Old love does not rust, the auction of the Baillon collection

The Baillon collection is a group of 59 classic cars that was discovered behind the chateau of the late French entrepreneur Roger Baillon.

This collection was auctioned for record amounts on 6 February 2015 during the Salon Retromobile in Paris. The collection was put together years ago by Roger Baillon at a time when classic cars were still relatively inexpensive. In the end, he wanted to set up his own car museum. However, this plan never materialized. After going bankrupt, he had to sell part of his collection and stored the remaining cars in sheds on his estate, where they were discovered last year by his grandchildren (!). They brought in the French auction house Artcurial, which immediately realized that the family possessed a very valuable treasure of automotive history.

The auction was prepared with meticulous care. First, professional photographers released highly atmospheric images of the discovery site, followed by a moody video. Only a handful of journalists and car magazines were then granted access to the castle location where the collection was found. Their stories caused quite a stir long before the auction date.

During the viewing days

For the viewing days during Retromobile, the auction house had gone to great lengths to present the cars in the condition in which they had been found. With a strong sense of drama, they had darkened the room and lit a number of cars with just a single orange lamp. A bright lamp on the front seat of other cars gave the whole display an almost ghostly appearance. The cars were, of course, still full of cobwebs, dust and grime, and here and there blades of grass were sticking out from the undercarriage.

Delage DS-11 S Coach

The auction can be called a great success, well beyond expectations. All 59 cars have found a new owner. The most expensive car (over EUR16 million) was a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spider that once belonged to the French actor Alain Delon. The model is one of only 37 examples ever built and, apart from a large dent in the trunk lid, is still in reasonably good condition.

1961 Ferrari 250 SWB California Spider

Another record sum was paid for a Talbot-Lago T26 Grand Sport in a dilapidated condition, fitted with a special shortened 1949 chassis. This car, with the remains of a Saoutchik body, fetched 1.7 million euros.

1949 Talbot-Lago T26 Grand Sport SWB Saoutchik

There can be various reasons why someone buys something like this. To begin with, not all of the cars on offer were actually in bad condition. Many of the bodies were made of aluminum, which does not rust and is relatively easy to repair. So it all looked worse than it really was, as people said. Apparently, the mechanical condition was not all that bad either. If it is a valuable car, it can make sense to carry out a complete restoration. It may also be that collectors of a particular genre specifically want to preserve such a rare model of car in its current neglected state. This has happened before with the Bugatti Brescia that was fished out of Lake Maggiore, which is displayed in a museum in the US unrestored but preserved.

Among enthusiasts of antique and classic cars, there is in any case a growing interest in cars that are in original condition. At the prestigious Pebble Beach event in the US there is even a separate category for this type of car, the so called preservation class.

Especially in the United Kingdom there are enthusiasts for a category of cars that, with typically understated humor, are called oily rag cars: well used cars that to the layman look ready for the scrapyard, but are in fact in excellent mechanical condition. These cars often look worn out, and that is exactly what gives them so much charm. Within this movement too, there has undoubtedly been interest in the Baillon collection.

Some of the cars on offer were in such an advanced state of decay that restoration was impossible. However, they could still be useful as a source of spare parts. A few Voisin owners in the room were therefore jointly interested in one of the wrecks, whose proceeds had been estimated by the auctioneer at € 1,500 - € 2,000.

Who bought what, and whether the ad hoc consortium of Voisin owners succeeded in its mission, has not been disclosed. The auction house’s official website mentions only in vague terms where the cars went (“an American collector” or, possibly even more vaguely, “an international collector”). The proceeds per car can be found on the internet. Incidentally, the “scrap” Voisin fetched no less than just over € 52,000.

Phil Seed (text and photos)