To Be OFFERED AT AUCTION WITHOUT RESERVE at RM Sothebys' Amelia
Island event, 8 - 9 March 2019.
Estimate:
$100,000 - $125,000
- Offered from the Leon-Hackney Collection
- Single-family enthusiast ownership since 1975
- Formerly owned by legendary enthusiast Burt Upjohn
- Regularly used for chauffeuring family, friends, and "special
visitors"
- Classic Car Club of America (CCCA) Full Classic
Chassis no. S243FP was one of 58 Springfield-built Rolls-Royce
Phantom I chassis fitted with this particularly handsome and
dignified formal coachwork, the St. Stephen, a traditional town car
design with an open driver's compartment for the chauffeur. Like
many of Brewster's town car designs for this chassis, it was
available with or without a collapsible landaulet roof over the
rear seat, in the fashion of horse-drawn carriages.
The original owner of this car, Lina Dolmetsch of Scranton,
Pennsylvania, selected the landaulet roof. Heiress to a large
lacquer paint and New York real estate fortune, she took delivery
of the Phantom I on 9 October 1928. Subsequent owners are recorded
by the Rolls-Royce Foundation as Charles R. Bradshaw of Delphi,
Indiana, from 1951 to 1956, then Denver B. Cornett, Jr., and James
Fogle, both of Kentucky.
Jay and Berta Leon acquired the Rolls-Royce from pharmaceutical
heir and well-known car collector, Burt Upjohn of Kalamazoo,
Michigan, in 1975. The Leons proceeded to drive it home to Hubbard,
Texas, and afterward used it extensively for weddings and local
celebrations. Well-preserved with a gentle patina of use
throughout, the town car is still exceptionally handsome in its
regal maroon and black finish, with a sumptuously appointed
broadcloth interior in the correct material and pattern, and
delightful touches such as heater grates in the floor, to warm
passengers' feet, and a beautiful clock in the division. At the
time of cataloguing it had recorded 82,332 miles, almost all of
them in the company of friends.
"It can hold a lot of people," Jay Leon wrote in The Classic Car in
1990, "and so we drive it for special visitors. Anyone who comes to
Hubbard from the outside is a special visitor." There could be no
better use.
To view this car and others currently consigned to this auction,
please visit the RM website at rmsothebys.com/en/auctions/am19.
