28/08/2026
David Golding - A Lifetime in Classic Cars (Part 1) | Season 6 - Episode 73
Kevin Reid from Ireland Made – stories of Irish transport sat down with classic car dealer David Golding to talk about his lifetime in cars. David’s story has it all, and we’re bringing it to you in two parts. In Part 1, there’s a Triumph TR4, a Dublin-built Mini Marcos, several Bentleys, a Mercedes-Benz 190SL and a slowly disintegrating Lancia Beta Spider Zagato. In Part 2, David recalls selling cars at the Terenure Car Show, a memorable encounter that saw Jack Charlton helping to push a classic Jaguar, selling no fewer than 74 Nissan Figaros, and a 1947 Bentley Mk VI with a remarkable ownership story.
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THIRTY-EIGHT YEARS IN BUSINESS
David Golding started his career as a self-employed car dealer in 1988. From his first yard in Ranelagh to his current premises in Rathgar, David has remained in the Dublin 6 area and is now one of the last car dealers in Dublin’s south city.
Over the past thirty-eight years, David reckons he has sold more than 3,500 cars of all shapes, sizes, colours and types. He regards himself as unusual in the motor trade, coming from a completely non-motor-trade background and being the first in his family to enter the business. His father and uncles were motoring enthusiasts during the 1960s and ’70s, although their interest was mainly in driving rather than the mechanical or selling side of cars.
With a lifelong love of classic and unusual cars, perhaps the best-known car David has sold is the Triumph Herald Estate that appeared in the background of the Beatles’ Abbey Road album cover, which he sold to a prominent Los Angeles collector.
Over the years, David has also embraced new ways of promoting and selling his cars, from social media to creating his own online auction site, which he believes is the only one operated by a classic car dealer specifically to sell his own stock.
In our interview, David talked us through the cars that made an impact on his life, from those bought by his parents, in which he travelled as a child, through to the beginnings of his own career as a car dealer.
TRIUMPH TR4 – IZD 100
As a newborn child, this is where it all started for David. His parents were driving the two-seater TR4 when they were first married, “although they didn’t let a child get in the way, and this car was how he was first brought about.”
BENTLEY MK VI CONVERTIBLE – AI 8477
The first photograph David has of himself alongside a classic car shows him in his mother’s arms beside his uncle’s Bentley Mk VI Convertible overlooking Killiney Bay. As the photograph shows, David was far more interested in looking at the sea than the Bentley.
The car featured regularly in the family albums, and his uncle took it with him when he moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1960s. David had always wondered what became of it and, during COVID, decided to track it down. “I found the car within twenty-four hours, and it was owned by the same person my uncle had sold it to forty years previously.”
The owner turned out to be a Rolls-Royce and Bentley restorer who had finished restoring the car only weeks earlier. David was able to contact his elderly uncle, then living in Australia, and tell him that he had found his old Bentley shortly before his uncle passed away.
DERBY BENTLEY – OTB 700
David’s first experience of a classic car came in the early 1970s when his father arrived home in a 1930s Derby Bentley, bought at a vintage car auction at the RDS. Needless to say, when he arrived home, David’s mother “threw a fit”. It was a very, very big car to fit into a suburban garage and the garage door wouldn’t close, so after a few months his mother forced him to move it on.
David’s overriding memory of the Bentley was its fold-out windscreen, operated by a crank handle. The mechanism fascinated him and, at the time of our interview, David had recently picked up a Wolseley with a similar fold-out windscreen.
MINI MARCOS
Around 1967, David Dunne was a major player in the Irish vintage-car scene and was producing Mini Marcos cars at his premises on the Long Mile Road. David’s father ended up trading the Bentley for, “believe it or not, a little Mini Marcos – out of the frying pan and into the fire!” David remembers the little fibreglass car becoming the family transport, despite there now being three young children and only a small bench seat in the back.
His overriding memory is of the three children squeezed into the back as they drove around College Green: “The car was actually lower than the tyre height on the Dublin buses either side of us – a terrifying experience.”
FIAT 124 COUPÉ – 331 ZA
As the family grew older, David’s father “moved into his Italian car phase” with the purchase of a red Fiat 124 Coupé. David remembers family holidays with the three children packed into the back on plastic seats with no air conditioning while his father “tore around the place at a serious rate of knots”.
ALFA ROMEO SPRINT – 777 IZE
In 1977, David’s father bought a new Alfa Romeo Sprint. For the first few months it carried the familiar “FOR REG” sign as he waited until January 1978 to register it as 777 IZE. David remembers being stopped at Garda checkpoints and his father being asked, “Who is Reg?” His response was always, “Ah, you’ll find out one day.”
This was also the car in which David learned to drive, becoming a familiar sight “tearing around the streets of south Dublin in his youth”.
MERCEDES-BENZ 190SL – 988 WZJ
When David began buying and selling cars in the 1980s, he was fortunate to acquire a Mercedes-Benz 190SL that he had spent his youth walking past on South Anne Street. “I always said to myself, ‘One day I will own it.’ Little did I know I would be so young when I had it. It’s one of those cars – if only I had kept it.”
David was “courting his wife in this car”, but when they married the Mercedes had to go “to release a bit of cash – life gets in the way”.
LANCIA BETA SPIDER ZAGATO – 260 U*I
In the late 1980s, David picked up a Lancia Beta Spider Zagato as part of a pair and kept it for around two years – longer than almost any other car he owned. “The market for slowly disintegrating Italian cars wasn’t as strong as I thought back in the late ’80s.”
David loved its styling, fold-down rear roof and Targa top and drove it thousands of miles around Ireland before it eventually found a new home in Limerick.
Our thanks to David Golding
Coming up in Part 2: David recalls selling cars at the Terenure Car Show, the day a grumpy Jack Charlton helped push him in a classic Jaguar, how he became ‘Mr Nissan Figaro’, selling 74 of these quirky little cars, and the story of a 1947 Bentley Mk VI with a fascinating ownership history.
Check out our previous video-story with David Golding:
3,500 classic cars sold - David Golding | Season 3 – Episode 61
https://youtu.be/mbUCf5###EU?si=VfDI3MnjnF5A5iKZ
If you have an idea for a story, please email Kevin Reid [email protected]
Sources of Information, Photo, Video & Music Credits:
All music and sound effects used in Ireland Made – Stories of Irish Transport are royalty-free and fully licensed through Epidemic Sound, giving us the legal right to use them in our productions.
