As ever, doing it in style, the organisers of this year’s Paris show put on another memorable event. In 2008, proceedings were enlivened by the presence of a Classic Driver stand complete with 1965 Ford GT40.

The light blue car, chassis 10113 from 1965, has been a familiar sight on circuits this year, complete with its Classic Driver decals.

One of the themes of this year’s Rétromobile was the 'Woman and the Car', as well as a celebration of 60 years of the Citroën 2CV, and 30 of the BMW ‘M’ models. Manufacturer presence is always high at Rétromobile, 2008 being no exception, so there were big stands from all ‘the locals’ as well as BMW Mobile Tradition and Daimler Classic.



On BMW’s stand were examples of a BMW Junior Team 320i, as well as one of the famous M1 Procars. The classic car traders present maybe did not seem as numerous as usual, although they did include Classic Driver dealers Thiesen. Needless to say, the car club stands did themselves proud with superb efforts by the amicales of Facel Vega, Delage, Hispano-Suiza, Lancia and Morgan.



Publisher Whitefly had come all the way from Argentina to present its new ‘Ferrari Argentina - Sports Cars’ book – to be reviewed on Classic Driver in the near future. The exhibition is well known for its automobilia, books and models, the many stands providing hours of browsing time for visitors.

On the auction front, Bonhams conducted a successful sale in the exhibition centre itself on Saturday evening (full report to come on Classic Driver) while Artcurial held a sale the very same day at the Palais des Congrès. One of the high-sellers at Artcurial was the LHD 1961 Aston Martin DB4 Series III achieving EUR 320,664, while the 1969 Lamborghini Miura P 400 S made EUR 320,664. RM Auctions was showing two entries from its forthcoming Maranello sale, the 1958 LWB Ferrari 250 GT California Spyder and the 1960 Ferrari Dino 246S.

Please click HERE to see the full Artcurial results.

Please click HERE to see the full Bonhams results.
















Text: Classic Driver
Photos: Gilles Danger