The star of the show at Barons’ first sale of 2011 was a charming 1933 MG J2 Midget, which came with five decades of history of ownership in the same family.

This lovely old MG was bid to £24,300, well above the estimated sale price.

The number of entries may have been a little down on February 2010, but the quality of the lots at Sandown Park was well up to standard and 80 per cent of them found new homes.

The unique, Jaguar-based 1966 Dunsmore Racing Special also drove over top estimate, selling for £21,000, while the most powerful machine on offer - the AK427 Cobra Replica - which had covered just 950 miles from new and was an awesome beast, was a great buy at £35,000.

A beautiful Rolls-Royce MPW 2 Door Coupe, which had failed to sell at Barons in December, was re-presented correctly with reams of build history, looking like a different car and made £14,650, proving that good presentation and attention to detail makes all the difference when it comes to catching a buyer’s eye.

And at the other end of the presentation scale, one buyer snapped up a challenging restoration project, described as ‘not for the faint-hearted’, when they acquired a 1973 Maserati Indy 4.7 for just £980.