Beschreibung:

It would be difficult to find a more versatile sporting car than the Talbot-Lago 150 SS Goutte d’Eau, for it combined speed and suavity in equal proportions. Never was that dual character more clearly demonstrated than in 1938 when a brace of privately-entered Talbot-Lago coupes – ‘straight out of a concours d’elegance’ according to the official history of the event – competed in the Le Mans 24-hour race with no more expectation than to acquit themselves honorably… and one of them finished third overall, behind two ‘Competition’ 135MS Delahayes! The Goutte d’Eau – it translates as ‘Teardrop’ – was the creation of that most elegant of Parisian coachbuilders Figoni & Falaschi, a partnership between two expatriate Italians, master carrossier Joseph – born Guiseppe – Figoni and well-connected businessman Ovidio Falaschi. Its burgeoning lines were so sensuous that rising star of the British motor industry William Lyons is reported as having gasped ‘Why, that car is positively indecent!’ when he first saw the Goutte d’Eau at the London Motor Show (but that didn’t prevent him from drawing inspiration from its styling for his Jaguars...). It is recorded that only eleven cars were built in this style, all with detail differences, plus five notchback “Jeancart” Gouttes d’Eau. A mere handful survives. Despite the extremely limited production, the importance of this design was underlined when a Figoni & Falaschi Talbot-Lago Goutte d'Eau coupe was chosen by New York's Museum of Modern Art for its seminal 1951 ‘Eight Automobiles’ exhibition of automotive design milestones. This car, which features Figoni’s ingenious disappearing sliding roof, was bought at the 1938 Paris Salon by wealthy socialite Mrs Robin Byng. She and her husband, the son of the Earl of Strafford, used the car in France before the war. Unfortunately, during the German Occupation of 1940-44, the Nazis commandeered the Talbot, stole its tires and ripped out the interior leatherwork. After France was liberated the Byngs recovered the car, which was lying at Nice, and in 1946 in a bar at Lugano they met gentleman racing driver Rob Walker, who was heading for Venice with his wife in his Rolls-Royce 20/25 Gurney Nutting drophead coupe (this at a time when there were severe currency restrictions on British motorists traveling into Europe!). The Honorable Robin Byng told Walker that he intended to import the vandalized Talbot into England and renovate it. Six months later Rob Walker ran into Robin Byng in that famous Mayfair haunt the Steering Wheel Club and was told that the restored Talbot-Lago was for sale through sports car dealers University Motors. Byng asked Walker if he might be interested in buying it. Walker later recalled: ‘I had a look at it and went for a run, and I must say I thought it was the most beautiful car I had ever seen and it certainly went, but it had one small snag at the time; the price asked was, I believe, £5000, and although prices were at their highest maximum at this time, I felt it was too much to pay for any car.’ And it was indeed a high price, more than that of a brand-new Rolls-Royce - including the extortionate level of postwar purchase tax. Nonetheless, Walker was tempted: ‘I thought about the car a great deal, and it was obviously the thing for me, and from time to time I would meet Robin Byng and haggle about the price; eventually he rang me up one afternoon and said that he would like to see me. He arrived in the car, said they had had an offer for it, very much lower than the original price asked, and if they did not have a better one by that evening, they would let it go. I raised it £100 and the car was mine. I never regretted it.’ Walker carried out several modifications to suit the car to his exacting motoring requirements: ‘Firstly, the brakes were Bendix, and most unpredictable, sometimes grabbing, sometimes fading, and in heavy rain almost non-existent; this was cured by getting the Lockheed conversion from France, and after that