Rodger Dudding
WITH HIS UNRULY mane of white hair and toothy grin, there’s something of the ageing rock star about Rodger Dudding; a combination of Brian May and Roger Daltrey, all rolled into one burly frame. But Rodger has built up a fortune that would put most rock stars’ in the shade. And he’s spent a good portion of it on building up the largest classic car collection in Britain, about 500 vehicles so far. To put that into perspective, the British Motor Museum at Gaydon numbers about 300, and the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu claims around 280.
Why so many cars? ‘I’ve always liked cars but I don’t really know why I started collecting them, other than that I like their designs,’ he muses at his HQ in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire. ‘I’d held onto my father’s Morris Minor, and the Jensen FF that was my first “proper” motor in the 1960s, and then I just started buying the odd car that appealed; an Anglia, a little Lotus. It wasn’t about the monetary value, I just liked the way they looked.’
Rodger wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He had a middle-class upbringing in Gillingham, Kent, as the son of a naval officer, where
