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1938 Buick opera brougham fernandez & Darrin, which one is the ex-Warshaswky one?


HistoryBuff

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I started a new thread on this car because I feared my previous question about the car would be lost in the Fernandez & Darrin thread. I was fascinated in reading about this car created by Fernandez and Darrin in Paris in 1937 (but finished by Franay) but am a little confused as to which one is which because apparently there are two of them. I would like a referral to a URL that shows pictures of the one Roy Warshawsky of J.C. Whitney fame owned, as I think it's the one that for a while was fitted with a Rolls Royce grille by some high school or college guys who wanted to play like it was a chauffeured limousine. That might have been in Flint MI. I don't know if that is the same car once owned by Countess Max de Polaska of Poland.

This picture at Pebble Beach shows one of the two but I don't know if it was the one temporarily grilled as a Rolls

http://www.ultimatecarpage.com/gallery/41641/Duesenberg-J-Murphy-Custom-Beverly-Sedan.html

Does anyone have an article which says who it was owned by during that "temporary Rolls"

period? I think I heard someone talking about it at a car show once. I wonder what that family sold it for? I'd like to hear a price for it back when it wasn't yet a recognized classic (it really doesn't look Buick-ish until you see the present Buick grille)>

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New information: There was an auction of the Warshawsky auto collection from 1996 which include, the one-of-a-kind car was designed by Fernandez and Darrin in Paris. What I am hoping to find is what Warshawsky paid for it and what it was sold for at the auction. I'd also like to hear from anyone who remembers the teenagers that drove it around with a Rolls grille...pretending it was a Rolls town car

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Got some more history. All I am hoping for is someone to name the price this car was sold for by or to any of these owners. My theory is that, when it wore a Rolls Royce grille, it was the cheapest, because staunch Buick people were turned off by the "customization." But I need to know what it sold for at that price. Here's my potted chronology of ownership:

This is what I found out about the car’s history so far. It was bought in 1938 by Sandra Planginton, the daughter of the man who had planned Grand Central station. She was a socialite, and after marrying a Count, Count Maxmilian de Pulaski (a relative of the famous general) she divorced him and married a Major Tisdale. The Major was a major Rolls collector and it was he who had the whimsical idea of installing a Rolls Royce radiator and a “thistle” hood ornament (still trying to figure out what that is).

It could have been a relative of the major who, with his high school buddies, had fun with the car pretending it was a Rolls Royce chauffeured limo.

It was then sold to a Michael Berry, an attorney in Michigan. He owned it until ’72 when he sold it to Kate Robbins, an assistant to the Classic Car Club of America official and in 1989 she sold it to a famous name in the car world, Roy Warshawsky ( who owned the JC Whitney mail order parts firm ) who is credited with bringing it back to its Buick-grilled state.

He later sold it to the Blackhawk Collection in Northern California and there were three other owners before it reached Wayne Barnes, an official with the Academy of Art in San Francisco, a school which, handily, teaches car design.

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Thanks for any clues on prices, and I welcome opinions of when this car was bargain priced...

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