Just Call It the Wheel Good Life

In the market for a used car?

I can get you a steal. A mint condition, 10-owner convertible or town car. Comes equipped with its own crank, running board, bulb-squeeze horn and wooden wheels. You’ll have to buy your own kerosene for the side lamps and the acetylene headlights are not optional. If you play your cards right, you can get it for just under $2 million.

If you want something fancier, say, a Bugatti Royale, you may have to go to $11 million but it’s just the thing for an afternoon spin in the country. You’ll want to wear your goggles and a duster.

I can get you a stock Horch for a song. About the cost of a villa on the French Riviera. It’s near-new. It was built in 1932.

Maybe you’d prefer a low-mileage 1909 Gabron Brillie if you’re in the market for an import. I guarantee the Japanese never turned out anything like this. You’ll not only be the only one in your block to have one, you’ll be the only one this side of the Rockies.

You want something to whip down to the market? How about an 1895 Benz? Maybe you’d prefer something you’d steer with a rudder? A car that runs on steam? We’d have an inventory clearance on those except we have an inventory of one.

How about a Hispano-Suiza? You’ll have to buy a leopard to go along with this because no self-respecting Hispano-Suiza ever cruised the paths of Hollywood Boulevard without Gloria Swanson and a jungle cat on a leash.

We got a car that might or might not have belonged to Clark Gable, one that could have belonged to Al Capone and a couple that the Kaiser no doubt rolled around in.

These are four-wheeled Picassos I’m talking about, Rembrandts with steering wheels. In the minds of their owners they are glorious works of art. They should hang in the Louvre alongside the Mona Lisa.

They were the quintessential art form of their era. If pieces of furniture lovingly handcrafted by great artisans of the past are considered exquisite representatives art, why not automobiles? Instead of hanging a Monet in your bathroom, why not a 1913 Stevens-Duryea touring sedan in your garage? Chippendale ever turn out anything more artistic? Did Gauguin?

I flew north to this unique event on the 18th fairway at Pebble Beach with L.A.’s mega-tycoon, Marvin Davis. He owns most of the scenery in this country--Pebble Beach, Aspen. He’s also one of the world’s foremost collectors--letters from Benjamin Franklin, Ulysses S. Grant and Eli Whitney adorn his library walls--and he’s currently trying to add United Air Lines or a pro football team to the list.

It was a pleasure to go to Pebble Beach without having to try to par it or hit any 200-yard carries over Monterey Bay, for a change. It was the first sporting event I attended in a long time where they played Mozart, but you know how civilized they can be in Northern California. If they were any more civilized, they wouldn’t be able to breathe. But what else are you going to play at an event known as a concours d’elegance, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame?”

In a way, it was an auto race. Only these were not trying to see who was fastest but who was prettiest. It was such an elegant collection of fancy carriages from the past you felt guilty not looking at them through a lorgnette.

These cars make you want to go home and throw rocks at the family jalopy. These are as handcrafted as a Vatican statue, symbols of an era when workmanship was paramount and Henry Ford had not yet invented the assembly line and made cars as uninteresting as cookies.

You saw marques--that’s an upscale term for brand names--that are as long gone from the American scene as the bison. A 1909 Lozier. The 1904 Peerless. Relics from what is known as the Brass Era of auto making, in honor of the light fixtures and accessories adorning the carriages.

You got your only chance to look at a Delahaye, a Locomobile Torpedo built in 1915, an ever-lovin’ Stutz Bearcat. The Duesenberg Phaetons were there. It was a paleontological exhibit, automotive dinosaurs that no longer roam the American roads, more’s the pity.

You want to know where the Japanese designs come from that dot the American freeways today? The Dream Car exhibit had the answer. These were one-of-a-kind American designs from the past, experimental prototypes Detroit used to glamorize their auto shows.

You remember how your eyes bugged when you went to an auto show as a kid and saw your first Chrysler Airflow, the first car where you couldn’t tell whether it was coming or going? An awesome machine that failed in the marketplace because it was 30 years ahead of its time? Remember the first automatic transmission?

Well, these cars were attendance come-ons. They were never intended for the open road. They were admittedly 20 years ahead of their time and, like certain pharmaceuticals, not deemed suitable for over-the-counter sale till further testing. They were supposed to be shredded, like sensitive documents, after they had served their purpose--as shills for the show, lures for the customers.

Auto lovers spared them from the slaughterhouse. Detroit planned to destroy them before they fell into the hands of people who might crash and sue but the American collector reacted as though someone intended to take a hammer to the Venus de Milo. They spirited the models away and somehow they found their way onto the antique market. Like puppies saved from the pound. No questions asked because the automobile world is glad they were spared.

The Americans’ love affair with the auto and the internal combustion engine is well-documented. You can have your Titians and your Rubens and your Tintorettos. The Mona Lisa may hang in the Louvre but the Spirit of St. Louis hangs in the Smithsonian, and the automobile as objet d’art is as American as corn on the cob, fudge or vaudeville.

It was the best of us. Nobody ever looked at a Rembrandt with more honest awe and devotion than a collector looks at his Silver Shadow Rolls or his 1928 Isotta Fraschini Cabriolet. The Louvre can’t have it.