Classic-Car Collecting

Automobile collecting passed out of the string-saving category some time ago. The international auction house of Parke-Bernet, a legend-draped eminence in the art world, now regularly conducts automobile sales; in a recent one, a Mercer brought $45,000. There are 79 major automobile collections in Europe, including one in the Soviet Union and one in Israel; many of these are museums exhibiting only the automobile and artifacts related to it. The Montagu Motor Museum in England and the Museo dell'-Automobile Carlo Biscaretti di Ruffia in Italy are two such, and world famous. In this country, the Harrah, Clark and Cunningham collections, in Reno, Southampton and Costa Mesa, California, are housed in museums. The automobile's standing as an object of art, formally attested in 1951, in the famous Museum of Modern Art show in New York (and again in 1953, 1966 and 1969), is firm today, and critics disposed to argue the point on aesthetic grounds must concede instantly on the other standard by which, like it or not, art has always been assayed: value appreciation. Some automobiles are worth 20 times their original value and, while every indicator suggests that prices will continue to rise, it is still possible to assemble a worthwhile personal collection. Money governs: It can be a collection of established classics, or of less valuable specialties, or of near-current models shrewdly chosen as possible rarities tomorrow.

For a small classic collection--each car compellingly interesting itself, created by men of taste and talent and individuality, certain to increase in value year after year--I would choose ten cars. Incidentally, but importantly, each would be thoroughly enjoyable to drive. This condition would exclude many historically notable vehicles, simply because they're slow or unwieldy or unreliable. I think everything should run, and reasonably quickly, too. In this, if not in all else, I am a partisan of the British discipline in collecting, which holds it offensive to keep an old motorcar, even a valuable one, squirreled away and not run it. British sportsmen run racing cars of the 1920s, 1930s and earlier in earnest competitions, accepting the risk of wiping out an uninsured $15,000 antique in a race for a five-dollar silver mug. A leader of this short-fused pack is a charming mad Welshman, Hamish Moffatt, who runs a 1926 Grand Prix Bugatti in flat-out races on original, narrow-section, hard-rubber tires, and in the rain. He wins, too.

To begin arbitrarily with a pair of two-seater sports cars: a Frazer Nash and a Morgan. These also have in common that they are chain-driven, British, distinguished in competition history, delightful to drive and cult objects. The Frazer Nash was designed by Captain Archibald Frazer-Nash initially and built from 1924 to 1938. Not many were made: probably 348. I have seen only three in this country. The British regard the surviving 'Nash cars--there are about 150 of them--on the level of national treasure, and the Frazer Nash section of the Vintage Spoils Car Club effectively controls their disposition. Perhaps half-a-dozen chain-driven Frazer Nashes appear on the British market in a given year, and it's usual to find their sale conditional on a promise not to export, although this can sometimes be overcome. I think the Frazer Nash is heavily underpriced in the current market at around $5000 and I expect to see it pulling $10,000 or so within the next few years.

A good 'Nash is recognizable as a thing worth owning at first sight: Like the TC MG, which it somewhat resembles, it's a fortunate design, a happy one, everything falling properly together. The front axle is bare, well out ahead of the stone-guarded radiator, with its quick-release cam-type cap; hood length is right, body length right, nothing out in back but a saddlebag gas tank; leather hold-down strap on the hood, outside exhaust pipes, strap-held spare, outside gearshift, brake and spark lever, fold-down windshield, double aeroscreens behind it, walnut and leather--nothing extra, nothing missing.

The Frazer Nash is absolutely unique and therefore most rare in one particular: Its chain-drive system was used on no other automobile ever built, save its own immediate ancestor, the Godfrey-Nash cyclecar. Strange, because it's a good system; and in the usage for which it was designed--competition/everyday normal--it had marked advantages. It's simple: The drive shaft runs straight from the clutch to a right-angle gearbox that sprouts two half-shafts; these carry four sprocket wheels and from each of them a chain runs to a corresponding wheel on the solid back axle. All the sprocket wheels run all the time, and gear selection is by dog clutches on the half-shafts: easy, instantaneous, silent. This system delivered two dividends: Changing gear ratios to fit varying circuits was only a matter of switching one sprocket per change, and the solid rear axle gave superior acceleration. (Absence of a differential also meant that in cornering, with the right and left rear wheels traveling different arcs and so different distances, a certain amount of slippage on the road was inevitable; this is one of the factors in the markedly individual and endearing way the Frazer Nash handles.

Most numerous of Frazer Nashes are Tourist Trophy Replicas, named after a now-defunct road race on the Isle of Man. There are many other model designations: Byfleet, Nürburg, Colmore, Exeter, Shelsley, Falcon, Ulster, Boulogne. The Colmore is the only four-passenger the company made; the Shelsley is supercharged--by two superchargers. Four proprietary engines were used--Anzani, Blackburne, Cough and Meadows. Almost every 'Nash was built to order, and the customer was free to specify instrument-panel layout, the kind of steering wheel he liked, and so on.

After World War Two, the Aldington brothers of London, who'd bought the company from Captain Frazer-Nash in 1928, put on the market a shaft-driven Frazer Nash running a BMW (Bayerische Motoren Werke) engine, a good-looking car and a successful competitor on the long-distance circuits. It hadn't the panache of the chain cars, and few serious autophilists are passionate about it.

The Morgan Three-Wheeler, often called a Mog, or a Morgan Trike, is chain-driven, but in a simpler fashion: It has one wheel in the rear, and a single fat chain drives it. The Trike and the four-wheeler that is still being made were the creations of one H. F. S. Morgan, an Englishman of notable eccentricity and purpose. A whimsy of British tax law that fell with most force on the poor man encouraged the Three-Wheeler: Tricycles, described as chain-driven vehicles of 896 pounds running on three wheels were taxed a straight rate annually, whereas automobiles paid a much higher rate, figured on horsepower. This law, pre-Morgan, restricted the working classes pretty much to bikes, until H. F. S. thought to make a three-wheel chain-driven car, in 1911. From then until 1952, 40,000 came out of the tiny Morgan works in Malvern Link.

The desirable Mogs are those of the pre-War period, particularly Super Sports and Aeros powered by big two-cylinder motorcycle engines by Matchless, J. A. Prestwich. Anzani and Blackburne, which hung out in front of the radiator. They were brisk on getaway. A good sports-model Mog would do 85 as it came from the store; they were peculiarly susceptible to tuning and magic wasn't needed to work them up to 100 mph or better. They were brutes to drive; but once tamed, the characteristics that made them difficult changed them to challenging. The steering was heavy but very quick, the suspension rock hard, the brakes negligible; yet, Trike experts could make them go very fast in what looked to be comparative safety. An Englishwoman, Gwenda Stewart, drove one at 72 mph for 12 consecutive hours, and took the three-wheel world speed record at 116 and a fraction, a figure that stood for many years. It took a hot factory-run BMW motorcycle sidecar rig to lift it, finally.

The Morgan had its little eccentricities: No doors were cut into the stark, open body, but it did carry a hood and side curtains, so that in a fall of rain or snow, the inhabitants were sealed up like a tank crew. This was acceptable, and even pleasant, unless the engine stalled, as high-output two-cylinder engines sometimes do, because it had to be cranked, which meant unbuttoning everything in order to get out, an annoyance if ten cars behind were blowing their horns. It was for a long time held to be gospel that a starter wouldn't work on a two-cylinder Morgan: The engine would kick back and tear things up. This isn't true, although the starter does need to be a sturdy one. Another Morgan oddity is the accelerator, a lever working off one of the steering-wheel spokes. It has no return spring; if the driver shoves it to wide open, it stays there until it is pulled back: and when the wheel is turned, it is important to remember, since the gas lever turns with it, that down is now on and up is now off, instead of the other way around. There are two other levers on the wheel, one for spark, one for mixture control.

An early Morgan looks decidedly flimsy, and when, at around 70 mph, running on anything but plate glass, it begins to buck and leap about, lifting the inside front wheel in the corners, it feels hazardous. A sense of some security comes in time, bred of the high power-to-weight ratio and the very quick steering, but it's true that the Morgan is nothing for crashing. The chassis is basically a couple of pieces of pipe, the floor is wood and the gasoline tank is hung in the scuttle over your knees. To exit on the driver's side is something of an exercise, even when the car is standing still, and hot exhaust pipes run along both sides of the body, just under elbow height. Tire failure in the rear single wheel usually means at least a spin-out.

In the 1930s, Morgan began propelling the tricycles with softer and more civilized engines, four-cylinder British Fords, tucked out of sight in the standard fashion, as an alternative to the big motorcycle twins; and after the War, they were standard. Cutoff date for the Ford Three-Wheelers is usually stated as 1951, but a few were made in 1952, and perhaps later, as favors for friends. The Morgan factory, a complex of seven small buildings, was run on an informal basis when the founder was in charge, and still is under his son, Peter. It is strictly a limited-production operation. A legend that is apparently immortal holds that one man paints all Morgans, with a brush. Not true; but there have been times when one man would have sufficed, periods when a production rate of one car a day or so was held to be ample. In 1965, for example, the 94 people on the Morgan payroll were turning out nine cars a week, all sold long in advance, of course. The rule is the same today: everything presold.

Ford-engined Mogs can be found occasionally in England for $750 and up and for around $1200 here. The twins run higher and a fine one in original shape, or restored, can go to $2500. They are good buys now at any reasonable figure. A Morgan is easily broken up; their engines were always in demand. Two World Wars and a serious depression junked many of them in England. Morgan Trikes will always be in short supply and their prices can go upward only.

I mentioned earlier that the last purchase of a T-head Mercer Raceabout had been at the Parke-Bernet sale in Brook-line, at $45,000. It reflects the rarity of this model of Mercer (there are fewer than 30 known to be in existence) and its undisputed place at the top of the list of desirable American-built cars. The last "new" Mercer was found 20 years ago. It turned up in a tiny Canadian village as a result of an article I had written, and I bought it. completely un-restored, for $1250, a reasonable price at the time. It's now in the Josiah K. Lilly collection in Massachusetts.

There are cars much sought after today that didn't amount to a great deal in their own time, but the Mercer was exciting from the beginning. It was nearly unique in its triple-use capability: a good passenger, sports and racing car. The Mercer Raceabout was sturdy, reliable and unfussy; on the road, it would outperform almost anything else of its time, 1911-1914, and you could buy one, take it straight to a race track and win with it. It was a lot of automobile for $2500.

The Roebling family (the same people who built the Brooklyn Bridge) was behind the Mercer and the factory was in Trenton (Mercer County). New Jersey. Finley Robertson Porter designed the T-head (so called because of the configuration of the cylinder head) and his was the rare satisfaction of living long enough to see his car selling for ten times its first price. Like the Frazer (continued on page 108)Classic-Car Collecting(continued from page 100) Nash, the Mercer is excellently proportioned; and although there's nothing much to it--hood, gas tank, fenders, two little seats and a steering post sticking up out of a bare floor--it looks light, lithe and lively. Its famous rival, the original Stutz Bearcat, seems pushy and out of balance beside it.

A factory guarantee of 75 mph came with the Mercer, and a modest amount of tuning would take it well over that. Mercers ran up a big racing record: In 1913, a good year, 15 first places, 12 seconds and 6 thirds. In ordinary use, the car is fun to drive, the big four-cylinder engine always running slowly (2000 rpm at 75 mph!), the steering fast, if very heavy, and the suspension taut. Beginning in 1915, the company built a somewhat more conventional car designed by Erik Delling around a softer engine. These, also designated Race-abouts, are called L-heads. There were touring cars, too.

Any Mercer, dated 1911 to the year the company gave up, 1925, is valuable; but, of course, the T-head is the prize, and Mr. Harry Reznick, who took the $45,000 car, was probably well advised. Barring catastrophe, I see no reason not to believe his car will be worth, in 2000, twice its present value. It's a rule of collecting that really sound merchandise appreciates steadily up through the years, come hell or high water, war or deflation.

Certainly as rock-solid in value as the Mercer is the Silver Ghost Rolls-Royce. The Ghost was the first long-run production car of the Derby-based firm; indeed, it had one of the longest model runs of all time--19 years, from 1906 to 1925--and, consequently, is on a lower rarity level than the Mercer. It was a better and a costlier car to begin with, however, and is now under such stringent demand that a totally unrestored 1911 brought $20,800 in a recent British auction, even though it was wearing a fussy and ungainly looking landaulet body. To extrapolate from that figure, a fine, pre-Kaiser War Silver Ghost touring car would have made $35,000 at the same sale, or ten times its worth 20 years ago. The highest known price for a Rolls-Royce is the $65,000 paid a few months ago for a four-cylinder of 1905 vintage.

Frederick Henry Royce made his first car in 1903 and ran the company with an iron hand until his death three decades later. His partnership with C. S. Rolls began in 1904 and ended with Rolls' death in an airplane accident in 1910. Originally, the car was called the Royce-Rolls and probably should have been always, but Rolls wanted to see his name first and he was putting up the money. The usage "Rolls" has always been held a vulgarism, but to call the car a "Royce" is permitted, although it presumes a close acquaintance. (Factory people have from the beginning said they were working at Royce's.) It was Royce, a born mechanic and a man obsessed with unattainable perfection, who created the car; and the British Empire, gratefully, made him a baronet for it. The combination of elegance, silence, speed and longevity achieved in the Silver Ghost Rolls-Royce has probably never been equaled. From the beginning, the car was guaranteed for three years unconditionally: parts and labor free. In some particulars, its design was less than genius-struck, but the quality of the material that went into it and the care its builders lavished upon it had not been seen before and probably have been equaled since only in the Mercedes-Benz shops. For example, for years, Rolls-Royce procedure in assembling the chassis frame called for tapered bolts fitted into hand-reamed holes and tight-ened to a precise torque figure; the radiator shell was then and is now hand-soldered, the main plates infinitesimally curved so as to appear perfectly flat--a trick borrowed from the Parthenon.

If you can't find a Ghost within the extreme range of your bank account, there are valuable successor models. The Phantom I is a splendid car and the only Rolls-Royce besides the Silver Ghost made in the United States (in Spring-field, Massachusetts, briefly) as well as in England. The P-II Continental, a rarity--fewer than 325 were made--and commensurately costly, is one of the dozen most capable fast touring motor-cars that ever ran. The smaller Royces, the 20-hp, the 20--25 and 25--30, low on most autophilists' want lists up to the present, have been good buys for some time as the available stock of the bigger cars was drained away into permanent possession in collections and museums. A coupe de ville on a 20-hp chassis makes a lovely miniature. Coupe bodies were often mounted on the light Royces, the ensemble meant to appeal to doctors, and these are useful and pretty still.

In the 1930s, the New York carriage maker Brewster bought up limousines and hearses and mounted more desirable bodies on them; notably, a stylish roadster. A British firm is currently planning to make replica Phantom I touring cars in the same way. To prevent deception (could there be anything lower than a larcenous used-car salesman specializing in Rolls-Royces?), they will be discreetly and permanently marked as nonoriginals, but otherwise indistinguishable from the real thing. They will be excellent long-term investments; I certainly intend to buy one.

England has known automobiles of reputation so puissant that one would be justified in thinking they'd been built in thousands. The Marendaz comes to mind, and the Leyland Eight and the Invicta, all cars famous in the connoisseur's memory and all made in very short runs. The most extraordinary of the lot may be the Squire, a potent sports car first dated 1934. Every reference book on high-performance cars lists the Squire, and many who've known all about the car for years have been staggered to learn, finally, that the total production was seven units. True, though. Only a dozen cars had been planned, and when the company, out of money, closed down in 1936, it had built twelve chassis and seven complete cars. The extra chassis and parts were bought up by the owner of one of the original eight, a Val Zethrin, and in the next three years, he slowly built three units, properly called Squire-Zethrin types.

Gregor Grant's British Sports Cars says of the Squire, "The late A. M. Squire was by way of being a genius, and there is no doubt that the 1-1/2-liter Squire was one of the most attractive sports cars ever built...one of the most talked-about cars of the time. It bristled with interesting features developed from racing practice...."

Adrian Squire, designer and builder, was a short, intense-looking man, dapper, wearing a big R.A.F. mustache. He was a draftsman and engineer at the MG factory, and long remembered as a good one. His purpose in the Squire was straightforward: He wanted to build the best possible sports car, cost no object. He consequently had to price the vehicle at $7500, a stiff figure at any time and seriously high in a period of economic spin like the 1930s. In two years, he did push the price down to $4000, still a lot, when MGs were going for less than $1000. Of course, the Squire offered a firmer base for the mechanical one-upmanship that has always marked sports-car people: a supercharged double-overhead-cam Anzani engine with a finned oil cooler out in front of the radiator, a Wilson pre-selector gearbox--and a signed statement that the car had lapped the Brooklands track at 100-plus mph.

When he saw he couldn't keep the company a float any longer, Adrian Squire went back to the drafting table, this time for an aircraft firm. He was killed in a 1940 air raid. I know of three Squires in this country. Although it is very rare, indeed, the Squire has almost none of the glamorous history--competition or civilian--that attends some other low-production makes, and the car's worth is accordingly lower. I would think $10,000 a fair figure for a Squire in good to fine condition. Fair is one thing, though, and persuading a reluctant owner to give one up is something else. Still, one ought never to go over the market. A collector I know who has almost unlimited resources abides rigorously by a self-fixed rule never to go over the market, by which he means his (continued on page 201)Classic-Car Collecting(continued from page 108) own appraisal of the car's worth, weighted in the second place, and I think slightly, by what it's worth to him for any special reason. For the patient, prices often come down. Oppositely, there's the con man's dictum: "A sucker can't wait."

The Chevrolet Corvette Stingray, as hot a vehicle as Detroit offers today, will get to 100 mph from a standstill in 14.7 seconds. Thirty-five years ago, a Model SJ Duesenberg would do the same thing in only 2.3 seconds more, which is one measure of the esteem in which the car is still held. It was a low-production item, by American standards, 470 units, J and SJ, of which more than half are still in existence, an extremely high survival rate.

Most of the motorcars that are worth having and worth remembering were created by single men, individuals--Bugatti, Birkigt, Ford, Packard, Bentley, Royce, Lanchester--but two brothers, the German-born Frederick and August Duesenberg, made the Duesenberg. Granted, most credit goes to the dominant brother, Frederick, the older. Settled in Iowa farming country as children, they were bicycle mechanics, moved on to motorcycles and then to automobiles. Their first-built car was a Mason, named after the man who financed it. There wasn't a Duesenberg company until 1913. The first model was tagged A, and it was a superior, if unexciting car, the first in the world to have four-wheel hydraulic brakes. Of the 650 A's that were made, only about 50 survive. The Duesenbergs made engines for the Government during the 1914-1918 War, but came into the peacetime boom market in thin financial shape. Money-making was never a primary interest for either of them; and although by 1922 their name was a sports byword (a Duesenberg, in 1921, won the first Grand Prix race ever for an American car, and seven of the first ten places at the 1922 Indianapolis 500 were filled by Duesenbergs), they were in money trouble two years later. Erret Lobban Cord (Auburn-Cord-Duesenberg) set them up again and asked Frederick Duesenberg please to build the fastest, most powerful and most luxurious automobile the state of the art would allow. Work on this satisfying project, which was to culminate in the model SJ, began in 1926 and the first customers got cars in the spring of 1929.

The Model J Duesenberg of 1929 and the companion SJ, which appeared in 1932, sold in a basic price range from $14,750 to $17,750, with occasional flights to around $25,000, because they were by all means the best thing on the domestic market at the time; some of them are worth today twice what they cost new, because, with the exception of a very few badly bodied aberrations, they are stunningly good-looking, capable of blistering performances by even 1969 standards and wreathed in an incomparable glamor. An unrestored sedan that was fairly scruffy-looking in my view changed hands for $35,000 not too many months ago. I remarked to a man who had dropped out of the bidding at $25,000 that I thought he'd been right, that the car was overpriced. He was not comforted. "I'd have gone $40,000 if I'd had it," he said. "After all, it's a Duesenberg, and it's original!"

In the span of the present car boom, Duesenberg prices have climbed like something by Picasso. The entire subject of classic pricing is one I find painful (I remember selling a very decent sedanca on a P-I Royce for $150), but I will bring myself to dwell on it long enough to state that D. Cameron Peck of Chicago, the most formidable of U.S. auto-philists in the 1940s and 1950s, once offered a seven-passenger J Duesenberg sedan for $375. That was in the autumn of 1949; and while Peck's cataloging was not ecstatic ("A boxcar on wheels as far as body is concerned, but a good chassis"), still $375 did take the car; I wonder if $13,750 would today.

Duesenbergs more desirable than Peck thought his was--roadsters, say, and touring cars and phaetons--more often found pricings around $1500 20 years ago. I remember being unable to persuade a man who said he was in the market even to go look at a Model J offered for $2000, because it was bodied by Saout-chik, a French coachmaker whose metal-beating ran to the bizarre. If it had been by Derham, Rollston or Hibbard & Darrin, he said, it might be worth a look.

The Duesenberg factory originated no bodies, but delivered chassis to bespoke coachmakers, in the ancient tradition, to be finished to customer order; or, more usually, the factory bought bodies itself. Fourteen such firms furnished the factory at Indianapolis with some 380 bodies down the years. Murphy of California did most, about 125 bodies. Others were Le Baron, Judkins, Weymann, Walker, Brunn, Dietrich, Holbrook, Bohman & Schwartz, Locke and La Grande. Foreign coachbuilders who raised bodies on Duesenberg chassis included Castagna, Letourneur & Marchand, Figoni, Franay, Van den Plas, D'Iteren Freres, Graber, Barker and Gurney Nutting. A Duesenberg could draw attention even in a palace courtyard; and coachbuilders, looking at the bare chassis ($9500 for a J, $11,750 for an SJ) made up their minds not to stint on material. Fine woods, leathers and fabrics were always used: silk, ebony and silver in one town car, for example. Today, Murphy roadsters and double-cowled phaetons by various American makers are much sought after. Sometimes the extra windshield cranked down into the front seat back, and occasionally a rear cowl carried duplicate instruments. The driver's instrumentation was complete, including a split-second chronograph, speedometer and tachometer, brake-line pressure gauge and four lights that came on at certain mileage intervals: at 80 miles, red to show that the automatic chassis lubrication system was operating; green to indicate a safe level of oil in the system's reservoir; at 700 miles, red for engine-oil change; at 1400, green for battery-fluid inspection.

The Duesenberg could not compete with the Rolls-Royce in the silence of its going; there was too much engine for that--265 to 320 horsepower--but nothing was spared to mask the brute force under the hood, including a mercury-filled vibration damper on the crankshaft, and it ran very smoothly. For the period, the Duesenberg handled well and the brakes were adequate. Most buyers never used half its performance; it was a status symbol beyond compare, something that would, if it appeared today, drop a Cadillac into Volkswagen standing. In fact, two attempts were made to revive the Duesenberg, the last in 1966, but both collapsed against economic reality. Built as the Duesenberg brothers did it, an SJ Duesenberg bodied by, say, Hibbard & Darrin, would have to cost $100,000 today. Frederick Duesenberg died in 1932 as the result of a crash in the Pennsylvania mountains, driving one of his own cars, and his brother, August, in 1955, of a heart attack.

As unlike Duesenberg as anything on four wheels could be, but equally admirable as artifact and infinitely more blessed with originality is the Lanchester in its early, tiller-steered form. There were heretical Englishmen who, practically laying their heads on the block, argued that the Lanchester was decidedly a better car than the Rolls-Royce. Perhaps not; although in the 1900s, there were known connoisseurs, including people in the royal household, who did prefer Lanchesters to "The Best Car in the World." In any case, it was an extraordinary vehicle; even today, a Lanchester is most pleasant to drive--quiet, nimble and vibration-free; in its own time, it must have seemed a miracle. Like the Duesenberg, it was born of a brother act: There were three Lanchesters, Frederick, George and Frank, with Frederick dominant. Frederick Lanchester was a kind of Renaissance man, universally accomplished. A practical engineer of the highest order, an inventor and innovator, he was a musician as well, a poet, a physicist, an aeronautical researcher. Builder, in 1895, of one of the earliest fine motorcars, he was publishing papers, four decades later, on jet propulsion and relativity. He was probably a genius, and like many geniuses, he lived a long time, to be 78 and laden with many honors, but fewer than he deserved. Similarly, his brother George: Because the first Lanchester car had been destroyed in a German air raid at Coventry, George Lanchester, at 83, and from memory, built a museum-quality model of it.

The Lanchester was so far ahead of its time that much of it was reinvented, years and years later, and credited to other names. First use of the disk brake is usually, and wholly erroneously, assigned to race cars and more correctly to airplanes, but indisputably, F. W. Lanchester had caliper-type disk brakes on his cars before race-car designers knew how to stop their front wheels and long before pilots could see any point in brakes at all.

Elegant was the word for the Lanchester. The first ones had two-cylinder engines. As a rule, an automobile powered by a two-cylinder engine can be seen vibrating half a city block away, but Lanchester's ran like a sewing machine: Through a tour de force of sheer intellect, he had harnessed the cylinders into a system of six connecting rods and two crankshafts, instead of the two rods and one crank that were usual. The result was a canceling out and containment of the violent out-of-phase poundings inherent in the engine. Originality and intelligence shone through the design everywhere: For instance, Lanchester dimensioned the car to place the driver's eyes at what would be the average level for a walking man, so that movement and direction would not seem strange. His tiller rose at the driver's right side, the horizontal bar curved to fit the body, weighted, dynamically balanced, making steering into a driveway as natural as pointing the hand at it. Drivers who became well used to Lanchester tiller steering much preferred it to the wheel system. Lanchester never came up with a Scotch tape-and-string solution to a problem, he worked in basics. When the owners of the ordinary car expected to grind the valves every couple of hundred miles, Lanchester's beautifully simple cooling system would let his go for 4000; the spark plugs could be adjusted with the engine running; oiling was automatic; his wick-system carburetor was indifferent to the dirty or mixed-strength gasoline of the day; the engine housing was between the two front seats, with all the hand controls mounted on a console over it, an arrangement that gave good balance to the car, and hung no weight out beyond the axles; the chassis frame was rigid and the suspension flexible--putting one wheel on a foot-high block had no effect on the other three--with the resultant superb ride; the entire body could be removed in five minutes without tools, and so on and on.

Lanchesters had a remarkably squared and balanced look, seeming always to be firmly placed on the road, particularly seen head on, when the radiator, in the water-cooled models, looked almost exactly twice as wide as it was high. (There was no need to unscrew the cap and peer into the hole to see if the water was up, by the way: Lanchesters had round glass-framed ports cut through the radiator shell for that purpose.) The cars were as stable as they looked, and because of this sure-footed way of going, and the quick steering available through the tiller system, they were easy to manage in the dreaded sideslip, or skid. English roads in the 1900s, often of stone or wood block and, of course, often wet and well dressed with horse manure, were wickedly slippery, and the versatile Dr. F. W. Lanchester included in the owner's manual that came with the car instructions on how to handle a skid, how to induce one for practice and even how to do a 180-degree spin in the width of an ordinary road, a useful maneuver that is not easy in most modern cars--small front-wheel-drive types excepted.

Like most men of their turn of mind, the Lanchester brothers were not brilliant in business and they soon found themselves harnessed to play-it-safe boards of directors who were frightened by originality and believed that the proven way was always the profitable way. In the Lanchesters' private table of organization, Frederick was designer; George, assistant designer and production man; Frank, business manager. But the company had been insufficiently funded at the beginning, was chronically in a short cash position, despite an excellent product and devoted customers, and in 1904, it went through a forced reorganization, in the course of which most of the Lanchesters' financial leverage was taken from them. The firm later gave its stockholders substantial profits, little of which Frederick Lanchester or his brothers saw.

Around 1914, the Lanchester began to look more like other motorcars, with the engine out in front and wheel steering. (The tiller had been optional since 1907 and was dropped in 1909; it was great for a light car but didn't have enough leverage for a big one.) The 1919 model, a remarkably lithe-looking sedan, was a notable success and the most expensive car in the London auto show of that year, at about $15,000 (partially because the interior walls and the ceiling were of burr walnut, with an elaborate leaf-and-flower pattern inlaid in lighter woods). This was on the 40-horsepower long-wheelbase chassis, also the base for a really startling motorcar built to the order of the Maharaja of Alwar. The driving seat was completely open--no doors, roof, windshield, body sides, nothing; behind it was an open landau coach body, looking exactly as if it had been taken from a horse-drawn carriage, and suspended on fully exposed, curved, sled-runner springs, just as early coaches were. Upholstery was in blue silk and hardware in gold.

The last of the "real" Lanchesters came through the factory doors in 1928; after that, and another reorganization, the Lanchester name was tacked onto a cheap Daimler.

The two-cylinder Lanchester remains an authentic marvel and a benchmark in the history of the automobile. It was a true original, owing practically nothing to anything that had gone before it.

Lanchesters rarely appear on the market today. The biggest collection is in the hands of a Briton, the primary authority on the make, Francis Hutton-Stott. One major American collector told me he would cheerfully pay $15,000 for a tiller-steered Lanchester in good to fine order.

A couple of years after the last Lanchester Lanchester appeared, another talented and unlucky Englishman, W. O. Bentley, announced his version of the very fast luxury touring automobile. The 8-liter Bentley chassis alone cost $9000, the complete car could go over £3000, or something like $30,000 in today's money. It would seem that, with the 1930-1931 Depression in full crunch, Bentley could not possibly have chosen a worse time, but 100 8-liters were made and sold without extraordinary difficulty. Most of them still exist--huge brooding monsters from another age, a period that seems as remote as the Jurassic.

Ettore Bugatti, who thought himself a figure of elegance, and was, and a wit, and wasn't, said of Bentley, "He builds the fastest trucks in the world." Others said, small wonder some parts of Bentley's cars looked like castings for a locomotive, since he'd begun his working life as an apprentice in a roundhouse and did a full year as a fireman the old way, the hard way, balancing with the big shovel in the open lurching cab, left hand covered with a cloth against the firebox heat. (For supper, he wrote long afterward, the thing was to rub the coal dust off the shovel and grill lamb chops on it.)

Bentley left the railroads after six years (as soon as he found he could never hope to own and drive his own locomotive, his friends said). He took the agency for some French cars, one of which, a tourer called Doriet Flandrin et Parant, he modified so effectively that he began to win sports-car races in it. During the Kaiser War, he developed a superior aluminum piston for aircraft engines and designed two thoroughly good engines, the Bentley Rotary I and II. The British government ordered 30,000 of these engines; but, since Bentley was unhappily signed on with the Royal Naval Air Service, he profited only insignificantly.

With next to no money of his own, and the help of friends no better off, Bentley, like hordes of ex-Forces people, set up a motorcar-manufacturing company in 1919. Unlike most of the others, he produced a car, due to be known, in the fullness of time, as the immortal 3-liter, and began selling it in 1921. Getting the Bentley into actual production was a feat of mind over matter; the company didn't have a machine shop or a foundry or even a drafting room in the real sense of the word. Outside suppliers made the Bentley components and the Bentley work force put it together. It was a good car, very sturdy, dependable, run by a high-speed overhead-cam engine that was essentially a race-car engine made reliable. A 3-liter won the 24-Hour Race at Le Mans in 1924, the first of five times the make was to do it.

There were 1639 3-liter Bentleys built, and 300-odd survive. The 3-liter begat the 4-1/2-liter, which begat the Blower Bentley, which begat the Standard Six, which begat the Speed Six, which begat the 4-liter, which begat the 8-liter. They were all remarkable cars, big, high-riding, some of them hairy in the extreme, all of them fast and trustworthy, except the 50 Blower Bentleys, supercharged 4-1/2-liters, which looked and sounded wonderful but never won anything. (Sir Henry Birkin, one of the legend-wreathed "Bentley Boys"--gentleman-amateur drivers, most of them, who campaigned the cars for the great fun of it--did come second to a Type 35 Bugatti in the 1930 French Grand Prix. This was a considerable feat, the Bentley being a big and heavy road car, after all, and the Paucircuit on which the race was run that year a twisty one.) The supercharger, mounted in front of the radiator, was huge and produced 110 extra horsepower, of which it needed 35 to run itself. W. O. Bentley didn't like it, and properly so, but it did make the blown 4-1/2 the sexiest-looking car in the line, and a fine one today is certainly worth $15,000.

Largely because of their record at Le Mans, unparalleled until the Jaguars came along in the 1950s, the Bentleys grabbed the British as no car except the Rolls-Royce has ever done. The firm made motorcars for only ten years, at an average rate of about one a day (3061 in all); but the name is immortal, nevertheless. Financially, the company never recovered from its initial underfunding; and for five years, it was kept afloat by one man, who pumped probably $750,000 into it: Woolf Barnato, heir to a huge share of the Kimberley diamond mines. Barnato was a Bentley team driver. Even he gave up finally, and Rolls-Royce bought everything.

The 8-liter, if it had come earlier, might have saved Bentley. It was a most impressive motorcar, silent, by the standards of the time, at 100 miles an hour, and putting out so much torque that it would run in high gear from 6 to 104 mph. W. O. Bentley said, "By the late 1930s, I think we could have made it into a very good car, with a speed of at least 115 to 120 miles an hour, with silence and safety. It would have been interesting to carry out this work, and I am sorry I was not allowed to." As it was, the 8-liter was so strong that it didn't really matter what kind of coach-work was put on it. Light fabric bodies by Weymann were stylish at the time, and an 8-liter would fly with one of them, but it could move a seven-passenger limousine almost as fast. (The engine was a bit bigger than today's Cadillac, presently the biggest passenger engine in production anywhere.)

W. O. Bentley has lived to see his car become a cult object and more, one in the line of artifacts locked into the history of the Empire: the longbow, the kilt, Big Ben, the Spitfire, the cricket bat, the pub and the London bobby's hard hat. His last work, the 8-liter, was handsome, I think, as a short-bodied four-passenger coupe with a blind rear quarter, and I would look for one of those if I were to begin looking today. Found, I think it would take $15,000 to move it, and that might not move it far. Incidentally, Bentley models were to be told apart, among other indications, by the color of the enamel in the radiator badge, which might be green, red, black or blue, except for the Speed Six model, normally green, but optionally anything the customer wanted. A Bentley was thus usually known as a Red Label or a Blue Label or whatever, although the factory intensely disliked the use of the word "label" instead of "badge." In any case, a proper 8-liter carries green enamel around the big black B.

(In 1933, the Rolls-Royce label was changed from red to black, presumably in mourning for Sir Henry Royce.)

You had to make a really big fast car if you were to count in the major leagues in the 1930s, and Ettore Bugatti, as was his wont, topped everybody with a thing that might have been called a 15-liter Bugatti if he hadn't chosen to call it a Type 41, or the Bugatti Royale. It was The End in almost every dimension and every particular--sheer bigness (seven feet from radiator to windshield, for example), price ($20,000 for the bare chassis), guarantee (for life), and so on. Ettore Bugatti was a superlatively skillful image projector, and the Type 41, the Golden Bug, as the British called it, was probably his master stroke. Hugh Conway, a primary Bugatti authority, thinks it possibly the most fantastic automobile ever. Only six were built.

Shortly after the War, an English Bugattiste who had a 41 with a sedan body asked me if I could sell it for him. I circularized the entire membership of the Sports Car Club of America without finding anyone who would get up $5000 for it. That car is certainly worth $50,000 today, but I doubt that an offer of twice that would move it. Because the number of 41s built is positively known, there's no chance that a "lost" Royale will turn up; the six are all held in permanent collections here and abroad (the Harrah Collection in Reno, the biggest and best in the world, has two), and so it seems hardly fair to include the car in a suggested collection, however hypothetical. It could happen, but it's a 100-to-1 shot at the moment. That doesn't mean that a new collector can't aspire to a Bugatti. M. Bugatti did make between 6000 and 7500 automobiles, and at least 1500 of them still exist. They exist in wide variety--some 50 models--because their creator was a restless, volatile, experimenting kind of man. He just may have been, too, the most interesting individual ever concerned with auto making.

Ettore Bugatti was an Italian who lived nearly all his life in France. He was one of a kind, greatly gifted, inventive, proud, unswervingly independent, indifferent to any opinion but his own, amused, aristocratic, impractical, profligate, a connoisseur, a gourmet, a bon vivant. He died in 1947, after years of life full of creation and drama. Bugatti was a moody man, imperious and egoistic. His father was a silversmith, a cabinetmaker and furniture designer, and Ettore Bugatti had intended to be an artist; but he decided, before he was out of his teens, that his brother, Rembrandt, had a superior talent; willingly to be second best was not his way, so he chose another métier. He was right about Rembrandt, who was, indeed, remarkably gifted. He was a sculptor, best known for animals. In 1966, a London gallery exhibited 21 of his bronzes, most of them sold the first day. Rembrandt Bugatti died young, a suicide.

Ettore Bugatti had designed and built cars before he was 21; and by 1910, he had a factory in Alsace-Lorraine. He built five automobiles that year, and it can truly be said that except for a very short period in the 1940s, the Bugatti has been in demand from that day to this. Bugatti's racing cars, his Grand Prix cars, were originals and, in some ways, the greatest of their time; his sports cars set standards that other makes were years in equaling. He was eclectic in design: tiny battery-driven child's cars, 110-mph open four-seaters, little leather-bodied coupes, big touring limousines, race cars, town cars--all carried the 3-1/2inch red-and-white Bugatti radiator badge. He made other things, too: boats, trains, airplane engines.

Closest to the Royale is generally held to be the Type 46. It was one of Bugatti's own favorites. Between 350 and 500 of them were made; and although the model was introduced in 1929. Bugatti kept it in protracted production. It was possible to buy a new 46 up to the outbreak of the Hitler War in 1939 and, indeed, even afterward; at least one and possibly four unused chassis, one of them crated, survived the shooting.

The 46 ran an 8-cylinder engine, 5.3 liters (318 cubic inches). The 12-foot wheelbase was designed to accommodate heavy, luxurious coachwork. It would do this with élan, offering a ride that was, by the standards of the time, more than ordinarily comfortable, with road holding and steering at Bugatti levels, then the highest in the world, and a top speed around 95. There was one difficulty noted by a few owners. As in the Royale, the Type 46 transmission is on the rear axle, which means that the drive shaft spins at engine speed; and in the Type 46, it had a tendency to vibrate a bit. French coachmakers, particularly Letourneur et Marchand and Million-Guiet, erected some splendid big, boxy gentleman's coupes on the 46 chassis, some carrying really huge leather trunks, bound with thick straps and brass buckles.

In 1931, a Type 46S was offered, identical with the 1929 car except for a small Roots-type supercharger that smoothed out the engine noticeably and gave it some extra zap. There were fewer 46Ss, they cost more than the straight 46s and are consequently more desirable. I should very much like to hear of one at around $7500.

Another avenue of assault on the big, fast luxury car was Abner Doble's: steam. Doble reminds one of Bugatti; he was imperious, arrogant, aristocratic, obsessed with the attainment of unattainable perfection and, like Bugatti, he had first intended being an artist, a concert pianist. There is a fixed law at work here; almost every automobile that is rated today as an imperishable classic, supreme in beauty or function or both, was created by a man of notable intelligence, sophistication, eccentricity and civility, who was not motivated by money-making.

After he had abandoned pianism and the ambition that succeeded it, surgery, and had been schooled in engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Doble raised $500,000 and set up shop in Waltham, Massachusetts. He built good steam automobiles, about 80 of them, but they were really only design exercises for his masterwork, the Models E and F Doble he built in California after his return there (he was born in San Francisco) in 1920. Between then, when he set up a new company with his brothers John, Warren and William, and 1932, Doble made 24 steamers. These were the best steam automobiles we have so far seen. Earlier steamers had been dragged down by nuisance problems. It took 30 minutes of long, involved procedure and a blowtorch to start some of them. To shorten getaway time, it was usual to leave a pilot light burning under the boiler; this annoyed garage proprietors and ferryboat captains, and in some jurisdictions there were laws against it. The steam automobile engine could boil away 25 gallons of water surprisingly quickly, and it was usual to carry a length of garden hose, in case there was nothing handier than a pond or a horse trough when the tank went dry. Steamers like the famous Stanley would go very quickly, indeed, but only for a short distance, because the boilers couldn't make enough steam fast enough.

Standing outdoors in the dead of a Minneapolis winter, a Doble would start and move away 22 seconds after the switch had been flipped; most 1969s won't do a lot better. The Doble carried a steam condenser where the gasoline car had its radiator; enough of the water that went through the boiler was recovered to make 30 gallons last for 750 miles. It was fast enough: 95-plus mph. Like all steamcars, the Doble was nearly silent, had ferocious acceleration (a steam engine delivers maximum torque the instant the throttle is opened) and would climb the side of a house, if the wheels didn't slip. Writer Griffith Borge-son, who lived near the Doble factory in Emeryville, California, recalls a hill favored by the firm's test drivers. It was two miles long and steep: rising one foot in four. Gasoline cars had to rush it flat-out and even then might not see the top; the Dobles could start at the bottom from a standstill and whistle on up, accelerating to the point of wheelspin, if they felt like it.

Specifying material, components and workmanship for his car, Doble named nothing but the best. He used chrome-nickel steel for chassis members, his machining was to the highest standards and he liked steering wheels of ebony and nickel silver. Doble's standards and his limited production necessarily imposed high prices: $8000 and up--up to $11,200. There are 15 E Dobles known at the moment; prices as high as $15,000 have been asked for unrestored, modified examples carrying nonoriginal parts.

Doble Steam Motors went under in the 1932 Depression, but Doble was concerned with steam almost to his death in 1961. Ten years before that, the McCulloch company (chain saws, superchargers) had mounted a serious and heavily financed approach to the steam automobile, with Doble leading, but it was abandoned far short of production.

So much for a collection restricted to ten automobiles, with the brutal omissions consequential to such limitation: the Alfa-Romeo 1750 Zagato, the Mercedes-Benz SSK, the Hispano-Suiza Boulogne are classics that come instantly to mind. But if they would add luster, they would add dollars, too: the Alfa, with two-seater body by Zagato, first seen in 1932, brings around $10,000 today. (A modern-engined factory-built replica offered a couple of years ago failed on the market.) The SSK Mercedes was a Ferdinand Porsche design built by the oldest and one of the most successful automobile constructor firms; it was much used by Rudolf Caracciola when he drove for the factory to win the Mille Miglia, the Tourist Trophy, the European hill-climb championship. SSKs were costly new and are in the $10,000-$15,000 area today. Hispano-Suizas run higher: $18,000-$25,000, justifiable in a car some authorities call truly the best car in the world; that's to say, better than the contemporary Rolls-Royce. The Hisso began as a collaboration between the Swiss designer Marc Birkigt, one of the immortals of automobilism, and Spanish financiers. Early cars were made in Spain, but Birkigt's final triumphs, such as the 12-cylinder Type 68, came out of France.

As the classics disappear into permanent museum custody, autophilists look in new directions and specialist collections spring up: child-size toy collections, for example. The best-known toy is the miniature Grand Prix car Ettore Bugatti built first for his son Roland and later for limited commercial sale. It was cataloged at the factory as Type 52. A 1928 model of this car brought $3000 at a recent British auction. Many others were made around that time and they are still being made; I have seen Ferrari, Mustang, GT40 Fords and Aston Martin toys recently. These cars are usually about two-fifths size, battery-driven. The finest collection of drivable toys belongs to Francis Mortarini of Paris. He has about 30. Toy-size cars attract many collectors. In the 1920s, some toys were elaborately detailed and up to 20 inches in length. Adam Pellicot of Stockholm has probably the biggest collection of toy automobiles--2500 of them.

Miniature road cars haven't caught on yet, but they will. Bugatti's Bébé Peugeot, the first practical small-automobile small automobile, would be the foundation of a miniature collection, with his Types 13 and 22, the Austin Seven, Bull-nose Morris, American Bantam, Crosley Hotshot, Fiat Topolino, and so on. Almost every automobile-producing country made a miniature.

Cleverest will be the new collectors who buy in 1969 the cars that will be crowding Parke-Bernet's catalogs for the spring sale in 2000. If I knew what those cars would be, I'd have a barn stuffed with them standing on end. The best advice remains the art collector's rule: Buy what you like. Most crystal balls are clouded. For example, on the ground of rarity, the Tucker ought to be a good buy, but it seems to lack basic appeal. The Edsel will be a rarity in 2000, but there may be little interest in it because it was a failure, and nobody loves a loser. The Tatra, a rear-engine V8 made in Czechoslovakia, is an interesting car; but while it's rare on this side of the water, there are thousands of them in central Europe. The Mercedes-Benz 300SL ought to be a classic, it was a breakthrough car and a success; enough were built to scatter the car around the world but not enough to make it common; it is good-looking and has an interesting history. I think the Ferrari will always be good, and racing Ferraris, because there are so few of them, very good. But the best guideline remains one's own taste--and it can't hurt to watch the quotations in the Sunday New York Times and magazines such as Road & Track.

How many cars make a collection? I think that three does it, if a viable association--historical, mechanical, personal, whatever--links them. Three at least as minimum and, as maximum, whatever your interest and your bank roll will reach. The ceiling at the moment is the 1500-odd cars in the Harrah Collection, but that's no reason you shouldn't try for 1500.