceptionally rare vehicle comes with a great deal of well-documented history and provenance, and has graced a number of prestigious collections throughout the course of its long life – most recent among them being the JLR Collection, no less.

This Sports Saloon was constructed by SS Cars Ltd in April 1934 and supplied new through Henlys London to a Mr Leonard Babbage Short of Dawlish, Devon.

It changed hands in 1947 and, thirty years later, it was rescued from the garage of a house that was due to be demolished, having apparently spent decades laid-up there.

As luck would have it, the next owner was Arnold Crowe, the proprietor of a well-known vintage car business in Birmingham.

In 1979, he set about giving the car a full body-off, chassis-up restoration, which we believe included a new ash frame; a full engine, drivetrain and mechanicals strip and rebuild; and a full interior retrim, which included restoring the instruments and zero-ing the odometer.

Since the restoration, ...