Five more to be going on with

Cars, girls names, cocktails and songs

Trade Me is like a living thing. With over 60,000 vehicles for sale at any one moment it inhales and exhales while you search it. There are so many changes being made to the listings that the order changes while you have a page up on screen. Flip to the next page and you are looking at the same listings again, meaning that a further twenty vehicles have been added in the last few minutes. Not all of them are worth noting, however, and what I consider to be the interesting side of Trade Me has been rather quiet recently. Not so the Reverend Horton Heat with his sacred hymn to the Galaxie 500.

This weeks addition to my fantasy garage is actually for sale, here and now. It is a Packard Clipper, the best looking American car of the day which was introduced into the teeth of WW2 in 1941. The timing was awful but the car looked so right that Packard resumed post-war production with it. So, mix a Manhattan, put your arm around Gloria and motor away to that little weekender in the Adirondacks.

1941 Packard Clipper.  This must surely have been one of the finest cars in the world in 1941 and would be equally wonderful to own today. This is one of the rare 1941 eight cylinder models made before production ceased for the war effort and was imported into New Zealand in 1950. It looks completely original but has had much expensive work carried out to make it road worthy again. A modest amount of body work and attention to some worn trim and you would be in excellent company indeed. For: Look at it. Against: Nothing this size is a cheap fix.

1964 MG 1100 BMC certainly got the maximum value from its small front wheel drive platform, issuing  them variously as Austin, Morris, Wolseley, Riley, Vanden Plas and MG as well as making them in Italy through Innocenti. The sporting models got twin SUs which lifted the rather soporific performance a notch or two and the MG grill looked smart on the Pininfarina hull. The two door models are very rare but this looks like a good example and ready to use at 5K. For: A nice variation on a clever car. Against: I would rather have that Stilleto from last week.

1967 Rolls Royce MPW 2 Door Saloon  This is not your average Corniche but one of the early Mulliner Park Ward coupes that differ in many details from the later factory models. The lighter embellishments and '60s interior suit the restrained and tasteful coach work which later became fatally pimped for US and Middle Eastern tastes. A lot of money has been spent after a lengthy period of storage but low milage does not rule out further problems. Disuse is the killer of these complex cars but you would be far better off putting 60K here than in a more mundane model. For: Elegant. Against: Cannot be run on a shoe string budget.

Lotus Elan 26R replica. Feeling frisky? This race prepped Elan should do the trick then. A regular on the Targa circuit, this early Elan is modeled on the Lotus factory racers which means even more added lightness than normal. The vendor says 55KG for the fibreglass body so avoid hitting things. For: Huge fun. Against: Like a paper lantern with a motor.

1967 Mercedes Benz 230S The last of the fin tail Mercedes (we will not call them Mercs here) benefitted from an enlarged twin carburetor six but did without the fearsome complexity of the 300 models with fuel injection and air bag suspension. They are the pick of the line up in terms of usability and this should garner some interest at a reasonable 8K. For: Construction quality. Against: Don't break one of those headlights.