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| Passion Investments: Auto |
Eternal Combustion
Richard John Pietschmann
06/01/2005
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Haute
Horsepower
Fueled by the confluence of the Art Deco movement, aerodynamic
influences from the aircraft industry, the concours craze of showing off
magnificent cars and wealth-driven fashion, top-end automotive styling in 1930s
France exploded in a frenzy of creativity. For a decade, French carmakers,
designers and coachbuilders created hundreds of increasingly dazzling
automobiles that were remarkably beautiful, powerful, fast and technologically
advanced. Car designs that had previously favored boxy, high-standing models
became rolling works of art with flowing lines and prominent pontoon front
fenders. Aerodynamics produced teardrop shapes, closed wheel wells, raked
windshields and lowered everything to within a few inches of the ground.
“They’re just so dramatic and gorgeous,” says Ian Kelleher, managing director of
RM Auctions, an Ontario, Canada, company that is one of the best-known auction
houses dealing in these cars. Leslie Kendall, curator of the Petersen Automotive
Museum, cites their fluidity and grace.
VALUE JUDGMENT
Classic French cars from automakers such as Delage, Delahaye and Talbot-Lago are
as striking as they are valuable. With sweeping curves and dramatic, aerodynamic features, certain models are worth upward of $10 million. Would-be collectors,
however, may find it difficult to acquire these classics at any price. Current
owners form an exclusive, if informal, club: They rarely sell these cars, and
when they do, they usually sell among themselves. |
Although these expensive, handcrafted
automobiles carried the badges of carmakers such as Delage, Delahaye,
Talbot-Lago and Hispano-Suiza (the Spanish carmaker moved production to France),
almost all of them were collaborations with coachbuilders. The carmakers shipped
the “rolling chassis” to independent carrossiers such as Figoni & Falaschi,
Chapron, Franay, Pourtout and Saoutchik to have the body designed, built and
fitted. Bugatti and Voisin were exceptions in that they frequently also made the
body.
The bodies were individual works of art, superlative creations designed
by true artists and executed by master craftsmen who literally pounded metal
centimeter by centimeter until, after thousands of hours of painstaking effort,
the finished car emerged from the shop. “I did some research on the time it took
to construct a wooden frame, build the model, have the metal-beaters handcraft
the bodies and then do all the finish work, and it typically added up to 2,000
to 2,400 hours per car,” Mullin says. Each car required three to four months to
build. “If a coachbuilder made 10 cars a year, that was a lot,” he adds.
Body
styles were usually produced in series that rarely exceeded a dozen cars.
Because each vehicle differed from its brethren in numerous ways, however, some
aficionados insist each car is a unique creation. “Each car was custom-made for
an exact purpose,” says Adatto, whose new book, Passion to Perfection, is
already considered a bible for collectors.
Cost was not a concern for wealthy
buyers immunized from financial worries during the Great Depression. They would
order one of these astonishingly expensive cars for a concours season or two, or
even to coordinate with an outfit to be worn to the opera. Mullin’s World’s Fair
Delahaye cost $36,000 new—which, at the time, would have purchased 40
Fords.
That same price ratio holds today—at the lower end of the market. The
majority of these cars are today valued from $1 million to $3 million, says
Kelleher, but the upper tier of the market is considerably higher. It is
difficult to place a dollar figure on cars that almost never change hands, but
if one were forced to pick a single model from this era as the most valuable, it
would probably be the Bugatti 57SC Atlantic, a flowing coupe designed by Jean
Bugatti. Three were made between 1936 and 1938, and Ralph Lauren owns one of
them. “If Ralph Lauren were to sell, it wouldn’t be for less than $15 million or
$20 million,” Adatto says. In fact, the true summit of the market may be even
higher. He estimates a high of $25 million for the best of the 200 or so
noteworthy cars.
Individuality and background are what set one car from this
era apart from a similar one from the same carmaker and coachbuilder, especially
on the highest-value tier. “Only a select few are considered real works of art,”
Adatto says, “and the more provenance and history a car has, the more value it
has.”
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