Some very interesting and well-informed comment can be found on consultant Simon Kidston's website (www.kidston.com). Simon knows the market, especially its upper echelons (and all its major collectors) inside out and his view is that there will be a slow-down now, but the major players will take advantage of the chance to grab some cars they've always wanted, as lesser collectors decide to cash in on their cars when their other investments are failing.

Consequently top prices will continue to be achieved for really exceptional, rare motor cars, further widening the gap between these and more common classics.

Sound advice, we reckon. Record prices are still being recorded by the auction houses this year - more than ever, it seems - and Kidston has the ear on some top ranking private sales in recent months too.

A Jaguar D-type with good history but no significant race action fetched £2.5 million, soon followed by a C-type Jaguar for the same, both records. At the Essen Show, he reports, dealers had no difficulty getting top money for really good cars, including some £280,000 for a Porsche 911 RS 2.7 and Mercedes 300SL Roadsters, as well as Gullwings, approaching half a million pounds now.

Kidston also reports - thanks to historian Doug Nye - on the annual Connoisseurship Symposium at the Collier Museum in Naples, Florida. This gathering of the greats in the collectors car world is inevitably unrepresentative of the ordinary collector, but it is interesting to read of their concerns for the future - ably addressed, it seems, by the sharp brain of McLaren F1 designer Gordon Murray, who painted a bleak picture of the future in terms of the restorability (or lack of it) of modern cars and the dangers of restrictive legislation. Intriguingly, far from being plunged into the doldrums by thoughts of being unable to use their cars in future, it seems the collectors were delighted by the news that modern cars would be unrestorable, concluding that this meant the cars they already have will rocket in value as the market becomes finite. Interesting - and possibly true, I suppose, if your cars are all static displays in museums or if you have your own private circuit to exercise them on..

Thanks to Simon Kidston for the astonishing photo above of the main auction tent at Barratt-Jackson's monster Scottsdale sale in January.

Malcolm McKay, Motorbase News Editor