Fabulous Forgotten Collections Fabuleuses collections oubliées
by Christian Martin
“The key to good relations with him was to not want to buy anything from him: he rarely parted with a car or motorcycle. In the 90s, the reputation of the place began to spread and allowed him to have a strong attendance from all over Europe . . . which satisfied a certain taste for spectacle and staging on his part!”
(French / English) Junkyard tourism, who knew that’s a thing?
But more importantly, the reference to someone not wanting to ever sell anything is a common denominator to the eight mostly French collections featured here (Mahy, Périnet-Marquet, Gérard Gombert, Bordeaux, Héron, Baillon, Terzulli, Delafon) as is the fact that simply amassing stuff is an entirely different matter from a curated collection in which everything is in working order.
That photo of the car on the cover would have been seared into your mind if you paid attention to cars in 2014/15. It was part of the Baillon Collection of utterly derelict but mostly original cars that would go to auction in 2015 attracting a record audience that was willing to pay record prices no matter how un/important the artifact on the block. Why? Because of the mystique that had attached itself to that “sensational” collection of barn finds.
Do we laugh? Do we cry? It seems like a tragedy—a Miura body shell, several Miura engines, elsewhere an AC with a Cobra body (it’s referred to as a Bristol but how likely is that?) and an Alpine that ran at Le Mans.
In our review of the Baillon book we wrote that a whole lot more of the backstory had yet to be told, and this book does that to some extent. The author had written that he really wasn’t able to grasp the totality of what he saw, and that is an experience that could apply to anything in this book. Given the brevity of the narrative it is difficult to understand what drives collectors who are disinclined to then act as proper custodians.
Are dealing with a hoarder here or a connoisseur?
Linen cover with deep debossing of a Bentley and falling leaves.
“The most beautiful coffee table books, combining art and literature” is the French publisher’s tagline and it is obvious they have clear ideas about paper (matte, coated, 200 g) and printing (in China) and the book as an art form. The typesetting side, not so much (and we won’t even say anything about the translation but that is really a low-level factor here), especially the word spacing in narrow columns is wildly inconsistent. The Table of Contents has been banished to the back of the book, another sign that unconventional thinking is at work here.
It is really the photos that carry the story; details on the cars in the collections or the specific photos in the book are scant (cf. model, exact type, coachwork, chassis number etc.). The book is large and so are many of the photos so you can play detective on your own.
The book is 9 x 13″ so photos like this make every single texture appear lifelike.
Author Christian Martin (b. 1954) is a trained photographer and here described as “the Michelangelo of beautiful mechanics.” He certainly has an eye for composition and atmosphere. Since so many of the photos are printed full bleed, meaning they go to the edges of the paper on all sides and across the gutter, the book is in ideal candidate for being displayed open, to which end the publisher offers transparent plexiglass book stands in different colors (€100).
In centimeters the book measures 25 x 33; the publisher also sells individual sizes of photographs (the smallest being 50 x 70 cm) on different types of media; they range in price from €160 to €4800) so this book is really not so expensive.
The building in which the Terzulli Collection is housed looks almost civilized but the way the cars are parked makes it obvious that they’re not going anywhere.
Copyright 2025, Sabu Advani (Speedreaders.info
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