Artcurial Motorcars
7Rond Point, des Champs Elysées Paris France
1938 Paris Motor Show Bugatti Type 57 Cabriolet Vanvooren For Sale by Auction
Vanvooren body n° 2940
Engine n° 546
- Volante collection
- 1938 Paris Motor Show Vanvooren body
- Exciting history
- Top level restoration
- One of the Volante Collection masterpieces
Having long been a mystery, this car recently revealed its secrets past after extensive investigative work carried out by various Bugatti historians as well as its current owner, who has carried out a full-scale, no-expense spared restoration. The car sports the Vanvooren Type 57C cabriolet body (chassis 57757/ engine 52C) that dates from the Paris Motor Show of October 1938, and was refitted around 1945, at the factory, onto a new Type 57 chassis (engine 546) that had been in stock since June 1939.
Chassis 57757/ engine 52C, cabriolet Vanvooren, Salon 1938
The coachwork on this vehicle was built by the Établissements Vanvooren, rue Pierre Lhomme in Courbevoie, in order to be displayed on the coachbuilder's stand at the Paris Motor Show, held at the Grand Palais between 6 and 16 October 1938. To this end, chassis 57C no. 57757/ engine 52C was prepared at Molsheim at the start of August 1938, so that it could be fitted with the Vanvooren coachwork. We know that the body was designed to fit this particular chassis as, on one of the three photos of the car, taken in Bois de Boulogne in October 1938, we can read " 57C " on the left-hand side of the trunk. These photos were published in the November-December issue of the magazine Auto-carrosserie. The body is described as being " black and blue in colour, with a blue hood and blue leather interior ". In 1938-1939, it was rare for the Vanvooren workshop to order chassis from Bugatti - this chassis 57757 was the only Type 57C delivered during 1938 to be made into a cabriolet. Another chassis, n° 57695/ engine 506, without supercharger, left the Vanvooren workshop during the 1938 Christmas period. The two chassis had been delivered to the coachbuilder on 12 August 1938.
The car 57757/ engine 52C was bought by D'Ieteren, the Bugatti agent from Brussels, on 30 September 1938. He was invoiced 41 200 francs for the four-seater cabriolet. The Paris Motor Show opened its doors the following week. On 15 November 1938, the car was finally delivered to D'Ieteren in Brussels, for his client Mr Washer, who paid 110 000 francs. In all the factory documents there is only mention of " Washer " as the client of the car.
Armed with this information, we set off on our search once more, and track down the daughter-in-law of the first owner, Jean Washer, the famous Belgian tennis player of the 1920s. She retrieved the family archives for us, and her nephew discovered the material we had hoped to find. The family album still contained publicity photographs of the car in Bois de Boulogne, sent by the Brussels agent in an attempt to persuade his client. There was also a photo taken during the winter of 1939, showing Jean Washer, in gloves and helmet, posing next to his new acquisition, which was fitted with Belgian number plates. His recently deceased son, Paul Washer, had, not long before, tried to contact the factory at Molsheim, hoping to find out about the family car. He apparently had strong memories of being 16 years old and his father buying the cabriolet. Unfortunately, he failed to get any answers. What we now know is that the car had been successfully 'recycled' by the factory towards the end of the war : the chassis had been fitted with the engine from 57404 and was used for a 1939 model cabriolet body by Gangloff, and the Vanvooren body was re-fitted to a new chassis with engine n°546.
Jean Washer (1894-1972)
Jean Washer, who was born on 22 August 1894 in Berchem and died on 22 March 1972 in Geneva, came from a family involved in the textile industry in Brussels. He started playing tennis after the war, joining the Royal Léopold Club de Bruxelles. His most successful year came in 1923 when he was ranked 9th worldwide. In 1924 he reached the quarter-finals at Wimbledon and lost to René Lacoste. The following year he was a semi-finalist at Roland Garros, having beaten Henri Cochet, but then lost to Jean Borotra ! He was a quarter-finalist once again in 1926. He won the singles in the Belgian outdoor Championships eight times between 1920 and 1927, and the doubles seven times between 1919 and 1925. He played for the Belgian team in the Davis Cup between 1921 and 1927. In 1922, at the Racing Club de Bruxelles, he beat Henri Cochet followed by Jean Borotra and in 1924, he won against René Lacoste at the Léopold Club and then Henri Cochet on the Côte d'Azur. A left-hander with a powerful serve, he had a good smash and a fast forehand shot. Professionally, he was responsible for the synthetic fibres department in the UCB Group UCB (Union Chimique. Belge). In 1928, Jean Washer acquired a splendid park in Drève de la Meute, Bois de Waterloo, in which the property " le Manoir " was situated. This huge Anglo-Norman residence dated from the early 20th century. After the Second World War, Jean Washer coached his son, who also became a very successful tennis player, and retired to live in his villa in Geneva until his death in 1972. Earlier, however, on 10 May 1940, the Germans invaded Belgium. The country surrendered on 28 May and the occupying forces installed themselves in Wallonia. They set up their quarters in " Le Manoir " and an officer confiscated the fast 57C cabriolet for his own use. Other cars were also extracted from various garages to be used by the occupiers. It appears that the Bugatti then headed east with its officer, as we next come across the car at a coachbuilder north of Frankfurt.
The Vanvooren body
During the car's recent restoration, when the woodwork and seats were dismantled, the coachwork number was revealed. It was stencilled on the back of the seats, in blue crayon on the wood and lead pencil on other parts. In total, the Vanvooren number 2940 appeared on over ten pieces of the coachwork. It conforms to a Bugatti chassis number that was bodied during the autumn of 1938, as number 2986 corresponds to coachwork fitted to a Coupé 57C Vanvooren in July 1939.
Analysis of various parts of the body, carried out during the restoration commissioned by the owner of the Volante Collection, has revealed the rest of the story to us. On the inside of a door panel there is a long inscription : " Erwin Leun, Karosseriebauer, Giessen. Klein Linden, Dammstrat 14. Deutschland " The town of Klein Linden is 400 km east of Waterloo, to the north of Frankfurt, and Leun's workshop is known for the work he carried out for the Wehrmacht during the war. The Leun family told us that their workshop had modified numerous cars that had been confiscated between 1940 and 1944. On the Bugatti, the position of the spare wheel was altered, so that it could be hidden in the trunk rather than be visible on the left wing. During the war, this was deemed to be safer, as well as being an aesthetic improvement. A tow bar was welded on at the back, which involved cutting out a few centimetres at the bottom of the rear bodywork. It is possible that this modification, as well as the holes pierced in the wings were carried out in order to install a radio. The name Hammerstein appears engraved in the metal of the two front seat sliders. This could be the name of a German officer from the military family Von Hammerstein, and be connected to the name of one of the officers who considered the car as loot. Although we can trace the car's journey from Waterloo to Klein Linden as taking place between 1940 and 1944, it is impossible to determine exactly when the chassis 57C was separated from the Vanvooren body.
The turbulent period of the war and the cars in stock in Bordeaux and Molsheim
The chassis must have been separated from its body sometime between 1944 and 1950. There is a strong possibility that the work was carried out in the factory at Molsheim, as the original rear axle N°52C and the frame appear to have been subsequently used on the car of an enthusiast from Colmar, after the war. The car's current chassis came from new stock that had been stored in Bordeaux in 1940, and, by order of Hans Trippel, taken back to Molsheim in 1941. An auction was organised at the factory that year, after the stock of cars from Bordeaux had been returned to Molsheim.
The body from chassis n°57757, our ex-1938 Salon Vanvooren cabriolet, was put on the new chassis equipped with engine n°546. It was a complete chassis with engine, gearbox and axle n° 546, that had been stored in Bordeaux in 1940 - 1941 then taken back to Molsheim. The frame number, 438, shows us that the engine 546 had not been fitted in a chassis when it was assembled in January 1939, but some time after June 1939. The joint research of several Bugatti historians, including Sandy Leith from the US, appears to show that the original chassis 57757 of our car, frame 339, still complete with its axle number 52C, received a Gangloff four-seater cabriolet body from 1938 - 1939 and engine ex-57404. From then, it became known, under this number.
The current car, chassis and engine n°546, body ex-57757 cabriolet Vanvooren
It is extremely likely that at the end of the war, several Type 57 and 57Cs that had been requisitioned, poorly looked after or simply damaged while in storage, would have been returned to the Bugatti factory to be restored. New clients had the choice of getting their chassis restored or having their coachwork fitted to one of the new 1939 chassis that were still available. This is undoubtedly what happened to body number 57757, whose owner after the war chose a new Type 57 chassis. One can suppose that the engine 52C was unusable as chassis 57757 was recovered by the factory and fitted with an engine from 1936, ex-57404, and a fairly heavy four-seater Gangloff cabriolet body, the latest 1939 model.
After the war, we find the chassis with engine 546 fitted with the Vanvooren coachwork, in Austria. Paul Girardoni, owner of a large Austrian sugar refinery, bought the car in the early 1950s, and according to his wife, Olga Girardoni, this transaction took place in 1951. She remembers receiving the car as a present from her husband, and using it daily, as well as taking it to the factory in Molsheim several times to be serviced. At this point, the car was green (Mrs Girardoni recalls it being " petrol-coloured ") with tan leather interior. Between 1952 and 1954 it was registered in Saint-Gilgen on lake Wolfgangsee, in the province of Salzburg, with the number S 33. 696, and later in Burgenland, close to the factory, with the number B 31. 133. Mrs Girardoni's family albums include numerous photos of the car and include some shots of the dashboard, which show it as being the 57C model - it had four small dials to the left and two larger ones flanking the steering wheel, all set on a lacquered wooden fascia, which would have been an option chosen by the coachbuilder.
In 1965 the car was sold to the great Swedish collector Allan Soderstrom, from Malmo. When he died, the Bugatti was put up for sale by his son, and bought in 1996 through the dealer Jean-François du Montant by M. Pierre-Alain Bonnigal. During his ownership, the car was repainted dark blue.
Offered for sale in 2007 by Andreas Haas, it was bought by the current owner in 2014, through Bruno Vendiesse, to become a highlight of the Volante collection. Our owner entrusted the Bugatti to the workshop of René Grosse for a full-scale two-year restoration that cost in excess of 300 000 €. The coachwork was repainted in the original Nitrolac two-tone colour scheme, blue and black. The interior was fitted with the type of seats that Vanvooren would have used, and upholstered in blue leather. The rear of the car, modified during the war, was restored to its original configuration.
Over 4000 photographs were taken of different stages of the restoration, documenting the meticulous attention to detail taken by the team at Grosse's workshop. A renowned Vanvooren specialist, our collector's approach to this project was as a historian. His Volante Museum, dedicated to fine pre-war motor cars, already included eight cars bodied by Vanvooren, and he was very familiar with the techniques used at the workshop in Courbevoie. There was no-one more qualified to return this 1938 Paris Motor Show Vanvooren cabriolet to its former glory.
Pierre-Yves Laugier
For sale in our upcoming auction on February 9th in Paris.
650 000 - 950 000 €
More photos of the car can be viewed at the following link: - details above
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