IMAGINE OPENING THE DOOR to your late uncle’s small unassuming suburban garage and finding a rare car inside that’s worth $4 million.
That’s what happened to an English engineer in 2007, when he unlocked the door of the garage left to him and seven other relatives by his 89-year-old uncle, Dr. Harold Carr. The garage was in Gosforth, an affluent suburb of Newcastle, and the car was a Bugatti Type 57S Atalante coupe.
It had been sitting in Carr’s cluttered, dusty garage since its last tax disc expired in December 1960. Despite its splotchy black paint job, torn and sagging seats, and rusty wire wheels, this barn find Bugatti sold for $4.4 million, including buyer’s premium, at the Bonhams Rétromobile auction in Paris in 2009.
Alongside the Bugatti were two other vintage but less valuable cars—an Aston Martin and an E-Type Jaguar. The heirs sold the Aston Martin, but the Jaguar was in such bad shape that it had to be scrapped.
A childless bachelor, Carr left his estate to his nieces and nephews. They were aware of his Bugatti and other cars but had no idea what they were worth. Carr had both engineering and medical degrees, but he worked as an orthopedic surgeon and was often seen tinkering with his cars while wearing surgical gloves. In later years, Carr became a recluse.
Described by his family as “generous” but “eccentric,” Carr was compared by some in the media to reclusive American millionaire Howard Hughes, due to his passion for machinery and aviation and his obsessive compulsive disorder. Carr had a hoarding instinct that led him to collect everything from 60 years’ worth of office supply receipts to 1,500 German beer steins.
Friends of Dr. Carr told London’s The Daily Telegraph that he likely knew the true value of the Bugatti and that he never answered the door when collectors called on him. Instead, they had to resort to writing offers on notes for neighbors to leave in Carr’s letter box.
Of the 43 Type 57S cars built by Bugatti, only 17 were ordered with the Jean Bugatti–designed Atalante coupe coachwork. The coupe left by Dr. Carr, chassis number 57502, was even more valuable because it was originally owned by prominent British race driver Earl Howe, and because its original equipment (except for some of the interior) was intact, a restoration was possible without relying on replacement parts.
“It has all the finest attributes any connoisseur collector could ever seek, in one of the ultimate road-going sports cars from the golden era of the 1930s,” said James Knight, head of the international motoring department at Bonhams when the auction house announced the car’s sale. Knight and a select group of others knew of 57502 for years but didn’t divulge its whereabouts.
The Type 57S (Surbaisse, or lowered) was built by the Molsheim, France, company from 1936 to 1938 as a high-performance variant of the firm’s road car, the 3.3-liter twin overhead-cam straight eight-cylinder Type 57. Appearing in 1934 the Type 57 rivaled Alfa Romeo, Bentley, and Delage in price and performance, but when customers wanted more speed, Bugatti unveiled the 57S.
Apart from a lowered and shortened chassis, the 57S shared basic components with the Type 57. Its high-compression engine had a dry-sump oiling system derived from the T59 Grand Prix car but was otherwise similar. A Roots blower was optional, but only two supercharged 57SC (Compresseur) cars were built at the factory.
The 57S shared the 57’s four-wheel cable-operated mechanical drum brakes and four-speed manual gearbox. Due to its larger diameter tires, the 57S had a slightly higher speed than the Type 57. Like the standard car, the 57S could be ordered with factory or custom coachwork. The standard chassis cost £590 ($1,629), whereas the 57S chassis was priced at £1,100 ($3,037).
Despite a variety of beautifully styled bodywork, a fine, modern engine, and uncompromising vintage chassis, occupants had to endure the 57S’s sweltering cockpit. The car also had little ground clearance and no independent front suspension (although the 57S had a semi-independent front system) or synchronized gearbox, but hydraulic brakes were introduced in 1938. For twice the price of the standard 57 chassis, the Type 57S, popularly known as the Sport chassis, included special touches like a V-shaped radiator in addition to its lower center of gravity and more potent motor.
The 57S rode on a 130-inch wheelbase and weighed less than 3,000 pounds. Advertised horsepower of its high-compression engine was 175, or 200 horsepower with the Roots blower. The production run of the 57S was brief, in part due to its excessively high manufacturing cost.
It would be hard to find a Bugatti with a more impressive pedigree than this one. Its original owner, Francis Richard Henry Penn Curzon, succeeded to the peerage in 1929 on the death of his father, becoming the Fifth Earl Howe. He resigned his seat in the British House of Commons and at the same time began his long and notable involvement in motor racing.
Howe won Le Mans in 1931 driving an Alfa Romeo, co-driven by Sir Henry Birkin. He competed at Le Mans six times between 1929 and 1935. Howe was close friends with the famed Bentley Boys, and when Dudley Benjafield established the British Racing Drivers’ Club, Howe was elected its first president in 1929. Under Howe’s 35-year stewardship, the BRDC went from a private dining club to one of the most successful and prominent motorsport associations in the world.
In 1928 Howe, as Viscount Curzon, had driven a Type 43 Bugatti with some success in the Ulster Tourist Trophy Race, achieving fastest lap in Class D. From 1929 to 1939, Howe campaigned several more Bugattis—Types 51, 54, and even a Works Team Bugatti Type 59. So it’s not surprising that he chose a Type 57S as his personal road car.
Howe took delivery of his new 57S on June 9, 1937, from Sorel of London, the UK agents for Bugatti. According to the Bonhams catalog, it was liveried in Howe’s racing colors of light blue and black, furnished with pigskin upholstery and equipped with twin spot lights and a split front bumper. Early on Howe added distinctive rear-view mirrors and a luggage rack, replaced the split front bumper with a single bumper, and added a similar rear bumper.
In the May 2009 issue of Sports Car Market, Simon Kidston noted that Howe also installed a removable panel in the dashboard to provide access to the troublesome magneto, extra air vents in the cowl, and ashtrays in the tops of both doors. Howe’s new Bugatti was registered DYK 5 and was a familiar sight in the paddock at British motorsport venues. It shared the motor house at Howe’s Amersham home in Buckinghamshire with a stable of other European and race cars. After hitting a tree with it in 1946, Howe parted with the 57S, but he retained the DYK 5 registration.
According to Bonhams, Howe sold the 57S to the London dealer Car Mart on the condition that the company not sell it in its “Howe blue,” so it repainted the car maroon and reregistered it as EWS 73. Continental Cars Ltd. of Send, Surrey, bought 57502 and sold it to architect John P. Tingay of Eastcote in Middlesex in 1947 for £2,000—a considerable amount of money in those days.
Tingay upgraded the car to 57SC specifications with modified manifolds and the addition of a Marshall K200 supercharger, because Roots units were no longer available. The next owner in January 1950 was Metal Castings Ltd. of Worcester, whose director, Harry Ferguson of Stanklyn House, Stone, Kidderminster, became the owner in March 1951.
Lord Ridley of Blagdon Hall, Seaton Burn, near Newcastle, became the next owner in December 1953. Having campaigned Alfa Romeos and built his own Ridley Special to compete with Herbert Austin’s diminutive supercharged racing cars, Ridley would have been a close acquaintance of Howe’s in prewar racing circles. Although Ridley owned the Bugatti for only a brief time, it was likely seen regularly in Newcastle by Dr. Harold Carr, whose family owned a wholesale business, JJ Macy’s, in that city.
Dr. Carr appreciated the finer things in life and no doubt knew of the motor racing exploits of Howe and Ridley. His choice of a Bugatti Type 57S was not by chance. Prior to acquiring 57502, he had corresponded with well-known sports and competition car dealer J. H. Bartlett of Notting Hill Gate, expressing interest in a Type 57 Atalante coupe. He had also contacted the Board of Trade in February 1955 regarding the possibility of importing a Type 57 from Belgium. Whether by design or coincidence, Dr. Carr bought 57502 for £895 ($2,520) from J. H. Bartlett in April 1955.
No one knows to what extent Dr. Carr used the 57S, but Bonhams believed that he had spent some time trying to enhance the performance of the de Ram shock absorbers and Scintilla Vertex magneto ignition. The car’s odometer showed 26,284 when it was discovered after Dr. Carr’s death. The car was not used during the war and was known to have remained partially dismantled for 47 years in preparation for a full rebuild.
Due to the doctor’s reclusive nature, 57502 remained largely out of sight until his death on June 14, 2007. Being a highly coveted model for collectors, with at least four thought to be in the Musée Nationale de l’Automobile in Mulhouse, France, Bonhams made it the centerpiece of their Rétromobile sale in Paris on February 2, 2009.
The car sold for $4,408,575, including buyer’s premium. This was less than exuberant presale estimates of $9 million by analysts caught up in the hype and hyperbole. But even with the deep pockets required for its restoration, some experts deemed this extraordinary barn find to have been fairly priced.
Bonhams didn’t comment on who the winning bidder was or what the car’s fate might be, but Simon Kidston reported in Sports Car Market magazine that 57502’s new owner plans to do as little as possible cosmetically and retain the Marshall blower, which is part of the car’s lineage.