Christie’s RetroMobile Auction

The headlines over the Auto Union Type D overshadowed the more significant fact that Christie’s had assembled an outstanding consignment of vehicles for its sale at Retromobile. Aside from a few ratty and neglected cars with celebrity ownership histories – the theme of this year’s RetroMobile show – the cars were unusual, intriguing and interesting.

Christie’s sold most of them, too, and for good money. The immediate post-sale numbers were 34 of 49 sold (69.4%) and $9,237,612 in total transactions.

Big numbers were made by the 1936 Mercedes-Benz 540K Cabriolet A at $1,604,733 and the ex-Pierre Levegh Talbot-Lago T26GS (a car that will get an invitation to just about any historic event its owner wants to attend) at $1,749,274.

The sale that got tongues wagging, however, was the 1890 deDion Bouton et Trepardeaux Steam Quadricycle which had bidders all over the place chasing it and made a mockery of its $236,000 high estimate. It wasn’t quite a Futurliner surprise, but it finally hammered sold at €635,000, €709,750 with commission, an astounding $932,618. That is a whole lot of money to pay for a very early starting time on the London-Brighton Run, but buyers were lined up ready to write the big check.

Christie’s anticipates offering the Auto Union Type D later in the year after the current uncertainty is resolved, perhaps at Monterey. Until then they can be proud of the results achieved in Paris and concentrate on lining up consignments for Greenwich, Connecticut to complement the barn-find Bugatti Type 57C (s/n 57766) with Atalante coupe coachwork that has already been consigned (estimate $300-400K.)

Rick Carey