Shed a tear for Antonio’s curvaceous Talbot-Lago

TALBOT-Lago built only 11 ‘New York’ style coupes in 1937 and ’38, all of them with the drop-dead beautiful coachwork by Figoni et Falaschi.

But one of them was super special, worthy of an Inspector Poirot investigation.

All 11 were exotic, high performance coupes, described by a leading American collector as as ‘the finest examples of assembled form ever applied to the automobile’ . . . but the one on chassis 90117 was specifically built for competition.

The man responsible for all of them was Antonio Lago, a talented engineer and slick businessman who had fled his native Italy in 1919 after escaping from a hit squad that had apparently been sent after him by his former bestie, Benito Mussolini.

Lago had been a founding member of the Italian National Fascist Party, but later became outspokenly critical of fascism, which led to a violent confrontation with Mussolini.

Lago, prepared for the unexpected in those volatile times, always carried a weapon — not a pistol, but a hand grenade.

One night in 1919 a trio of killers had him cornered in a trattoria where they shot the two owners.

Lago threw the grenade, which killed one and wounded the other two would-be assassins, and escaped.

He fled to Paris, then to the US, where he worked for the Pratt & Whitney aircraft engine company, before going in England in the 1920s, where he worked at Self-Changing Gears, makers of Wilson pre-selector gearboxes.

He soon became a director of the gearbox company and acquired the rights to export the advanced products.

Among his potential customers was Automobiles Talbot-Darracq, then owned by the Anglo-French firm of Sunbeam-Talbot-Darracq, which produced a range of unremarkable sedans, and was about to call in the receivers.

The Darracqs were built in England, the Talbots in France.

Lago then bought the company from the receivers and set about revitalising the product line.

Apart from new body styles, he called in former Fiat star engineer Walter Becchia, who developed the racing engine for the Fiat 804, which in 1922 won both the French and Italian Grands Prix.

Becchia, also unhappy with Mussolini’s fascism, had also left Italy and became a French citizen, working at Talbot.

Lago knew that motorsport was a vital component to sales success and got Becchia to develop a competition version of the company’s 3.0-litre six-cylinder T150 engine.

The result was a comprehensive redesign with an engine enlarged to 4.0 litres with hemispherical combustion chambers and a trio of Zenith-Stromberg carburetters.

More than sheer power, the car also had to be agile and have exceptional roadholding, so Becchia enlisted the aid of fellow former Fiat chassis guru Vincenzo Bertarione.

What emerged was the new T150-C frame, a ladder type, with box section side spars joined by tubular cross-members.

The short-chassis Super Sports, or “SS,” variant featured independent front suspension via a combination of top links and a transversely mounted leaf springs, while the rear end had an underslung live axle.

Other changes included a large-capacity sump and a Wilson pre-selector gearbox for quick and precise gear changes.

In 1936, Lago built a quartet of T150-C SS Roadsters – and they knocked spots off the opposition, with a magnificent 1-2-3-5 result in the Sports Car-only French Grand Prix of 1937 and a commanding 1-2 win in the RAC Tourist Trophy at Donington Park.

Lago had meanwhile been introduced to revered coachbuilder Giuseppe Figoni by ace race driver Luigi Chinetti – who later migrated to the US during WWII and put Ferrari on the map in America.

Lago wanted Figoni to fit a number of his chassis with a variation of the extravagant coupe bodies that the Figoni et Falaschi coachworks had already become known for via their spectacular Delage and Delahaye cabrios.

Figoni was happy to oblige and 16 such coupes were constructed over the next two years.

The first five were called ‘Jeancart’ coupes in deference to the man who commissioned the first one.

They used a combination of T-150-C and T23 chassis.

Featuring trademark Figoni touches such as steeply raked windscreens, sculpted fenders and oval windows, each was impossibly beautiful yet subtly different to the next.

At its unveiling at the 1937 Paris Motor Show, the new coupe was dubbed “Goutte d’Eau” — literally “water drop” — a term was quickly anglicised into “teardrop,” which endures to this day.

While the Jeancart coupes all exhibited an elegant notch-backed side profile, the second-series cars were even more pure in aesthetic terms.

They were launched at the 1937 New York Auto Show, hence they were called the “New York” cars.

Ten were built on 104-inch T150-C SS frames, and one on the 116-inch T23 chassis.

All were powered by a 175-horsepower (about 130kW) version of the dependable T150-C engine.

The latter, on chassis 90117, was the penultimate of the “New York” models built, and the only one with the distinction of being the sole Goutte d’Eau coupe squarely aimed at a career in competition.

It was commissioned by Philippe Régnier de Massa, a member of one of France’s oldest and most decorated noble families.

He specified items such as additional driving lights, a 250-km/h speedometer, a semi-bucket driver’s seat, reinforcement tubes and brackets in the engine bay, a long-range fuel tank, and an external fuel filler cap.

The car also had an opening rear window and a unique heart-shaped sunroof.

De Massa entered his car in the 1939 Le Mans 24-Hour, with co-driver Norbert-Jean Mahé, who had finished 9th in the 1934 event.

The pair were running strongly in 9th place but they dropped out on the 88th lap for reasons variously attributed to either a broken valve spring or disqualification for a contravention of the some regulation.

No other outings are recorded for the car during de Massa’s ownership.

WWII broke out barely 10 weeks after Le Mans and the car was confiscated by the German forces in 1942 – and disappeared.

It was found in 1945, neglected and sans engine by a man called Becker of Rangsdorf, East Germany.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989, chassis #90117 after its many years behind the Iron Curtain, was sold to Peter Schmitz, of western Germany.

He started restoring it, but only had it until 1995, when it was sold in an unfinished state to Automuseum Deventer in The Netherlands.

France and the iconic Citroen 2CV

The correct-type Talbot-Lago engine was eventually found in the UK and subsequently fitted.

In 1996, ownership of the car then passed to George Lingenbrink of San Diego, California, who started a comprehensive six-year restoration.

In 2006, chassis #90117 entered the famed Oscar Davis Collection, and in 2007 it made its first public appearance in 68 years at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance.

Then in 2010 it took several ‘firsts’ at Villa d’Este in Europe, including the Trofeo BMW Group – Best of Show and the publicly selected Trofeo BMW Groupe Italia.

Not to mention the Louis Vuitton Concours Classic Award, intended to recognise the “best of the best” among the world’s concours-winning automobiles, which followed in 2011.

It sold at auction in Monterey, California, a couple of years ago fetching US $7,265,000, (AU$11.4 million).

So advanced was the chassis of the 1938 Talbot-Lago T150-C SS coupe that it was the underpinnings of the brand’s successful T-26 Grand Prix racer up to 15 years later.

Doug Whiteford won the Australian Grands Prix of 1952 and ’53 in a T-26 and the car – regarded as one of the most attractive monopostos of its era – is still in Australia, owned by motorsport legend Vern Schuppan.

What of Antonio Lago?

Described as ‘a ruthless businessman with great charm’ he was awarded the Legion d’Honneur by the French government for the glory he brought to France.

He was a major in the Italian Air Force in WWI, survived a professional hit squad and went on to create one of the world’s most spectacular and successful brands.

He died in Paris in December 1960, aged 67. He is buried at Predore, near Milan.

The famed carrossiers Figoni & Falaschi were forced to shut down their business after WWII when demand for such specialised work dropped to a trickle.

Ovidio Falaschi returned to Italy to run a hotel and Joseph Figoni spent the second half of his life in a successful garage business.

In the short time the two men worked together, they produced some of the most desirable coachwork ever fitted to a rolling chassis.

The Teardrop Talbot Lago is no doubt the duo’s highlight and can be considered the fitting finale of four decades of highly individual custom designed coachwork.

The curvaceous Talbots remain among the world’s most desirable motor cars.