| Monterey Sports & Classic Car Auction Friday, August 17, 2007 - Saturday, August 18, 2007 |
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| 1937 Delage D6-3L Grand Prix Race Car | ||||||||
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Specifications: 137hp, 2,988cc overhead valve six-cylinder engine, four-speed Cotal electric preselector gearbox, independent front suspension with transverse leaf spring, live rear axle with semi-elliptic leaf springs, four-wheel drum brakes. Wheelbase: 3,188mm (125.5") From the beginning, Louis Delage believed that racing success would sell cars. A year after founding Delage & Cie. he fielded two cars in the Coupe des Voiturettes de L’Auto, a grueling weeklong contest. One crashed, but the other finished second to a Sizaire et Naudin. Thus began a long and quite successful association with the sport. In 1908, three single-cylinder Delages ran the Grand Prix de l’Automobile Club des Voiturettes at Dieppe, finishing first, fifth and twelfth. Louis Delage had been right: orders for new cars poured in and he had to enlarge his factory. In 1913, a team of Type Y cars with 6-liter engines finished the Grand Prix de France at Le Mans in first, second and fifth places. Buoyed by success, drivers Thomas and Guyot took two of them to the 1914 Indianapolis 500, where Thomas’s victory and Guyot’s third established Delage’s reputation abroad. Heady with success, Louis Delage commissioned his designer, Arthur-Léon Michelat, to work up a double-overhead-cam four of 4.4-liters for the 1914 French Grand Prix. Michelat chose vertical shaft drive for his camshafts and operated the valves desmodromically, without springs. The performance of this Type S was underwhelming, finishing eighth place in the race. Then war intervened and cars were mothballed. In 1916, they were purchased by the American sportsman Harry Harkness. Barney Oldfield placed fifth in one at Indy that year, and a cadre of drivers campaigned them at Sheepshead Bay with varying results. After the war, Delage launched a series of six-cylinder sprint cars. A 5-liter version won its first outing at the Mont Ventoux hill climb in 1922; a 6-liter car managed second at the Gaillion Hill climb in 1923, bested by Delage’s new Type DH, a huge one-off 10.7-liter V12. With Thomas at the helm, this car set a new European speed record in March 1924, and a new world’s record of 143.31 mph in July. At the other end of the scale was the 2LCV, a 2-liter V12 designed for the French Grand Prix of 1923. A miracle of miniaturization, it had a tiny 51 mm bore and dual overhead cams. It had, said historian Griffith Borgeson, “an appearance of airiness, delicacy and mechanical elegance unique in history.” The 2LCVs were the scourge of the European Grands Prix in 1924 and ’25, compiling an enviable record in France, Spain and Belgium. For 1926 and 1927, when a 1.5-liter limit replaced the 2-liter formula, Delage developed an even smaller engine, a 1.5-liter twin-supercharged straight eight. This marvelous machine achieved two victories in Grands Prix in France, Britain, Spain during 1926 and five in 1927 – as well as winning a 500-mile race at Rafaela, Argentina. Louis Delage had realized his ambition, the European Grand Prix championship, but it had cost him dearly. The equivalent of $210,000 dollars (in 1927 alone) was more than he could afford; the racing effort was abandoned at the end of the season. His company, too, was not long to survive under his domain. By 1935, Delage & Cie. was in receivership, shortly to be taken over by rival Delahaye. A revival of racing occurred under the new management, with Delahaye 135 Speciale chassis powered by Michelat-designed six-cylinder 3-liter pushrod engines. Louis Gérard, co-driving one of these D6-3Ls with Jacques de Valence, came in fourth at Le Mans in 1937, and second, with Georges Monneret, in 1939. Failing to finish Le Mans in 1938, Gérard easily won that year’s Royal Automobile Club Tourist Trophy race at Donington Park. A further five cars were constructed after World War II, tuned to 142bhp. One of them finished second at Le Mans in 1949. The circumstances of this car’s birth and early life are unknown. Its second career began in Argentina around 1976, when Luis “Lucho” Clucellas purchased a bare chassis from a friend named Claudio. Similar to that of a Delahaye 135 MS that was known to have run at Le Mans in 1937, the original car was thought to have been a Delahaye rally car of the Coupe des Alpes type. Juan Rocha, regarded as a local mechanical genius, put the car together, after which it was clothed in aluminum by Hugo Galicio. The source of the engine has been forgotten, but Rocha built up the Cotal electromagnetic preselector gearbox out of accumulated parts. Since the car was to have a Delage engine, it was decided to build a replica of that driven by Gérard in the 1938 Tourist Trophy race. Some artistic license, however, was applied by Galicio in the tail of the body and to the fenders, which were given Bugatti treatment. Clucellas decided that painting Galicio’s magnificent craftsmanship would be criminal, so the car was left unpainted – and is so to this day. After a year or two, Clucellas lost interest and sold the car to Michael Dellepiane, who raced it extensively into the early 1980s. Delage expert Robert Macnie remembers losing to Clucellas on the dirt track at San Andrés de Giles as “great fun”. The car was imported to the U.S. in the early 1990s. The present owner purchased it in 1998 and had it meticulously restored three years ago. No detail was overlooked, no part left untouched. The engine was rebuilt to Delage factory racing specifications, devised for maximum endurance and reliability. It has been rallied by the consignor, flawlessly finishing the Colorado Grand, the annual 1000-mile vintage rally, in 2005 and 2006, earning honors as “Prime Motoring Fool”. This very exciting Delage is thoroughly sorted and ready to rally or race, and represents a rare chance to acquire a turnkey automobile for vintage motor sports competition. |
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