Description
Estimate: 50, 000 € / 70, 000 €.
This car will be sold during an auction sale organized by AGUTTES.
It will take place in Paris, at the Espace Champerret, France, on March 15th, 2026.
The digital catalog is available on our website.
Please contact us for any further details.
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1951 - Cadillac Series 61 Club Coupe "Cunningham Le Mans Chassis no. the details below French collector's registration Viewing instructions: Short chassis, big V8, mecha gearbox: the first muscle car to shine at Le Mans! Since 1941, General Motors has offered an astonishing Cadillac Series 61, in sedan or coupe form, an entry-level model designed to fill the gap left by the demise of the LaSalle brand, between Buick (luxury) and Cadillac (very high luxury). Little did anyone suspect that, with the tumbled V8 introduced in 1949, and a redesigned body, this workhorse would turn into a racehorse... With their distinctive rear fins, said to have been inspired by the mythical Lockheed P-38 Lightning aircraft, post-1948 Cads make their mark. And what can we say about the 61 Fastback Sedannet, a coupé considered to be one of the greatest masterpieces of all time, from which the Bentley Cresta Facel or the Continental Type R drew their inspiration? In 1950, to differentiate it from the poor man's Cadillac, the Fastback Sedannet Coupé was shortened by 10 cm. It wasn't a great success, however, and only 14, 200 Series 61 Short Chassis were built, only a handful of them with the optional mechanical gearbox... With its 164 hp V8 and featherweight (around 1. 7 t), it didn't take long for some to see the beast's potential. Including Briggs Cunningham, who wrote a test for The Motor: "The Series 61 Fastback Sedan with mecha gearbox accelerates harder than the new Jaguar XK 120, and probably than any other production car in the world". Its 0 to 100 km/ h time of 11 seconds speaks for itself... The same Cunningham entered two Series 61s with mech. gearbox and short axle in the 1950 Le Mans 24 Hours: an ungainly and imposing "barquette" nicknamed Le Monstre, and a production version christened Petit Pataud. The latter finished 10th at Le Mans, in the hands of brothers Miles and Sam Collier. In the same year, two identical examples finished 2nd and 3rd in the dreaded Carrera Panamericana, achieving several feats, including being the 1st car in the world to win a special stage on an open road at over 160 km/ h! How many mechanical gearbox Cadillac Coupé 61s were sold? Nobody knows, at Cadillac or elsewhere! Customers all wanted "the best gearbox in the world" (sold confidentially to Lincoln and Rolls for a few years), and didn't care about the "old" mechanical gearbox that gave them a few extra horsepower. The copy illustrating these pages was acquired in the early 1990s, in the USA, by the indefatigable and inimitable Fenouil, journalist, writer, pilot and Dakar legend (participant and top pilot in the first 13 editions), creator of the Tunisia and Pharaons rally-raids and organizer of incredible vintage rallies. Where this astonishing and extremely rare Cadillac once again came up trumps. Offering incredible performance and a superb patina, and eligible for Le Mans Classic in particular, this sublime and emblematic Cad' is sure to seduce an enlightened enthusiast.
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