27 years ago, James Hull started his dentistry business in a small town in Wales. Today his dental empire reigns across 50 locations across Great Britain, tweaking the teeth of self-conscious Britons to the tune of nearly 7 million pounds per year ($11.8 million) and a business value of nearly 90 million pounds ($152 million). There's a lot of money to be made, evidently, in overthrowing a British stereotype. Mr. Hull -- cricketer, cancer survivor (3 times!), and self-confessed workaholic -- spent this fortune quietly amassing one of the UK's largest car collections: a whopping 543 cars, scurried away in an airy, skylight-laden warehouse in Hertfordshire, north of London.

There's the wood-paneled Mini Traveller owned by one Lord Mountbatten. There's a ruby red 1966 Jaguar 420G built for Sir William Lyons himself, used to chauffeur the great man to the Coventry office. There are cars owned by Mike Hailwood, Winston Churchill, Sir Elton John. (When Hailwood wasn't dominating on Hondas, he drove an E-Type. Churchill drove a humble Austin; Sir John, a humble Bentley.) There's the Morris Minor Series II convertible which was Hull's first car, purchased 35 years ago. Then, a Jaguar Mark II 3.8 -- once, one of the fastest cars on the road, which earned its attention among ruffians and miscreants, "catnip to British car collectors," according to Hagerty. There are Mille Miglia winners. Does any man need five Citroën DSs? Hull does.

Hull hoards like a man who truly knows what he's doing. He claims to have sold just five cars in his 35 years of collecting.

This wasn't just an assemblage of cars, stacked together in a warehouse -- this was a man's life work, painstakingly curated to the tune of $170 million. That's how much the collection was worth when Hull put it up for sale. He could think of no more fitting a custodian than Jaguar Land Rover -- which, emboldened by record profits, has bought the whole thing for an undisclosed sum.

Hull's collection is a fitting expansion for the newly emboldened Jaguar Special Operations, which will oversee the collection. 130 of the 543 cars are Jaguars. There are C-Types, D-Types, XK120s, SS100s. There are thirty Mark saloons and twenty XJs. There are E-Types of every generation and configuration. There's an XKSS, though not McQueen's. There's a Lynx Eventer, which should belong in Ian Callum's garage. "I do indeed have a passion for Jaguars," said Hull in a video for Classic and Sports Car Magazine. The oldest Jaguar he has is a 1922 Swallow Sidecar; the newest, an XKR-S.

The collection suffered a setback in 2006 when a band of rapscallions broke into the warehouse and vandalized some 60 cars, hotwiring them before crashing them into each other. "The carnage was unbelievable," said Hull at the time. "I've spent 30 years building up the collection and it was destroyed in two hours."

Evidently, the collection has since bounced back enough to garner Jaguar's interest. The Special Operations division will move the collection to its historic Browns Lane home in Coventry, approximately 70 miles northwest of Hertfordshire. Jaguar plans to leave the collection intact -- it won't divest itself of any of the vestigial brands of the once-noble British automobile industry. No doubt Jaguar will begin trucking its historic models to press events and unveilings across the world, to dazzle the journalists who might view the upcoming XE this September. Surely, a rare aluminum-bodied XK120 should do that job well.

There's more to this than a rich man's wide-eyed enthusiasm. There's the remains of the British Empire at stake: Never has a collection of Britannia's finest vehicles been assembled in one place, and never again, unless Prince Charles decides to start amassing the Isle-of-Man-built Peels at Buckingham Palace. It's perfect in a way that would only be matched if Sergio Marchionne makes a bid to buy back the Chrysler Building and mount a Guilia Sprint Speciale on the roof. "My primary motivation was not to get the maximum price but rather to secure the future of the collection in this country," said Hull. "[Jaguar] are the perfect custodians to take the collection forward and I know it is in safe hands.

"Indeed, my collection is going home."

The Hull collection also includes 365 pedal cars, 300 examples of war memorabilia, and one mini Avro Lancaster hanging from the ceiling. Jaguar

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