Dylan Miles

We’ve only spoken a couple of times previously, but from those short conversations, it’s been pretty obvious that petrol runs through your veins. Yeah, apparently the first word I said was car. Was it really – that’s fantastic!? I presume this all stems from your dad? Yeah, my dad was in the business of restoring vintage motorcycles, particularly Brough Superiors, which are the ultimate pre-war super bikes. Lawrence of Arabia was a famous customer of theirs, he had 7 and actually died riding one, believe it or not. If you’ve seen the film, Lawrence of Arabia, he is riding a Brough at the start and my dad restored that actual machine about 20 years ago. We sold it at the end of last year to a very good customer of ours in America. That’s a classic film shot. Absolutely, I mean that’s basically the equivalent of having the DB5 from Goldfinger.

You’ve got a couple of Broughs in the showroom, do you know much about the history of the marque? George Brough was the son of a guy called W E Brough, a motorcycle manufacturer in Nottingham at the turn of the century. George obviously grew up seeing his dad at work, and decided that he could make a better motorcycle than him. He called it the Brough Superior, which must have really annoyed his old man. He was a very capable rider as well, I think he did the first London to Edinburgh trials when he was 16, on one of his dad’s bikes. He began Brough Superior in 1919 – they were very powerful, hand-built sports bikes which were incredibly successful as racing bikes and held multiple land speed records.

Do you ride bikes? I can, but I don’t often as I value my life too much! Even if you were a regular on bikes, I presume one of the Brough Superiors could still be pretty scary? If I rode how I drive, then probably! But also – I’m very aware of motorcycles on the road but lots of people aren’t as careful, and with pre-war bikes the brakes aren’t the same as on a modern bike. Broughs are powerful machines and they’re quick, but the brakes are 100 years old. If someone decides to pull out in front of you, you could be in trouble. If you’re out in the middle of nowhere, they’re wonderful.

So, your dad restores these? Yeah, he grew up in the East End of London, on the Commercial Road near Watney Street Market. My grandfather was a tailor and my grandmother was a dressmaker – they got married in the forties. My dad was born in ‘55 and he watched, and listened to, a lot of American programmes at the time. As a result, he was very influenced by American music and loved the cars. My grandparents weren’t remotely interested in cars, but he persuaded his dad to take him to the London Motor Show in 1964, when he was 9 years old. This would have been about a month after the release of the Bond Film, Goldfinger, so the whole world wanted to be on the Aston Martin stand, and obviously my dad wanted that too. The picture of the white car up there, that is my father’s car. The photo was taken at the London Motor Show, I think it was in October 1964, and that’s Laya Raki, a famous sixties belly dancer and actress, laying on the bonnet. My dad saw that car on the stand and I guess it inspired him because when my twin sister and I were born, in 1985, it came up for sale and he bought it. He has had it ever since, so I’ve grown up with that car, which has a lot to do with why I do what I do. Dad’s first car was a ’61 Cadillac, a highly inappropriate car for a 17 year old. I’m sure it would have been a bit of a heap, but pretty cool none the less, and he had a series of Buick Rivieras and Cadillacs following that. They sound pretty expensive for a 17 year old? Well, unless they were brand new, American cars in the late 60s and 70s didn’t have much value because they were so expensive to run. They had big engines and there was the fuel crisis of ’74, so no one wanted to drive around in a V8, you had to be a lunatic to do that and I’m sure his cars were all a bit tired.

Has he always restored bikes? He actually trained as a paint chemist, but started restoring bikes quite early on and that evolved from a hobby into a business. From the late 70s, he lived in a flat in Brixton, off the south circular, and was restoring Brough Superiors from there. His Cadillac would have been parked outside and he also had a Great Dane, so I think it would have looked pretty wild. Would you describe
him as a wild character? I guess so, and my mum as well. He had a huge beard, so looked like a member of ZZ Top. He wore leather jackets and black jeans – in fact, that’s all he still wears now. Apparently, my grandparents would put their heads in their hands and said, why do you have to dress like a Hells Angel?

He met my mum in the late 70s and they moved to Brixton where they stayed for a few years, but when my twin sister and I were on the way, they were forced to leave. I think the social services came round to the flat and having climbed over vices and bikes to get to the front door, and then shuffling passed the Great Dane, basically told my parents that they weren’t keeping any kids unless they could find somewhere more suitable to live. So, they moved to Ladywell in Lewisham and that’s where we spent the first 10 years of our lives. My dad had a workshop at the back of the garden, the conservatory was full of bikes and the DB5 was in a garage up the road. I was brought up surrounded by cars and bikes. At that time, dad had a number of quite significant pre-war competition bikes and they used to sprint them, so he’d run them at vintage motorcycle club sprints. My sister and I would be in the pram watching whilst we held our hands over our ears for protection against the noisy racing engines. We also went to a lot of Aston Martin club racing events – the inspiration you get as a kid, and that nostalgia is ultimately what fuels this whole industry. I was immediately interested in that world. My dad never forced it on me but I soon had all the model cars – I think I learnt to read with Classic and Sports Car. I’ve kept everything that I’ve read, so I now have a massive library of magazines and books.

It’s one of those subjects that you can soak so much up as a kid and always have more to learn – you mentioned earlier that you suffer from ADHD, do you think that helped or hindered you? You never stop learning and actually, that’s one of the best things about what I do, the research aspect of it, which is weird because I wasn’t really interested at school. I used to take car books in and wasn’t really bothered about much else. Luckily, I went to a good school, so I did get a well-rounded education, but I was never academic, apart from with car stuff. I’ve got a photographic memory for it, which is unbelievably helpful. I can remember the history of individual cars, chassis numbers or number plates and that’s all really useful. I now spend hours researching our cars, and I think that’s one of the positive things with ADHD, I’m still learning about it but as I understand, it gives you super focus on the things that you’re really interested in. If you can harness that in the right way, then it’s incredibly beneficial. I actually don’t think I would be able to do what I do if I didn’t have ADHD, because it’s an all-consuming thing.

My dad had a workshop at the back of the garden, the conservatory was full of bikes and the DB5 was in a garage up the road. I was brought up surrounded by cars and bikes.

So, are all of the cars in the showroom your stock? No, a lot of the time, we will act as an agent for the owner. So, let’s say you call me up and say that you’ve got a DB5 you’d like to sell…I wish. (Dylan laughs). I’ll discuss the car with you and we’ll agree a valuation that’s realistic and that we feel comfortable that we can achieve. If that all sounds ok, the car is transported to us where we professionally detail it, research its history and write an in-depth description, which gives a very good outline of the car’s life. It will then be professionally photographed before being advertised across a range of platforms and using our extensive network of contacts. And that research is the bit that you like the most? I do enjoy that part because you’re always learning something new. Obviously if you’ve got a modernish car with fairly low mileage, there’s less to discover, but if you’ve got something like a pre-war racing car with decades of history that you need to piece together, it gets really interesting. We had a really special car recently, an Amilcar C6, which had extensive pre-war race history. I was fortunate enough to be asked to sell it after the owner had passed away. He had a tremendous amount of paperwork for it, but it wasn’t in any order, so I spent 2 months working it all out. You can’t just go to Wikipedia for that kind of information. I think there was something like 26 C6s built, and 6 or 7 came to the UK but they were all raced by the same 3 or 4 people at different times, so you have to carefully research the race results and match those up with the particular drivers. That took a huge amount of time, but I really enjoyed it because you’re putting together an accurate history which can then be preserved for years to come – that’s really important.

Would you call yourself a car salesman, or is that not the right term? Although there are good and bad in every industry, car dealers can have a bad rap, so one thing that was really key for me from the outset, was total transparency. It means people come back and enjoy working with us – we’ve got a lot of repeat customers that we’ve had from the start. I don’t really consider myself to be a salesman because I take more of a consultative approach – someone might come in with the idea of buying a certain car, but after having listened to them, I might actually say, with the greatest respect, that isn’t a car that’s going to work for you. What I don’t want to do is to sell someone something that isn’t right for them. I’d much rather recommend some other options and I think people value that honesty.

When it comes to buying cars as an investment, are they similar to say gold, where the price can fluctuate depending on the economy? That’s difficult to answer because there are so many nuances and variations between marques, models and histories. It’s easier for younger cars, but if you’ve got something that’s historic, with a limited production run, where each car or bike has got its own individual history, you need to assess it very carefully. That obviously means checking its condition, but also confirming its provenance because if it’s been raced for 50 or 60 years, it may have had a lot of components changed and has subsequently evolved over time. There’s quite a lot of detective work that needs to be done before you can accurately know the difference between a good, and a bad example. And are there cars which people are still looking for? The holy grails of the car world? Yeah, there are definitely certain cars but they’re few and far between and are more likely to be pre-war, because wartime had an impact. Things got broken up or used for other purposes then, and that’s very relevant for cars and bikes, so there’s probably a lot more unaccounted for pre-war machines, but there’s still a handful of post-war machines.

You mentioned that people used to race Aston’s, but they’re so expensive, I can’t imagine anyone doing that? Oh yeah, it used to be really active. It’s only in recent years that it has slightly dropped off because the values have got so high, but the Aston Martin Owners Club, and the Aston Martin club racing series, was probably the biggest historic racing car series throughout the 70s and 80s – it was a huge thing. I used to go with my dad to Brands Hatch and it was amazing, so many cars and really exciting racing. That has now been overtaken by things like Goodwood and they really have become global events.

Can you remember how old you were when you learnt to drive? The car and bike events that we went to when I was a kid were usually on farms or estate homes, so they often had long drives. I was probably about 4 when I sat on my dad’s lap for the first time and he let me steer. I suppose I was about 8 or 9 when I would have actually been driving properly, on private land. My dad had a 1985 M635 BMW, which was the first car I drove, which was super cool. But in terms of my own car, my dad bought my sister, Isobel, and I our first car, a blue Peugeot 106 Zest which we shared. Have you always been involved with cars throughout your life? I went to a great school in South London called Colfe’s and, as is the way of the world now, everyone was expected to go to university. I went to Nottingham Trent to study International Business, but it really didn’t interest me, so I left and moved down to Brighton to study Law with Business instead. I stuck that out for a year and a bit, but my heart wasn’t really in that either, so when I got a phone call from an old family friend to say that he had managed to get me an interview with Coys, who at the time were a classic car auction house, I said great. I got on the train, they said I’d got the job and I started straight away.

…I was soon driving Astons around New York - that was a fun time.

Throughout my teenage years, my parents said to me we’re not going to give you pocket money – if you want money, you’re going to have to earn it. So, I started cleaning cars for the neighbours and then that evolved to me working for some of the local classic car dealers. I did that for years, I resented it a bit because I was outside washing cars for my mates’ parents whilst they were inside on their PlayStations, but I think it gave me a really good work ethic, which really helped when I got a proper job. I worked at Coys for about a year, mostly in the showroom, but we did auctions as well. They don’t exist anymore but they were the market leaders of the old car world at the time, so it was a great place to learn – some of the top people in the industry all started there.

Since then, I have moved around learning the trade, including a year in Kuwait and then a spell in the States. I decided I really wanted to spend some time there, so I took my 2 sisters to New York for a long weekend, because they’d never been to the US before. Whilst we were there, I went to visit a friend in Long Island, called Tom Papadopoulos. He runs a very successful classic car dealership and is probably the top guy in North America when it comes to classic Astons – we’ve always got on really well. I went to see him and basically told him what I wanted to do, and asked if I could have a job? He was a bit taken aback, but said, okay, if you can get a visa, I’ll give you a job. That isn’t as easy as it sounds, so Tom probably thought nothing would come of it, but a contact I had put me in touch with a great company that helped with the application process and I was soon driving Astons around New York – that was a fun time.

I have moved around quite a bit, and people sometimes point that out to me, but in reality, it’s paid dividends because I now have a huge network of people in the industry, all around the world. As a result, in 2017, I decided it was the right time for me to start my own business. You’re now established in this great showroom in Tunbridge Wells – how did that come about? I was living on Mount Sion and I just walked past one day and saw the To Let sign. The building was dilapidated and looked terrible but without really thinking about it, I ended up agreeing to take it on with no real idea of how bad a state the place was in – or the amount of money that I would need to invest to get it back to where I wanted. That’s the story of my life though, really, if you think too much about doing something, it can often hinder you. I see that with some people who may live with regrets, whereas I’m probably the opposite of that. I do consider things, but if I get an idea, I’ll usually go for it and, because of the history of this building, I also felt I had some moral responsibility to restore it and get it back to its original use.

Do you know much about its history? As far as we know, it was built by G Stevenson’s Motor Engineers as a car showroom and repair centre in 1909. They had the concession for Humber, Wolseley, GN, Essex and then Daimler and Lanchester. Apart from in recent times, it has remained as a car show room, or belonging to a business related to the motor industry ever since, so it has a real history connected to cars. And how long did it take to get it back into shape. It was a 9 month refurbishment project, but I’m someone who can’t do things by halves – we don’t cut corners with anything that we do. We had a big opening party in January, 2023, with over 150 people here and Steve Coogan came along to do the official opening ceremony for us. That must have been quite a scene looking in from the outside. Yeah, it was great. We had a lot of donations from fellow car dealers for our charity auction which was hosted by Drew Pritchard of Salvage Hunters and William Smith of RM Sothebys. We raised just over £12k for charity, so it was a really great event all round.

It’s obvious that this isn’t a world for the faint hearted, but can you give me an idea of how long it takes to complete a restoration and how much that would typically cost? Well, if you use Aston Martin as an example, a complete restoration of a DB5, with everything done to it, will take about 18 months. It really depends on how far you go when it comes to costs, but £350,000 to £400,000 would be realistic. There are certain cars that can actually be worth less afterwards, if someone is doing it for sentimental reasons, for example, but they’ll be aware of that before the start. We try to advise people as best we can and we treat every car as if it were our own. There is a lot of care taken throughout the whole process and I think that’s what people value. That’s why they trust us with their cars, because they know that they’re going to be looked after in the same way, and in some cases better, than they do.

Okay, let’s finish up with the obvious question – name your dream car? I always say that cars are a bit like music, so that question is impossible to answer. I’ve got an eclectic taste, so it can depend on your mood or the situation. Okay, it’s Sunday morning, the sun is out, you’re going out to a relaxed Sunday lunch with the family. Well, I’m very lucky. I managed to acquire an Aston Martin V8 Volante last year, and that would be high on the list but if not that car, then it would have to be our family DB5. I really like the way Astons drive, but it’s their history and my lifetime connection to them – all of the memories that are associated with them, it’s difficult to explain but I guess it’s an obsession for me.