Cool Hunting

Every car in Christie's Exceptional Motor Cars at the Greenwich Concours d'Elegance Including the Sergio Franchi Motor Car Collection auction has a story—the people who made it, owned it, where and how they bought it, and sometimes how they restored it.

Many of the 46 cars in the sale were collected and owned by the famous tenor Sergio Franchi. His favorite car—and the highlight of the auction—is his 1930 Isotta Fraschini 8AS Boattail Convertible. Isotta Fraschini's were truly the cars of royalty in the early 1900s—both those with countries and those who commanded their people from the silver screen of Hollywood (perhaps best personified by Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard who was driven in her similar looking 1929 Isotta Fraschini Tipo 8A Castagna Transformable).

One of the fascinating things about many of these fine automobiles is that you would order the chassis from the manufacturer, and then have any of several coachmakers finish it for you. Sometimes standard packages were offered and sometimes they would create completely custom cars. While this practice exists today (with coachbuilders such as Fisker, who build custom bodies on Mercedes chassis) this artform has lost visibility from the much more plentiful field of customizers, like those featured on Pimp My Ride, who take existing parts (mostly) to modify production cars.

Many of the cars are much more accessible, and practical, than the IF (which is estimated to sell for somewhere around $700,000), with bargains to be found on recent classics like Jaguar, Delorean and Buick, and "Janie," who earned her fame by being the last Checker Cab in service in New York.

4 June 2006
12:00 pm
Roger Sherman Baldwin Park
Greenwich, CT
USA