The Baillon collection: the find that changed everything

Baillon had initially planned to open a museum, but his plans fell through during the 1970s so he instead put the cars he’d collected into storage, and left them. It was only when Artcurial Motorcars visited to assess the forgotten collection that the true scale was unveiled.

“The Baillon collection changed the destiny for Artcurial Motorcars,” says Pierre Novikoff. “That discovery was so huge, and it may never be beaten, and it changed a lot for us. I actually knew the accountant for the Baillons as I had raced against him, and we spoke about some of the cars we knew were there. They got in contact about a year later, but nothing prepared us for what we found.

“They said to not come wearing a suit as there’s not much space to walk around, and from the start we had to walk across the roofs of some cars to reach others, it was incredible. We were supposed to stay an hour, but we spent all day and were still finding things. It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. We only had a month to catalogue everything and organise the auction, so it was very stressful, but just wonderful.”

Top of the pile was the long-lost ex-Alain Delon Ferrari 250GT California Spider, which went on to sell for over €16m. The total sale reached over €25m at Rétromobile in Paris. But that wasn’t all…

“We had another great discovery four years ago when we offered a great collection at the Le Mans Classic,” adds Novikoff. “The owner was passionate about Hispano-Suiza, Grégoire and some very special French cars and he stored the lot in an old cinema. It was like something out of a film itself!”