The relativity of originality
06/02/2017
On May 27, 2017, i.e. last Saturday, RM/Sotheby's auctioned off one of the most spectacular vehicles in automotive history in the park of Villa Erba in Cernobbio on the occasion of the Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este . The new owner paid EUR 3.36 million for the elegant car, which is known as the "Goutte d'Eau" (teardrop) because of its shape. It is a Talbot-Lago T150-C SS from 1937, one of only two cars (chassis 90110) built by the French coachbuilder Figoni et Falaschi with fully enclosed wheels all round.
The car is said to have been completed on November 25, 1937, but was probably not sold and spent the war years in the Talbot-Lago factory. At least that's what photos show.
In 1946, the car, or rather the chassis (without bodywork), turned up in Wichtrach at Hermann Graber, the Swiss coachbuilder, who was commissioned to put a new and now open body on the chassis. Apparently the waterdrop body had been damaged in an accident, but whether it was still on the chassis when it arrived in Wichtrach is probably not known.
In any case, Graber did a great job and designed an elegant convertible body. The owner H. Frey drove the car until he passed it on to a Mr. G. Frey in 1966. I wonder if they were related? The car returned to the Bern region in 1987.
In 2000, the new owner decided to put the original bodywork back on the chassis. As nothing of it was left, it had to be completely rebuilt, a job that was undertaken by the company "Auto Classique Touraine" in Tours (France). This coachbuilder had already reconstructed another "Teardrop" and was therefore ideally positioned for the work, which nevertheless took around three years.
The car was painted two-tone black and silver, probably in contrast to the original color scheme, and was largely enjoyed in silence. In any case, it hardly ever appeared in public until it was auctioned off.
However, the Graber bodywork , which had accompanied the chassis for 44 years, was rescued in 2000 and finally found its way onto the chassis of a 1936 Talbot-Lago T120 when one with an unrepairable bodywork could be found. Incidentally, the Graber-Talbot was sold on June 13, 2015 at the Dolder auction of the Oldtimer Galerie for just under EUR 400,000 with reservations and was probably sold after renegotiations.
There is plenty of room for philosophizing about this story! How original is a car whose body was basically a replica of the original Figoni body and did not contain a single piece of sheet metal from back then? Wouldn't the Graber version have been more worthy of protection from a historical point of view, after all, it was built "in time". If the "soul" of a car lies in the chassis and drive train, then what was the Graber-Talbot-Lago T120, which was built in the new century?
This example shows very clearly that originality is relative. Although a car, i.e. the Talbot-Lago T150 SS, was brought back to life in the original sense, the greater part of its 80-year history was erased and sacrificed for a completely new body shell. Financially, however, this feat was probably well worth it and it is to be hoped that the black and silver "Teardrop" can now be seen again at concours events. It remains to be seen what the points judges will think of this car.
