rare car

Rare Car To Go On Display At The Biltmore Estate

Rare care lovers have a new reason to tour the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. The property, which hosted the President and First Lady for a quick tour last weekend, will soon display a rare and historical touring car from the earliest days of motoring. The 1913 Stevens-Duryea Model "C-Six" seven-passenger touring car will go on exhibit May 20 at Antler Hill Village. Antler Hill Village is the new village that connects the estate's present and past with dining, shopping and historical exhibits.

The car is believed to be one of only 10 of its kind in the world and once belonged to George Vanderbilt. Guests will not be able to touch the vehicle, but they will be able to see it up close and get a sense of the Vanderbilts as a family who enjoyed one of the most exciting new inventions of the late 19th and 20th centuries – the automobile. Records at the estate show that the Vanderbilts were first exposed to the wonders of automobile travel in the early 1900s. An excerpt from a letter dated Aug. 23, 1903, that Mr. Vanderbilt wrote to his friend William Field while traveling in Europe read in part that automobiles made "travelling a different thing and simply a natural transition instead of an effort."

Vanderbilt bought several cars before the eventual purchase of the 1913 Stevens-Duryea Model "C-Six" and traded in his 1912 Stevens-Duryea Model "Y" for a 1913 Stevens-Duryea Model "C-Six" seven-passenger touring car, the first Stevens-Duryea offered with electric lights and a starter. Most of the time automobile owners in the early years had chauffeurs to drive them about but records show that Mr. Vanderbilt did sometimes drive himself and was issued a drivers license for a Stevens-Duryea by the state of North Carolina in 1913. (At that time, the state required that drivers be licensed separately for each automobile that he or she drove.) By 1919, both Mrs. Vanderbilt and Cornelia, George and Edith's only daughter, were driving, somewhat unusual for the era since women rarely drove in those days.

[via Citizen-Times]

Tags: antler hill village, biltmore, biltmore estate, historical car, rare car, stevens-duryea, vintage car

The Barn Bugatti Sells At Auction

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Luxury Cars & Autos, Auctions

From the barn to the auction block, a rare Bugatti Atalante 57S that had been tucked away in a barn for half a century had its moment in the sun this weekend. The car was auctioned off in Paris as part of the Bonhams Retromobile sale. The estimated value had been listed as high as £6 million (about $8.8 million) and the official estimate was between 2.75 million euros and 4 million euros. Bloomberg reports that it sold for 3.5 million euros ($4.53 million). The two-seat 1937 Bugatti Atalante 57S coupe was one of 17 vehicles of its type and had just 26,284 miles odometer. This number was far less than the $7.92 million that, as my colleague Jared Paul Stern reported, another 1937 Bugatti Type 57SC Atalante coupe sold for last summer. That car, however, was in much better shape, the new owner of the barn Bugatti is facing a restoration bill in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Source

Tags: atalante, auction, bonhams, bugatti, cars, rare car, RareCar

Jay Leno Sued Over Rare Car

by Deidre Woollard (RSS feed) —

Filed under: Luxury Cars & Autos, Celebrity Shopping

Tonight Show host Jay Leno is a noted car enthusiast but his enthusiasm may have him in a bit of trouble. Bloomberg reports that Leno bought a rare 1931 Duesenberg luxury roadster through what has been called a "sham" auction while the elderly owner was suffering from dementia.. The car in question is a 1931 Duesenberg luxury roadster valued by its owner at $1.7 million. Leno paid $180,000 to the Manhattan garage, that said the owner, now deceased, hadn't paid his bill and sold the Dusenberg and his 1930 Rolls Royce. Wendy Lubin, daughter of late Macy's executive John Straus, has sued Leno, 58, his company Big Dog Productions Inc., and the Upper East Side Windsor Garage where she says the cars were parked for more than 50 years. The complaint filed in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan says that the cars were auctioned off to satisfy "relatively trivial parking bills." They also says that they garage tried to confuse Straus with multiple bills and refusing his checks to pay the Windsor garage bills, and that they never contacted hi or his family. The plaintiffs seek damages of more than $1.7 million and return of the Duesenberg.

Tags: dusenberg, jay leno, JayLeno, rare car, RareCar, vintage car, VintageCar