Insight: where luxury cars go to die

That seems like a heck of a lot of bits from broken Bentleys, but all is not what it seems. “Walk around here and you’ll think it’s a scrapyard,” says Handford, “but that’s just what you see. Breaking cars probably accounts for less than 10% of what we do here; it’s just very visible.”

In fact, half of Flying Spares’ business comes from supplying brand new parts for Rolls-Royces and Bentleys, for cars ranging from just after World War II to the almost brand new. Those parts are split roughly in half between components sourced directly from the Rolls-Royce and Bentley dealer networks and those made by competing manufacturers. “It depends what’s available and what the customer wants to pay for,” says Handford. “Take an oil filter as an example: we go to exactly the same supplier as Rolls-Royce and buy exactly the same oil filter. The only difference is the box it comes in doesn’t have Rolls-Royce written on it – that, and the price. But we won’t call it an original part because it wasn’t supplied by Rolls-Royce.”

The rest of the business comes from reconditioning old components that may have come from a car that’s going to be scrapped, but themselves have plenty of life left in them. I’m shown to a unit where a dedicated team of people spend all their time rebuilding engines – overwhelmingly the 6.75-litre V8s that served for so long under the bonnets of both Rolls-Royces and Bentleys – and back axles. Interestingly, when I look at the details of the engines in stock, very few have done enormous mileages. People have always seemed to use these cars for special occasions and most motors have far fewer than 100,000 miles on their clocks. Add in the fact that these engines were beautifully built and absurdly understressed, and therefore capable of vast mileages, and you can see why they’re so ripe for restoration.

The stores themselves are fascinating, and immense. Hundreds of engines, from straight-six motors for Silver Clouds to V12s for Silver Seraphs, sit patiently awaiting their fates. There are rows of Rolls-Royce radiator grilles and Bentley radiator cowlings. Spirits of Ecstasy abound. After a while it all becomes quite disconcerting.

But where, I wonder, do all the cars come from in the first place? “We get them from all over,” says Johnson. “Sometimes it’s cars that owners intended to restore but never got around to it, sometimes it’s cars that have become uneconomic to repair and sometimes it’s cars that belonged to someone who’s died and the family just want to get rid of it.’

So how can he tell the cars that are worth restoring or recycling from the worthless rot-boxes? “Over time you get an instinct for it. It’s not practical to inspect every car, and not needed. Cars tend to suffer the same sorts of problems and 80-90% of the cars I buy I see for the first time only when they get here. Sometimes you get a bad one, sometimes you get lucky.”

As if to illustrate the point, he shows me to a Silver Shadow, bought from a deceased owner’s estate, which had been in storage for years. “I bought it over the telephone, then when it got here and we cleaned it up we discovered we had a single-owner car with 25,000 miles on the clock in amazing condition. It’s probably worth over £20,000.”