Retro Mobile Paris

ian,
No discounts offered to clubs.
The only way to save is to purchase an advance day ticket at €14, rather than “at the door”. Alternately, if you can persuade 9 other like minded souls, entry is €12 each for a group of 10.

Having attended since 2008, I’m giving it a miss for a bit.

I see that there are still some £34.50 singles from London to Paris and Paris to London available, so if you are in the UK and haven’t yet visited Retromobile, this is a good a chance as any!

see: http://en.retromobile.com/

Thanks for that Ian, I am a member of TU but didn’t know that.

I assume it is just one ticket per member.

Just got back from Paris and Retro Mobile. This was the 2nd year I have been and it will probably be the last. It was a little too “Haute Gamme” as they say in French. The cars were too high a level for any normal enthusiast. A few people said the same thing to me while we were there. There were 16 of a certain model of Mercedes there with a price tag of a minimum €800K each. There was not one Renault 4L and only around 3 2CVs. There was one Traction on the Traction Universelle club stand and a couple of DS which was lucky as this is the 60th year of the DS.

I did get some parts for the Traction but other than that it was a long two days of walking around and bumping into people, specially the pretentious 50 to 60 somethings dragging along their 20 year old girlfriends and their auction paddle.

I like shows where you can touch and feel cars that you could actually own one day and not view shiny polished sports cars of some millionaires dreams.

It was good to see the Collection Baillon which was the barn find of 60 cars early last year. Interesting but these cars will probably never see the light of day again now they have been cautioned off. We were talking to a a group of American guys in the bar of the hotel and they were chatting about the collection. I said we were searching for parts for our Traction and 2CV van. The next day we saw them at breakfast and they asked if we found what we were looking for, laughing we said yes, good value too. I asked him if he had fun at the auction and he said they got the car they wanted but at €1.45 million it was a little more expensive than they would have hoped. €1.45 million for a pile of rust…… I think I prefer driving my little 2CV or Traction than looking at a pile of rust, then again it is the same thing with a 2CV 🙂

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Then it was a trip into Paris

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And finally freezing our nuts off after a shopping trip to M&S we found ourselves on this famous street.

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The the reported sale prices were “way off” the estimates according to this link:
http://lautomobileancienne.com/resultat-vente-artcurial-collection-roger-baillon/
Either someone was being very pessimistic or the bidders just “had to have it, no matter what the cost”!

I’m trying to get the figures for the next days’s sales but they aren’t posted yet :
http://www.artcurial.com/en/asp/results.asp and select the sale

But will they restore them?

Every car was as they found them, a couple of finger prints etc but dust, cobwebs and mud were all part of the cars.

I bet they stick them in a glass box and brag they have the only €2 million dollar bucket of rust 🙂