THE world's oldest 20hp Rolls-Royce went under the hammer in Leominster this month and sold for more than £20,000.

But the 1922 Rolls-Royce 20hp ‘Goshawk’ pre-production prototype – found slumbering in a barn in Wales – could actually be worth closer to £150,000 once fully restored.

Nicknamed ‘Cinderella’ by the development team – chassis 6G2 was eventually pensioned off in October 1925 and sold to a G Palgrave-Brown of Suffolk.

It was kept until the late 1940s – at which point it vanished from view and was widely assumed to have been scrapped until it was discovered in 1996.

That discovery sparked five years of intensive research which proved that the car was one of seven ‘Goshawk’ experimental prototypes trialled by Rolls-Royce in France and England in 1922.

It was officially recognised as the oldest in existence following the find and was sold to a private collector for £25,520 at Brightwells' classic car and motorcycle auction earlier this month.

More than 1,500 people packed in to the auction, with sales for the day totalling more than £930,000.

A 1969 Aston Martin DB6 was the best seller of the day, fetching much more than it's pre-sale estimate of £123,200.