by Wallace Wyss –

Now there is, I dare say, no more bombastic a person in the old car biz than Gary Wales of Woodland Hills, California.

I have known him for decades, and always like basking in his shadow as he recounts yet another tale from the world of classic cars. I even have devoted two chapters in my Incredible Barn Finds books to specific cars he owned, the Ferrari 250 Breadvan that was built by an Italian count to unseat the rule of the Ferrari GTO and the ’47 art deco styled Bentley he restored and sold for a then unheard of amount for a postwar Bentley.

Now where I owe him the apology is about the Bentley he restored. It was rococo in the extreme, over the top, and I always suspected he over ornamented the car to make it more flashy, particularly changing the windshield from one pane to two separate panes so he could add that little bit more chrome in the center.

But now I was looking at a Bentley book and realized, damn, the car existed with a two piece windscreen some 50 years earlier so he was only bringing it back to an earlier look.

The 1947 Bentley Mk VI Franay Drophead Coupe was styled by Franay in France, on a Mk. VI chasiss. Usually the Mk. VI cars came with a modestly designed standard steel body but a few went out to coachbuilders.

You kind of wonder why Franay, not the most swoopy coachbuilder, got away with stealing the flowing lines of his flashier rivals, like Figoni et Falaschi and Saoutchik but, hey, you got to give the customer credit for even insisting on a perpetuating a prewar body style when it was already three years after WWII and the design themes they were stealing were prewar.

Rolls-Royce was no doubt happy to see a custom being built but they knew that the times before the war would never come back when people would order chassis and then go through the catalogs of coachbuilders to order a custom built design, like you would order a bespoke suit tailored for you on Saville Row. Oh, there were still English coachbuilders, i.e. Freestone & Webb, Hooper, James Young, Mulliner, and the like but the whole idea of ordering a coachbuilt car was dying out fast.

The Bentley Mk VI was the first Rolls-Royce produced with a standard steel body and sold new for 4,038 pounds sterling, including purchase tax—enough to buy a dozen Fords of the day.

The man ordering the car that became Gary Wales’ dream project was a French industrialist who fortunately had a pre-war concept of aerodynamics and glamor.

The car, S/N B20BH, was destined to be the 1947 Paris show car for Carrossier Franay. Fortunately, soon after the war, the French re-started the concours making it similar to those before the war , only different from the fanciest concours in the U.S. today, new cars were entered, and judged on the elegance of their coachwork. So it became the fashion to order a special car built for you and show it off.

This one went on to finish first at two concours at Enghien and Boulogne in 1948. One story says the car was sent back to the coachbuilder for a refresh which included even more baroque trim. At that time, the original 4-1/4 liter engine was replaced with the new Bentley 4-1/2 liter engine and dual exhaust. Not to worry that the car would get “dinged” at a concours for a non-original engine, as it’s all in the factory records.

The car was later sold off to England, then was exported to the U.S. where it went through a series of owners, among them the late Sergio Franchi, an opera singer, Broadway star and early supporter of the Pebble Beach Concours. It isn’t surprising that late Lorin Tryon, co-chairman of the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance for almost 30 years, saw the car and bought it in somewhat decrepit condition.

THE TRADE

In 1979, well-known Bentley enthusiast Gary Wales of California, bought the car from Tryon. The transaction, like a lot of things in Gary’s life, came about by pure serendipity, i.e right place, right time.

Here’s the story: one time Wales was selling Bentley parts to a friend over the phone and the guy mentioned “Hey, Gary, did I ever tell ya I used to own a coachbuilt French car?”
The whole story is in one of my Incredible Barn Finds books, but here it condensed down to a nutshell: Gary invites the guy over, plies him with the best French wine and before ya know it, the guy agrees to take Gary down to the ‘hood where the car was. By the way it was a Talbot Lago.

When I say ‘hood, I mean a place where the murder rate was approaching that of, say, Baghdad. But no matter, Gary had his flame lit and was going on full afterburner. Now bear in mind it was what, 20 years after the guy sold the car. So this guy thinks he can remember where it is. After several hours Gary’s parts supplier recognizes the old service station the Talbot owner used as his shop and they stop. The man who had bought the car is there. They ask him breathlessly, “do you still have the car?”

He does.

Minor problem, tho. The car was still there, at the man’s house, but had been stored in a garage that collapsed. Fortunately, the swoopy fenders had been off the car so it was salvageable. At that time still being a Ferrari guy on his way to being a Bentley guy, Wales did a quickie re-do of the car, which was then powered by a Cadillac, and took it up to Monterey to watch the vintage races.

AN INVITE TO HEAVEN

At that time the concours co-big wig, i.e. Tryon, used to come over to the racetrack and invite ten cars to the concours, in a sort of hands-cross-the-water spirit, and invited Wales and the Talbot. Once he reached Pebble, Tryon noticed that a crowd was gathering around the Talbot – a car not even in the judging – and sidled up to Wales and said something to the effect of “Y’know, I like that car. What say we do a little horse-tradin’?” Wales, his antennae now at full array, said “What ‘cha got?” and Tryon took him to his garage with the by now sad looking Bentley. Hey Wales was a Bentley guy. Duck soup, the trade was done.

Wales recognized the car’s pedigree but knew from the get-go that Franay modifications in 1951 were missing.

To his credit, Gary didn’t jump into the restoration immediately. No, he took years to buy photographs and it wasn’t until 1988 that he felt confident he could restore it to its unique design.

Years later, the restored Mark VI chassis rolled across the field at Pebble Beach to compete in the Postwar European Custom Coachwork class.

It easily earned first place. Since the modifications to the original design were done in the original era, and by the same coachbuilder, with authentic documentation, it was determined to be the real deal. Now of course Gary, being Gary, did a couple things that were controversial. He showed it around with a frog mascot in place of the flying “B.” He put the flying B back on for judging. I also questioned the frogskin upholstery but now that the windshield is authenticated as “in period” I am sure that at some point in time the car had an unusual upholstery material.

When another car received top honors at Pebble, it was announced that the Franay Bentley missed receiving Best in Show by a mere 1/10th of a point, the closest margin in Pebble Beach Concours history.

Gary Wales got a world class amount of publicity for the car, and deserved it, I think he is a model for: 1) recognizing a diamond in the rough 2) taking the time to research the car before he started restoring it. I especially enjoyed hearing that he and his wife took the car to France and drove it about in its original settings, sort of re-living history y’might say. I can just see them in my mind’s eye, both with big straw hats and summer clothes, toodling down the Promenade de la Croisette in Cannes, the whole world seeing what grand touring used to be.

Last I saw Gary he was showing some unique baroque vehicles based on old fire engines, these new creations more whimsical than anything that has a chance of winning Pebble. But hey, Gary’s done the concours thing, and, oh by the way, he sold that Bentley for $1,728,000.

Let us know what you think in the Comments.

THE AUTHOR: Wallace Wyss recounts this and similar tales in his series of books sold under the Incredible Barn Finds imprimatur from Enthusiast Books, Hudson, WI.

Photos above from Bentley Spotting.