We might be curious, collector extraordinaire Roger Willbanks mused over dinner, about how cars caught his fancy in the first place.
Willbanks, of Denver, owns the French 1936 Delahaye Type 135 Competition Court Teardrop Coupe, the class of the Art & the Automobile exhibit at the Toronto auto show last February. A year ago, the car won best-of-show and the people's choice awards at the second annual Cobble Beach Concours d'Elegance near Owen Sound, Ont.
This coming weekend, he is returning with a 1930 Duesenberg SJ with a rare Rollston Victoria body. At Concours events throughout North America, Willbanks has become a familiar face.
The love affair began in 1940, when his older brother took him to the Denver car show. He was six. "All these searchlights beamed into the sky, so exciting," he recalls, 75 years later. "I'd never seen anything like it."
No one had seen the Chrysler Thunderbolt concept car presented at that show. Its retractable metal roof and, especially its flush sides, departed from the protruding fenders characteristic of 1930s cars. "I have that car now," he says. In fact, it summered at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, in the Dream Cars Exhibition.
Willbanks's ability to acquire cars began with a degree in business administration and a career with AT&T, "then the biggest, best-managed company in the world." He refused a transfer to New York "because I don't feel as a car guy you'll be too comfortable in that city." He preferred home, his native Denver, where he became a public relations executive and is presently general manager of Royal Publications, publisher of NutriBooks.
Over the years, throughout the career shifts, his passion for unusual automobiles accelerated. "I'd trade cars, sometimes sell cars. Sometimes, they'd go up in value." Ask Willbanks about the number of cars in his collection, and he'll arch an eyebrow.
"Tell me, when you meet somebody who has an art collection, do you ask how many paintings he owns?" Willbanks says. "It's the quality of the art that counts, not the numbers."
He chuckles, before making another point: "Some of these fellows who are known for having collections of hundreds of cars, do you ever wonder, 'Are they all really worthwhile?'"
Willbanks recounted tales of worthwhile cars, all his own. When asked about the Delahaye's steering orientation, he says: "The first car Enzo Ferrari ever made, in 1948, had its steering wheel on the right side. How do I know for sure? Because I own that first Ferrari. Think of how incredible it was, Enzo Ferrari finding the craftsmen to put together an automobile only two years after the war – the country devastated. At one point when he ran out of funds, Ferrari had to sell his wife's handbag, a bag he had given to her, to pay the men working on the car."
A replica of Willbanks's original 125 S is on display in Ferrari's museum in Modena, Italy, he says. "But they gave it chromed spoke wheels. Chrome? In 1947?"
His 1936 Delahaye, a black two-seater with a long, narrow front, has coachwork designed by French builder Figoni & Falaschi. Imagine someone driving the car from Paris to the Riviera for the summer, he says, or racing it.
The record price for a Delahaye, incidentally, stands at $6.6-million (U.S.) – for a 135 with a fantastic, rare torpedo body sold at RM's Amelia Island auction in 2014; a more common 135 MS coupe sold for $990,000 in March.
"At the Art of the Car Concours [in Kansas City], there was a $20-million Ferrari 250 LM everyone thought was sure to be best-of-show," he says. "Twenty-million! My car was not of that calibre. But what do you know, my Delahaye won [in People's Choice balloting; the Ferrari ranked fourth]."
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