Tales from the crypt

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If every decade has a barn find which puts all the others in its shade, then Artcurial has just uncovered the one for the 2010s, perhaps even ruling out all of the rest since the 1980s. The pictures that have emerged from their latest discovery are mouth watering. Not just because of the cars themselves, also because of the haunting atmosphere in which these cars have been found. Take a deep breath to see what the 60-car strong Baillon collection, as it is called, encompasses. Avions Voisions, Delages, Panhard-Levassors. Not one, not two, but three Talbot Lago T26s with Saoutchik body, four Delahayes by Chapron. Of course a Facel Vega Excellence and Bugatti T57 Ventoux top it off just nicely.

There may have been more Bugattis, perhaps sold earlier on. From what we understand the Roger Baillon collection started life as the idea for a private museum, back in the mid-1950s, with the originator focussing on the grand French automobiles, preferably clothed by the great French coachbuilders. Baillon amassed over a hundred cars in just over a decade, but had to sell out about half of them when his trucking company went under in the 1970s. Sixty of them now remain captured on the estate grounds, supposedly belonging to a castle in the West of France.

Hang on, there are some non-French Grand Routiers that will stir up the market for sure. How about a Maserati A6G 2000 Berlinetta in Frua frock and in delightful Portugal taxi colour scheme? Or a short wheel based Ferrari 250 GT California Spider of which they say it once belonged to Alain Delon and was thought lost for decades?

What a find! You can’t blame Artcurial’s director Matthieu Lamoure for only being able to speak in superlatives: “Never since the revelation of the Schlumpf Collection in Mulhouse such an iconic car collection has been revealed (…) Never again will such a treasure be unearthed to the world!”

We don’t know, and can only wonder how such an extraordinary collection has come to the light only now? How could Roger Baillon’s cars be tucked away for such a long time? And where exactly were his castle grounds? But then perhaps it’s those questions which make this collection as good. It’s just like the old days!

(Text Jeroen Booij, pictures courtesy Artcurial)

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