Happy New Year!

While displaced from its usual Salon Retromobile auciton venue, Parisian auction house Artcurial releases a stellar pre-Retromobile auction catalogue. Slated for Thursday, January 27th, immediately before Retromobile’s opening the next day, Artcurial’s Automobile Legends auction will take place at The Peninsula Paris with 74 carefully curated lots on offer. See the catalogue here and for you North Americans, be sure to contact Artcurial’s American specialist, Ed Fallon for more details and bidder arrangements for this fabulous event in Paris.

Now on to this week’s featured posts!

1. April 24, 1932: A young Jean-Pierre Wimille crossed the finish line at the Grand Prix d'Oran, claiming his first-ever victory in a Bugatti—this Bugatti, Chassis 51132. Factory-entered at the 1931 Belgian Grand Prix with drivers Divo and Bouriat, featuring the only Figoni bodywork fitted to a Type 51 in the 1930s, and exhaustively documented by Bugatti expert Pierre-Yves Laugier, this FIVA-authenticated Grand Prix legend represents one of only 40 Type 51s ever built and heads to Artcurial's Paris auction on January 27th.

   https://motorcopia.com/?p=1807

2. Picture this: Livorno, Italy, 1966. Giotto Bizzarrini—the engineering genius behind Ferrari's 250 GTO—slides behind the wheel of his personal 5300 GT Strada, a lightweight “1 of 20” alloy-bodied weapon he's modified with racing secrets gained from his Alfa Romeo and Ferrari days, not to mention his road models and P538 prototype program. This is that car, now offered from 42 years of single ownership, emerging without restoration and accompanied by factory documents and a story that reads like Italian automotive folklore.

300SL Time Capsule: Original Paint, 21K Miles, Found at Its 1956 Delivery Address

3. Sixty-nine years after Olympic champion Claude Foussier took delivery of his ultimate-specification 1956 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing—one of only 60 built with the rare NSL engine, Rudge wheels, and full competition spec—this untouched icon emerges from the same Paris address with original factory paint confirmed, just 21,000 miles showing, and a No Reserve hammer drop at Artcurial on January 27th that could shatter world records. This is the most original, best-preserved Gullwing to surface in modern auction history.