The 18-car collection of Charles H Brown that includes petrol, steam and electric vehicles will go under the hammer at Bonhams’ Grand Palais Sale in Paris tomorrow.
It’s a ‘conventional’ petrol machine that will top the Brown auction, however, in the form of a 1931 Bentley 8 Litre Sports Tourer with coachwork by James Pearce, which is expected to make €500-650,000.
Said to have been ‘dead silent’ at 100mph, just 100 of the cars were ever built. It features an engine that was developed by increasing the standard (6½ Litre) unit’s bore by 10mm. The machine also has an uprated gearbox to cope with the extra torque.
The result was reported by The Autocar in 1930 to amount to ‘motoring in its very highest form’.
Another star of the collection is a 1927 Renault Torpedo with Art Deco coachwork by Kellner, which is estimated to make €120-150,000.
The six-cylinder open-top was shipped to the US in 1969. There it featured on the cover of Antique Automobile Magazine and at the Briggs Cunningham Museum in Costa Mesa, California.
