The mystery BMW Special. Note the two hoods, the front holding the engine and the top one holding the spare wheel.

Story and photos by Graham Gauld

From the VeloceToday Archives, March, 2016

Last week I talked about the car that truly stopped the show at Retromobile, the Ferrari 335S, so now I will go from the sublime to the ridiculous.

A tale of two? Nardis

I happened by the stand of Christophe Pund who runs La Galerie Des Damiers and has a habit of digging up remarkable cars that no one has ever heard of. This year he went better and put on show a car he told me he had found as a wreck – and by the time of Retromobile it was little more than that – but did not know exactly what it was. I mention it because some reader in Italy may remember something about it and be able to help out.
Fundamentally it is a two-seater sports car with a lightweight body and powered by a 750cc BMW motorcycle engine mounted in its own compartment at the front of the car. There is a second hood under which is the spare wheel so the driver sits in one of two sketchy seats holding what appears to be a Nardi steering wheel.

The mystery BMW Special. Note the two hoods, the front holding the engine and the top one holding the spare wheel.

Story and photos by Graham Gauld

Last week I talked about the car that truly stopped the show at Retromobile, the Ferrari 335S, so now I will go from the sublime to the ridiculous.

A tale of two? Nardis

I happened by the stand of Christophe Pund who runs La Galerie Des Damiers and has a habit of digging up remarkable cars that no one has ever heard of. This year he went better and put on show a car he told me he had found as a wreck – and by the time of Retromobile it was little more than that – but did not know exactly what it was. I mention it because some reader in Italy may remember something about it and be able to help out.
Fundamentally it is a two-seater sports car with a lightweight body and powered by a 750cc BMW motorcycle engine mounted in its own compartment at the front of the car. There is a second hood under which is the spare wheel so the driver sits in one of two sketchy seats holding what appears to be a Nardi steering wheel.

Christophe Pund with the BMW Special.

The car must have been exciting to drive fast round a corner considering the spare wheel is mounted high in the frame and so it must have understeered like a pig. Christophe then dashed off and came back with the original Italian registration book for the car which recorded that it was taxed in July 1951 by Luigi d’Sebastiano Bosio. However nowhere does it state the make of car. On another document someone had written “Nardi Danese”.

The BMW motorcycle engine.

In certain respects its cigar body reminded me of a real Nardi Danese that I first encountered forty years ago, when it was bought by the late Earl of Moray (Lord Doune) for his collection. That Nardi Danese was built in 1947 and as was common in those days it was designed with cycle wings on it so that you could run it as a sports car with the wings on it or else as a single-seater race car without.

The Earl of Moray’s Nardi Danese now owned by Julian Madjub, is this similar in shape to the BMW special?

Lord Doune did not know much about the car when he bought it from European historic car dealer Rob de la Rive Box and, as it turned out, neither did Box and asked me to see what I could find out. It is believed to be one of the only early Nardis fitted with a Fiat 1100 engine.

Fiat 1100 engine in the Nardi when owned by the Earl of Moray (later Lord Doune).

Now, believe it or not, sitting on the stand beside me was another old friend, Julian Majzub who, today, owns that very Nardi Danese – a remarkable coincidence!

Julian is a great character and collector of interesting historic cars that he races in England. The story behind this Nardi Danese is a complicated one, which I will return to in a future story about Julian and his cars, but I mention it because I wanted to attach a photo of it when the Earl of Moray owned it. Note that its shape is like that of the strange BMW-engined car that Christophe Pund had on his stand and may or may not help in trying to get more background on the special. I am not suggesting that the BMW might be a Nardi creation but that it may be.

Outside photo of the Lord Doune Nardi.

Remember, some of the earliest cars built by Enrico Nardi were powered by BMW motorcycle engines. So is Christophe’s car an early Nardi? You decide.

Jaguar Classiche

I know that VeloceToday leans towards Italian and French cars but I would like to tell you a little story which I think is interesting. We all know of the development of Ferrari Classiche, a lucrative department of the factory that officially fettles and restores older Ferraris and gives the owner their stamp of approval. Wandering past the Jaguar stand at Retromobile, I happened upon Paul Bridges, a former Jaguar engineer and now chief engineer at Jaguar Heritage which is the company’s department that oversees the company’s own car collection. On the stand was a bare bodyshell for an E-Type coupe.

Paul Bridges of Jaguar Heritage with a display of Jaguar’s new body panels. ( Photo by Phil Rigby)

Paul explained that Jaguar has now decided to set up their own system offering Jaguar-built body panels for E types. With E-Types becoming more and more valuable, Paul explained that Jaguar Heritage decided to start retooling some of the inner and outer body panels using high-tech scanning. Now, the company can now not only offer proper factory-made panels through Jaguar Heritage, but are buying E-Types themselves, taking them apart and rebuilding them using the latest technology. It could be the start of a new trend for manufacturers going into the retro market.

Mexican Ferraris

Steve Tillack is well-known in the American restoration trade as a guy who does great work bringing old Ferraris and the like back to life. I usually bump into him at Retromobile but this year he took the plunge and had his own stand with a truly mixed bag of interesting cars. Two that stood out for me were Ferraris; both were Berlinettas and both had come from the collection of the late Mexican enthusiast Lorenzo Zambrano’s stable.

The Zambrano Ferrari 212 Berlinetta that finished second in the Pan American in 1951.

One in particular was a 212EL Vignale Coupe ( 0161EL) that had run on the Carrera Panamericana in 1951 finishing second driven by Luigi Villoresi and Alberto Ascari. That year the Pan American was run specifically for four passenger coupes, so that most of the opposition came from waves of American cars of the period like Hudson Hornets, Buicks, Mercurys, etc. Many were driven by the famed stock car drivers of the day like Marshal Teague, Hershel McGriff and Ray Crawford and even a bunch of top notch American sports car drivers like John Fitch, Phil Walters and Jack McAfee.

The Ferrari s therefore managed to squeeze in as four seater passenger cars. Apart from them the only other “foreign” cars were Louis Chiron’s Delahaye 175S, two Mark VII Jaguars – one driven by Jerry Unser – two Lancia Aurelias for Giovanni Bracco and Felice Bonetto and an Alfa 2500 SS that was involved in a fatal accident

The Ascari Ferrari was owned by Franco Cornaccia the Milanese Ferrari distributor. The sponsorship of the car came from the Sinclair oil company and after the race the car was sold to the Mexican businessman Santiago Ontanon who owned Industrias 1-2-3 a company that made detergents. He was to go on to sponsor other Ferraris in the Pan American Road Race featuring his Industrias 1-2-3 Logo. Ontanon kept the car for many years and eventually sold it to his nephew, Andrew Batista and twenty years after that it was sold to Zambrano and so the car has been in Mexican ownership for an incredible sixty years. Steve Tillack has done all the restoration work on the car in the past twenty years and he restored it to its original 1951 blue and yellow colors.

Another classic Ferrari Berlinetta, the 250 Sport used by Bracco to win the Mille Miglia in 1952.

The other Berlinetta Steve had on his stand was the rare 250 Sport (0156ET) that won the 1952 Mille Miglia driven by Giovanni Bracco who managed to beat the favored Mercedes Benz 300SL of Karl Kling.

Make plans now to be at next year’s Retromobile. See you there.

Editor’s Choice: The booth of the Swiss dealer Lükas Hüni is always one of the attractions of the show. This particular Bugatti Type 55 Roadster is considered to be the most original as it is the sole example that remains unrestored.

Photos and text by Hugues Vanhoolandt

Again this year, Rétromobile proved to be the best classic car show in the world due to the variety and the quality of the cars presented. Not only did the most important European classic car dealers show their best offers, but many different exhibitions with various themes were organized inside the show by the Rétromobile team.

Thanks to that are shown to the public some treasures that are only visible in museums or private collections.
Now let’s take a tour through the ages …

Where it all began … After a first attempt in 1875, Amédée Bollée presented his ‘La Mancelle’ at the 1878 Paris World Exhibition where it attracted the attention. The license was then bought by a company from Berlin. It is estimated that about 50 examples were built, what makes it the first individual production car in automotive history. This is the sole remaining example and kept at the Musée National de la Voiture of Compiègne, near Paris.

A bit younger although from 1903 is a Richard-Brasier Type H. The Richard-Brasier brand only lasted from 1902 to 1905 but it won two Gordon-Bennetts Cups in 1904 and 1905. After the departure of Georges Richard, the company continued under the Brasier name until 1930 when it has to cease activities following the great depression.

One of the exhibition was entitled ‘One woman, one collection’ and featured the cars owned and driven by Julia de Baldanza, a long time figure of the classic car scene. Here is another woman’s car as this 1928 Bugatti Type 40 of the ‘Fiacre’ style was especially designed by Jean Bugatti for his sister Lidia. Alongside is a 1929 Type 35B driven by Julia in the Monaco Historic Grand Prix.

Another Type 35 from a well-known Bugatti specialist.

Also from a private collection, a Type 59 Grand Prix, mostly driven in period by French ace René Dreyfus, winner of the 1934 GP of Belgium with this car.

Introduced in 1937, the Bugatti Type 57 S (for ”Surbaissée” or lowered) featured a modified Type 57 chassis with lower center of gravity. Here is a supercharged SC version owned by Dr. Williamson from 1974 until his death in 2008.

Is the new Bugatti Vision Gran Turismo concept the classic Bugatti of the future?

Another exhibition was dedicated to the French designer Philippe Charbonneaux. At an early stage in his career, he teamed up with French champion Jean-Pierre Wimille to build some prototype aerodynamic cars. The project came to an end after Wimille was killed during practice for the 1949 Grand Prix of Buenos Aires.

Charbonneaux designed several advertising vehicles including this car that hides a Citroën 2 CV. Only the top of the body and the interior has been kept from the original “2 chevaux”.

The “Pathé-Marconi” truck, also from Charbonneaux and bodied by Antem, took part in several advertising caravans of the famous cycling Tour de France.

Designed by Charbonneaux in 1954 or 1955, this plastic body clothes a Salmson 2300 S chassis. Although presented at the Paris Salon by the Paris Salmson dealer, it found no customer and remained a one-off.

In charge of the Style department at Renault, Charbonneaux designed the Renault 16 which was a hatchback. But he also developed this prototype with a normal trunk. Alongside is a futuristic TV with rotating screen, also due to Charbonneaux, that sold 18,000 examples.

Not from Charbonneaux although it could have been, this 1968 advertising vehicle has the particularity to be able to stand on its feet and turn on its own wheels. This car was part of the URO exhibition, (for Unidentified Rolling Objects).

The Automobile Club de l’Ouest, organizer of the famous Le Mans 24 hours, was celebrating 110 years at Rétromobile. For this occasion, the ACO brought out of its museum some of the cars that marked the race since 1923 like the Chenard & Walker Tank, entered in 1925 and … 1937!

After the war, French manufacturers were mainly concentrating on small displacement cars, very light and fuel efficient. This 744 cc D.B. Panhard finished 9th OA in 1959, winning the Index of Performance.

It is with the Matra team that France regained top positions in the famous Le Mans double header. With this Matra Simca 670B, Larrousse and Pescarolo won the last of three consecutive wins for Matra in 1974.

Four years later in 1978, Renault beat Porsche with the Renault Alpine A442 B driven by veteran Jean-Pierre Jaussaud and young gun Didier Pironi.

But the French manufacturer has been linked with Grand Prix racing since the beginning, as demonstrated by the Renault Type AK, winner of the first Grand Prix in history, the ‘Grand Prix de l’A.C.F.’ at Le Mans in 1906 with Ferenc Szisz. The example shown here is a replica.

Nearly 80 years later, in 1983, Renault and Alain Prost missed the World Drivers Championship by 2 points behind Nelson Piquet and his Brabham-BMW.

Although coming back again in Formula One in 2016, Renault is also present in the new Formula e for electric powered single seaters with this car and a team involving Alain Prost as well as his son Nicolas as a driver.

Back in time and to rallying with the Renault Nervasport, an 8 cylinder model that won the Monte Carlo Rally in 1935.

Another star of the Monte Carlo Rally was the famous Peugeot 205 Turbo 16 of the Group B era. Ari Vatanen won the 1985 edition with this car which will be auctioned in Monaco next May.

Before WWII, Peugeot was present in competition due to the efforts of Parisian dealer Emile Darl’mat who built 104 examples of the Peugeot Darl’mat speciale, in roadster, convertible or coupé form. Here is a 1938 roadster sold to England where it competed before and after the war.

Although the celebrations of the Citroën DS 50th anniversary are now finished, it is interesting to note this rare coupé built by a craftsman of North of France called Hector Bossaert with a design by Pietro Frua. It is the sole surviving example of the 12 built.

The French elegance was well represented by this 1938 Delage D8-120 Vanvooren cabriolet once owned by Prince Aga Khan.

For their Jubilee, the Delahaye Club de France showed this 1936 Delahaye 135 S competition bodied by Figoni & Falaschi.

Another Figoni realization on a Delahaye 135 chassis. Shown here is an MS version built for ‘la Môme Moineau’, a successful French singer of the 20’s who later became the richest woman in the world.

Do you remember last year’s Rétromobile sale of the Baillon collection, plenty of derelict cars that brought crazy prices? Here is what the the Talbot Lago T26 Record by Saoutchik looked like a year ago...

…and now what it looks in 2016. Work is in progress and will surely be completed a year from here. One of many reasons not to miss next year’s Rétromobile!