Words and Pictures: Adam Tait

You’ve been a lifelong fan of anything automotive, especially if it harked from the seventies or eighties. You’ve just sold a mortgage broking firm and per chance, a close petrol head friend with experience within the automotive industry also thinks it’s time for a change. This is the story of James Mann and Lucas Hutchings, a duo that have deployed their business knowledge to the buying and selling of retro tin from their favourite period, the seventies and eighties, BMWs being their speciality.

4Star Classics as it was coined deals in cars from a period when traction control and iDrive wasn’t part of the options list. At a time when leaded four-star fuel was available at every fuel station and the game console of choice became the Atari. From the flares of the seventies to the Rubik’s cube of the following decade, the machines that constitute 4Star’s stock list all rubbed shoulders with these fads.

“We’ve tried to make car dealing that bit more professional,” quips James. This seems evident from the slick website, with each car receiving a full studio photo shoot, but as I sit in the sales office, the online impression is carried on. On the glass coffee table is a huge Dom Jolly-esque mobile phone fit for a stock broker yuppie, brochures from the eighties and various retro prints adorning the walls.

CONTACT

4STAR CLASSICS
Horsham Road, Bramley, Surrey, GU5 0LN
01483 274347  
www.4starclassics.com

Follow 4Star on Facebook and Twitter: www.facebook.com/4starclassics

To read more about 4Star Classics see the February 2011 issue of Total BMW. Back issues available here.