Winner of the 2010 Pebble Beach Best of Show Award
Rare and insightful describes only cursorily Jim Patterson’s 1933 Delage D8S that took the Best of Show Award at this year’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. The body by coachbuilder de Villars of Paris is a one-off effort, a collaboration between the two companies to showcase their abilities at the 1934 Paris Auto Salon. During the early part of the 20th Century, de Villars was one of the most respected coachbuilders in Europe, producing no more than 25 bodies per year; conversely, Delage was renowned for its superb engineering and craftsmanship, power and speed.
Only 99 D8S chassis were built, each boasting a race- and aircraft-inspired overhead valve 4-liter 8-cylinder engine producing 145-horsepower. Engine oil was routed through the intake system to prevent carburetor icing – an aeronautical design that improved performance. Because of its shorter wheelbase and lower chassis, the D8S performed exceptionally well, in fact, besting many cars of the era such as Bentley and Duesenberg. Neatly, the jack is stowed on the steering column, while the lug wrench is affixed to the fuel pump.
Costing about 100,000-Francs, nearly $20,000-US dollars, the Delage D8S was one of the absolute most expensive cars of the era; the average price of a typical home in the United States at that time was roughly $3,000, while the average American salary was somewhere in the $1,200 range. But the money was well spent – the engineering behind the engine and chassis was only part of the bargain, as the bespoke bodies featured touches such as finished door jams, uniquely-shaped windows, concave side moldings which project into the vehicles body, a leather top, specially-designed gauges and interior accoutrements, and much more.
This particular Delage, chassis number 38021, was displayed in a Paris dealership window after its debut at the Auto Salon, and then purchased by Aurelio Lerroux, the son of then Prime Minister of Spain, Alejandro Lerroux. Aurelio sold the vehicle to his friend, Sr. Rico, the brother of Madrid’s mayor at the time. Fashion mogul and film star, Rosalia Gulon, owned the car briefly before it came into the hands of the Gran Hotel Velasquez until the 1950’s, used briefly and put into a lengthy storage, to be discovered in the 1990’s very intact and reasonably unaltered from its original form.
