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8-D Maine Antique Digest, December 2016
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FEATURE
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8-D London
Stolberg, was sold in
Chantilly by a family
descendant—but it is
a car that spent many
years in America
and has quite a back
story.
How it originally
got to the U.S.A. is
not clear—and part
of the Bonhams cata-
logue description makes a curiously worded comment on the matter:
“It disappeared overnight from the Pym premises. All that is known
is that it was stolen that night. In any case the Mercedes resurfaced
decades later in the USA.”
I leave readers to wonder what might have happened in those war
years but later, postwar developments made its path to auction and its
return to Europe a little clearer.
One of the first of a string of U.S. owners, not all of whom are
noted here, was Russell Strauch of Toledo, Ohio, a pioneer collector
of great cars, and it was in 1991, while in Richie Clyne’s Imperial
Palace Collection, that it was “cosmetically restored” by Mike Fen-
nell Enterprises of Saugus, California.
In August 2011 it was bought at $3.77 million by a European collec-
tor at a Pebble Beach, Monterey, California, auction conducted by RM
Auctions*, but six months later, when it was exhibited at a car show in
Essen, Germany, it was recognised by one of Hans Pym’s heirs.
A German court case followed and eventually a settlement was
reached by which, some 70 years after it went missing, it was resti-
tuted to the Pym family.
A Porsche was among the higher priced lots in an October 7 sale
held by Bonhams in the Belgian coastal resort of Knokke-le-Zoute,
but though it is noted below, I have chosen for illustration a 1964
Citroën DS 19 cabriolet to represent that sale.
I picked it for the
simple reason that
when I was a teenager
hitchhiking around
Europe, I once man-
aged to arrange a lift
from southern Spain
all the way to Calais
in northern France in
a very a similar car.
It was being driven
back to England by
an expatriate Brit
who thought a bit of company would not go amiss.
The ahead-of-its-time hydro-pneumatic suspension was what
made these Citroëns so famous and desirable, but they were also so
very elegant—especially in the
décapotable
or convertible version
of this model.
This dark blue beauty, which boasts special coachwork by Henri
Chapron and has more recently been extensively restored, is for me at
least one of those unobtainable objects of desire. It sold at $202,510.
The Belgian sale had been led at $653,660 by one of several expen-
sive Porsches on offer, a 1955 Porsche 356 “Pre-A” Speedster with
a very early 1600 cc engine and white coachwork by Reutter, but the
Porsche that gets into this report comes from an English auction.
It was the most recent of the Bonhams “Goodwood Revival” sales,
held annually to coincide with the hugely popular Festival of Speed
events in the grounds of Goodwood House in West Sussex, home of
the Earl of March, who is president of the British Automobile Racing
Club, patron of the TT
Riders Association and
an honorary member
of the British Racing
Drivers Club, among
other things.
This year’s sale,
held on September 10,
included the “amaz-
ingly original, unre-
stored example of Porsche’s first purebred sports-racing car,” the
1956, 1.5 litre 550 RS Spyder pictured above.
Cranking up the hyperbole, Bonhams also called it a “mouth-wa-
teringly original, unmolested and intricate ‘time machine’ … the
world’s best-preserved never restored example of this seminal
Porsche model…” and one with a “perfect provenance, headed by
connoisseurial collectors.”
The words and pictures devoted to this immaculate, 60-year-old
beauty, which has never been raced or rallied, ran to ten pages and on
the day it sold for $6.09 million.
With a $2.65 million high estimate, a 1936 Aston Martin 2 litre
Speed Model “Red Dragon” sports racing two-seater had been
granted no fewer than 25 catalogue pages in search of a buyer, but it
did not sell.
*
In that same $80.14 millionMonterey sale, a 1937Mercedes-Benz
540 K Spezial Roadster sold for $9.68 million.
Cranking up the Hyperbole, or Mouth-Wateringly Magnificent Motors
B
ack in August, at the Quail
Lodge & Golf Club in Car-
mel, California, Bonhams held a
$34.8 million car sale at which
several records were broken.
High spots included a 1931
Bugatti Type 51 Grand Prix
Racer at an even $4 million and
a 1904 Mercedes-Simplex 28-32
hp five-seat rear entrance ton-
neau at $2.8 million, to name
just two successes, but here my
focus is on half-a-dozen motor-
ing sales held in recent times by
the auctioneers in England, Bel-
gium and France.
By the time this issue of
M.A.D.
appears, Bonhams will
have held yet another sale to
coincide with the much-loved
annual London-to-Brighton Vet-
eran Car Run, and on December
4 will hold another London sale
that will include a quite remark-
able Rolls-Royce.
The latter does feature as a
preview in one of the linked
reports that follow, but I am
going to begin with just three
cars from those Bonhams car
and motorcycle sales of the past
couple of months.
Held in the grounds of the
beautiful Château de Chantilly
estate, around a 45-minute drive
from Paris, a September 3 sale
was led at $5.9 million by a beau-
tiful Mercedes-Benz 500 KRoad-
ster—a legendary car that proved
a sensation when first shown at
the 1935 Berlin Auto Show and
even then cost a small fortune.
No more than 30 examples
of the Roadster version of the
500 K are believed to have
been made. This one, acquired
new by Hans Friedrich Pym of
Sold for $202,510, this ravishingly lovely 1964
Citroën DS 19 cabriolet was part of the Bon-
hams sale in Knokke-le-Zoute, Belgium.
At $5.9 million, this beautiful Mercedes-Benz
500 K Roadster was the highlight of the Bon-
hams Chantilly sale in France.
A Rolls-Royce with the Versailles touch—to be sold by Bonhams in
December—together with three views of the lavishly and expensively
fitted out interior.
This specially adapted Pontiac Six 4
litre motor home was sold by Bon-
hams on September 10 for $45,755.
Please Do Have a Good Look Around Inside
M
any of the cars seen in the Bonhams
sales were simply beautiful automo-
tive works of art—but not all of them, at
least not from the outside.
One vehicle on which a lot of thought
had obviously gone into the interior finish
was a 1936 Pontiac Six 4 litre motor home,
ordered from the U.S.A. by a Captain
Dunn and then handed over to a local, Sus-
sex coachbuilder by the name of Russell
for adaptation to his special needs.
As purchased by the Bonhams
consignor, it had been painted
khaki, which must have been in
anticipation of its use as an ambu-
lance at the outbreak of World War
II. Instead, it was put carefully into
storage in 1940 and for the next
50 years had the engine turned
over every few months by Captain
Dunn’s widow!
The new owners contacted
Russell’s of Bexhill and on being
invited to attend a local motoring
event were introduced to a gen-
tleman who had been a young
apprentice there at Russell’s in the
1930s and had worked on the vehi-
cle as one of his first jobs.
It seems that Captain Dunn had
contracted polio whilst on his hon-
eymoon, leaving him paralysed
and requiring the use of the wheel-
chair that can be seen in one of the
accompanying illustrations of the
specially adapted vehicle. Captain
Dunn died in 1946.
A sad story, but a great find,
and another “time warp” lot, it
sold at $45,755 in the “Goodwood
Revival” sale of September 10.
On now to a quite extraordinary Rolls-
Royce Phantom I that will form part of a
Bonhams London sale on December 4.
Built in 1926, it was a gift from the
American businessman Clarence Gasque
to his wife, Maude, a Woolworth’s heiress
who had a passion for French 18th-cen-
tury history and design.
Clarence, who was the finance director
of Woolworth’s U.K. operation, also stip-
ulated that it should be grander and more
lavish than the Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost
made for his Woolworth colleague JB
“Surefire” Snow.
Setting no limit on the budget, he left
the details to the Wolverhampton-based
coachbuilders Charles Clark & Sons,
whose owner, John Barnett, took as his
design inspiration a Marie Antoinette
sedan chair that he had seen at London’s
Victoria and Albert Museum. The result-
ing interior certainly had more in com-
mon with the glories of
the Palace of Versailles
than the inside of a car,
even a Rolls-Royce.
Craftsmen from the
famous tapestry and car-
pet makers Aubusson
spent nine months work-
ing on a tapestry for the rear seats, and,
in keeping with a car that would come
to be known as “The Phantom of Love,”
cherubs appeared on the painted and spe-
cially lit ceiling or roof, and as lighting
supports.
A bow-fronted drinks cabinet, reminis-
cent of an antique commode or chiffonier,
and concealed fold-down and tapestry-up-
holstered occasional seats in cupboards at
either side all added to the fun.
Surmounting this elaborate division
was a small French ormolu clock and two
French porcelain vases containing gilded
metal and enamel flowers. In honour of
the Gasque family’s French origins, and at
his client’s request, Barnett also devised a
faux coat of arms that was applied to the
rear doors.
Sadly, Clarence died in 1928, and in
1937 Maude, who lived until
1959 and spent the rest of life
promoting vegetarianism, put
the car into storage. In 1952
it was sold to the well-known
Rolls-Royce enthusiast Stan-
ley Sears and it subsequently
passed through the hands of
R-R lovers in Japan and the
U.S.A. before returning to
the U.K. and the Bonhams
consignor.
On delivery, this Rolls-
Royce had cost £6500, of
which £4500 had been spent
on the interior—and all this
at a time when £500 was
enough to buy a small house
in England!
In the December sale it is
valued at around $600,000 to
$850,000.
The 1956, 1.5 litre Porsche 550 RS Spyder
was sold by Bonhams for $6.09 million at this
year’s “Goodwood Revival” event.