CarBuyersNoteBook

1937 Bugatti Type 57S Coupe

Bonham’s Paris auction recently sold a 1937 Bugatti Type 57S coupe for $4.4 million. The startling thing wasn’t its rusty trim. faded paint and worn interior – it’s that the car’s condition likely hiked up its selling price. A decade ago, a buyer probably would have sent this Bugatti in for a megabuck restoration. According to Rob Sass, a vintage-car expert whose writing has appeared in the New York Times and Sports Car Market magazine, a sympathetic mechanicals-only restoration is the trend these days. “Under the circumstances, restoring the car might well be cause for regret,” notes Sass. Some of this may be due to the influence of PBS’s popular Antiques Roadshow, where objects excavated from attics and basements are brought to experts who often warn owners about cleaning their finds – and possibly polishing off thousands of dollars.

Does that mean every rusty heap is now a preservation-class classic? Hardly, it is the cars that were rare, valuable, and important to begin with that are most valued, cars whose histories are worth preserving in their unaltered, often imperfect, original states.