One event largely helped to excite the imagination of aesthetes. In 2015, the sale of the Baillon collection – sixty old models often very rare gathered among the outbuildings of a Château des Deux-Sèvres by two deceased collectors – marked the spirits. To the general surprise, auctions reached 25 million euros while the overwhelming majority of vehicles were reduced to wreckage. Now, in automotive, romantic ruin sells very well. Especially when it is of noble extraction.
A Talbot Lago bodied by Saoutchik but looking like a pile of scrap left for 1.7 million euros. Clou du spectacle, a Ferrari 250 GT (in presentable condition, elle) having belonged to Alain Delon, was auctioned 14,2 million euros after being exposed to the lust of bidders covered with a film of dust. "This episode helped to expand the phenomenon to the category of popular vehicles which now covers a real business", notes Grégory Pelletie" for automobile collectors, the Baillon sale was the discovery of the wreck of the Titanic or an unknown room in the Pyramid of Cheops ", recalls Matthieu Lamoure, director of Artcurial Motorcars, who was the organizer. Since then, auction houses have made themselves a specialty of barn outings . The main attraction of the annual "Automobiles on the fields" sale scheduled to be held in Paris on December 3 by Artcurial Motorcars will be a 1960 AC Bristol roadster. A "discount exit, entirely original, untouched" totaling only 18,000 kilometers specifies the catalog which estimates its value between 300,000 and 500,000 euros.
A barn exit must be treated with special consideration. "It's an aesthete's car, respectful of certain principles," Lamoure says. The latter regrets that the American owner of the famous Ferrari of the Baillon sale finally undertook a full restoration ("down to the key chain," he says) for a budget that would flirt with the million dollars.r.