It’s not often that an acclaimed masterpiece goes to auction without a reserve price, but this week’s fabled Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este will host an extraordinary auction on 25 May 2025 where a Talbot-Lago T150C Teardrop Coupé will face the hammer without a safety net.
We've written extensively about Giuseppe Figoni’s automotive sculptures over the last 25 years, but the short story is that Italian-born, Paris-located Figoni was a gifted automotive coachbuilder who was enrolled in 1934 by fellow-Italian Antonio Lago to design a series of beautifully proportioned bodies to drive the marque's revival.
Launched at the 1934 Paris Salon, the Figoni Talbot-Lago Teardrop (French: "Goutte d'Eau") used a new four-liter engine, a Grand Prix chassis and, in the fashion conscious home of "Art Deco", the stylish aerodynamic T150 was the toast of the town even before it went racing successfully.
The most valuable French car ever sold is now a T150-C-SS with all-aluminum coachwork and fully-enclosed front fenders that fetched US$13.425 million at Amelia Island in 2022. Along its journey, the car had been awarded First in Class at Pebble Beach 2005 and Best of Show at Amelia Island in 2007.
The car (Chassis No. 90034) going to auction at Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este is well known, having won its class in the 1948 Spa 24 Hour Race.
Since those glorious racing escapades three-quarters of a century ago, the car has been part of many famous automotive collections, changing hands in 2005 for $3,685,000 at RM Sotheby's Monterey Car Week, then $4,620,000 at RM Sotheby's Monterey Car Week sale in 2010.
Last year, the car was offered by Broad Arrow Auctions at its Monterey Jet Center 2024 sale during Monterey Car Week, but failed to meet reserve and was passed in. Official guidance on the car's expected price was between $6.5 and $8.5 million, so in the world's most buoyant collectible car marketplace, the gorgeous T150 Speciale failed to meet its owner's expectations and so the car is being returned to Europe and auctioned without reserve to ensure that all the right people are paying attention.
The potential for someone to pick up an acclaimed masterpiece at a bargain price is immense.
BroadArrow's official price guidance this time around is €4.5 to €6.5 million, but with the EUR-USD exchange rate unstable, and no reserve, the car could sell for prices that haven't been seen for decades. The auction, and indeed the entire glorious Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este event can be streamed live on the internet for free.