Chassis No. T26GS110102 The T26 Grand Sport Anthony Lago presented the T26 Grand Sport in bare chassis form at the 1947 Paris Salon. It was a direct descendant of the legendary prewar T150 C-SS and it was to be his swan song. The new Grand Sport rode on the same short 265 centimeter wheelbase which was shared with the prewar racing cars, and the construction and layout, as well as the mechanicals, were conventional and represented classic mid-1930s technology and fast-car thinking. The chassis on the T26 GS was low, as the two rails passed under the rear axle and suspension. The engine, Wilson pre-selector transmission, firewall, and suspension components were bolted directly onto the chassis. The steering was worm and sector, and the front suspension was independent with a transverse leaf spring. The live rear axle was suspended by half-elliptic leaf springs, with the suspension mounts on top of the chassis rails. There was a short transaxle between the engine and transmission which assisted weight distribution, followed by an equally short driveshaft. Since it was in the middle of the chassis, the transmission created a hump in the middle of the floor of the cabin just in front of the seats. For repairs and maintenance, the transmission could be accessed through the floor in the interior of the car. The chassis had a foot-operated one-shot lubrication system with a pedal actuated by the driver. The gas tank was a large 120-liter affair mounted on the chassis rails behind the rear axle. The complete chassis with all components and ancillaries weighed around 850 kilograms dry. With a full tank, oil, and water, the entire chassis assembly was still just under a ton. The jewel in the crown was the magnificent 4.5-liter six-cylinder twin-cam engine featuring hemispherical combustion champers that Anthony Lago had developed during the War with Carlo Marchetti, his chief engineer. Not only was this bespoke motor lovely to look at with its polished Art Deco valve covers, but it also gave exceptional torque; in Grand Sport tune, output was an impressive 190 horsepower. For a short while, the T26 GS was the fastest production car in the world, as well as one of the most expensive and exclusive. It was a grand gesture and the final flowering in France of the great tradition of the truly custom-built motorcar. The Grand Sport was a profoundly bespoke and outrageously exclusive chassis, and in fact, the last chassis-only automobile model that was presented to the public in France. Because of its stratospheric price and inherent good taste, it appealed to a genuinely sophisticated clientele, who could appreciate its pedigree and aesthetics. It was a chassis that demanded truly unique hand-crafted bodies which in turn gave admission, no questions asked to concours events at the highest level. In short, the Talbot-Lago T26 Grand Sport was the embodiment of French haute couture in metal, and truly the last of a kind. The Dubos Frères Coupe is regarded as the body style that was sanctioned personally by Anthony Lago. It was designed by Carlo Delaisse, a well-known freelance designer who had created bodies for the great coachbuilders Vanvooren, Franay, Chapron, and Letourneur et Marchand. For this reason, it was the Dubos Frères Coupe that was depicted in the 1948 Talbot factory brochure, illustrated with an imaginative charcoal drawing by the famous illustrator Piet Olyslager, as the first body was yet to be built. T26 Grand Sport chassis 110102 was delivered to its first owner, a certain Mr. Wight Whiting, on 27 September 1949. The body had been commissioned by Talbot directly from Dubos Frères and was first used for concours showings in Paris in June and July of that year, prior to being sold to Whiting. The chassis received Dubos Frères body number 6162, a number which is visible on the coachbuilder plaque mounted on the inner door sill. 110102 was the second GS by chassis number and received engine, transmission, and rear axle numbers 114 - like Bugatti, Talbot did not match mechanical component numbers to the chassis number. All these original mechanical components are still fitted to chassis 110102. Style and Design The style of the Dubos Frères Coupe is not as flamboyant as most Grand Sport bodies. The design itself is a semi-pontoon, very modern for its time and largely devoid of the ornamentation and unnecessary embellishment so favored by the grand carrossiers, all of which would have added weight. With its very long hood, short rear deck, and smart coupe roof line, the result was a racy and purposeful sports car that spoke loudly of speed. In keeping with the car’s sporting nature, the distance between the axles was so short in relation to the large 18-inch wheels that the rear wheel arch encroached upon the door opening. This in turn prevented a full roll-down side-window construction. For this reason, a rear-mounted vent window was incorporated, which foreshadowed the vent windows on the Touring-bodied Maserati 3500 and 5000 GT Allemano body styles some eight to ten years later. The main concessions to creature comfort were the fitted suitcase behind the seats and a manual sliding sunroof (a patented Dubos specialty) which also helped ventilate the cockpit on warm days. These details are important for an understanding of Lago’s original vision for the Grand Sport model: Despite its eye-watering price, this was to be a raw and minimalistic sports car and as close as technically possible to the Grand Prix cars. With no unnecessary frills to dilute its focus, it was a car to be raced on Sunday and used as a daily driver on Monday. Some owners rose to the challenge, others did not. In this way, the Dubos Frères Coupe showed the hand of Anthony Lago at work. Tellingly, it was the model he chose to picture in his brochure and show on the Talbot stand at the 1948 Salon. With its relatively light construction, the Dubos Frères Coupe turned the Grand Sport chassis into an automobile where form followed function. From this perspective, many Grand Sport chassis ended up somewhat over-bodied and the Dubos comes across as a more appropriate design for the GS chassis than the larger Saoutchiks. The Dubos Frères Coupe was a different beast: an aggressive, balanced no nonsense, masculine, and luxuriously ascetic go-fast machine for the few connoisseurs astute enough to decode its precise purpose. The Dubos Frères body was finished new in Noir Soudée, a black nitrocellulose shade, with a lighter interior in piped leather. This interior is believed to have been red, and that is how it is finished today. Chassis 110102 made its first public appearance at the Concours d’Élégance du Bois de Boulogne which took place on 23 June 1949. The car was not registered and wore number 3931-WO, a dealer plate belonging to Talbot. It was there shown by Madame Marc Soudée, née Françoise Guerlain, and won a Grand Prix, namely the Coupe Parfums Carven. Monsieur Soudée was president of the company that bore his name and supplied paint to Dubos Frères. The concours win was publicized in the July 1949 issue of l’Equipment Automobile, while the Soudée paint company ran ads in the newspaper Le Figaro. The April 1950 issue of Road & Track featured an image of 110102 taken by the legendary car dealer Roger Barlow of International Motors in Hollywood, California. The photo was taken in California as it showed Barlow’s wife Louise behind the wheel. Given the deadline for delivering photographs to a magazine, 110102 is likely to have been on the West Coast of the USA as early as December 1949 or January 1950. Factoring in the transit time from France to California, it seems that 110102 was very likely exported shortly after it was sold to Whiting at the end of September 1949. This is supported by the fact that the badge on the hood of 110102 and the chassis plate both read LAGO and not TALBOT, as Lago was used by the factory for chassis that were exported. Since his name is on the production card, it is likely that Whiting imported the car to the USA, although it is evident that he kept 110102 for a very short time. Barlow sold 110102 to the renowned racing driver and exotic car dealer/importer Otto Zipper, who raced the car, but the year of the transaction is unknown. A colleague and competitor of Barlow as well as a friend of Briggs Cunningham, Otto Zipper operated Precision Motors on the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and 26th Street in Santa Monica. During the 1950s, a number of the most exclusive Delahayes, Bugattis, and Alfa Romeos in the world passed through his hands before he focused his attention on Ferraris in the 1960s. An Austrian immigrant, Zipper was also a personal friend of Tony Lago having previously owned several Lagos including a Pourtout-bodied Teardrop and a GP car. Towards the end of the factory’s life, Zipper ended up with several of the BMW V8-powered Lago Americas as a partial debt settlement from the more or less permanently broke Tony Lago. There is a widely publicized picture, perhaps taken at Laguna Seca, showing Zipper working on 110102. In a handwritten Grand Sport listing made by the late Roland Poncet, the name Schaeffer, USA is listed as a previous owner of 110102. Some years later, 110102 passed to Richard Straman, a well-known Southern California Ferrari restorer. Straman believed that the 8,000 miles shown on the odometer when he acquired it were genuine and that the original tires were still on the car. Straman began a restoration, stripping the car and partially renewing the interior, but did not finish the restoration. On 24 February 1997, he sold 110102 to Jerome Sauls, proprietor of the famous Ritz Garage in Warrington, Pennsylvania. Sauls commissioned a full frame-off restoration, where great effort was made to be correct in every detail. Sauls showed the car at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in August 1998. Collector George Howitt from Belgium purchased 110102 in late 2004. In 2005, he showed the car at Rétromobile in Paris after having it refinished to a high standard. Chassis 110102 was purchased by a well-known Talbot-Lago authority in the summer of 2009. This collector has retained the car since and showed the car at the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este in 2010. Racing and speed were the lifeblood of Anthony Lago. He created the T26 Grand Sport simply because it was something he had to do—even if the economic and political climate was unfriendly to such an extravagant automobile in the early postwar years. But Lago forged ahead regardless, and as a result these cars were extremely rare, even when new. The Grand Sport is not some docile Grand Routiére; it is a high-powered, big-displacement true sports car in the classic sense of that term. A Grand Sport makes its presence heard from a distance, and it runs, drives, and brakes very well. It is a car the makes demands upon its driver and rewards him or her in equal measure. There must be complete involvement at speed, and the exhilaration is palpable. Betty Locke, who owned three T26 Grand Sports, once said about them: the faster they went, the better they went. Indeed.