“Stinky”: Quail’s Most Interesting Car

This year, what I was looking for was a truly unique car, that neither I, nor anyone else, had seen before, at least not in my lifetime, a car that would blow you away when you saw it. I found what I wanted, and here is the story:

Don Lee started selling Cadillacs in 1906, and was awarded the West Coast distribution in 1919. In 1926, Lee bought KFRC radio in San Francisco, and the next year bought KHJ in Los Angeles. In 1929 he paid for LA’s first television broadcast, and in 1932 broadcast the first motion picture. Eventually, Lee owned twelve stations and became a CBS, and later, Mutual Broadcasting affiliate. To this day the ridge above the famous “Hollywood” sign, where he put his transmitter, is called Mount Lee. But in 1934, Lee succumbed to a heart attack, at only 54 years of age. His son, Thomas (Tommy) Lee inherited the empire, but left business management to CEO Willet Brown, to pursue, as author Lou Brooks has succinctly put it, “his other interests, namely race cars and women.”

Tommy was only 28 when he inherited this empire. He collected cars from all over the world, sponsored race cars, and raced himself. Among the cars that interested him was the Talbot-Lago. Antonio (Anthony) Lago was the genius and inspiration that brought these special cars into the world. In 1934, when the British company Sunbeam Talbot Darracq fell into financial difficulty, the Rootes brothers took over the British operations, and Lago took over the French side. He had some definite ideas about how to make a grande routiere out of the Talbot; a new pushrod OHV hemi-head motor, the Wilson preselector gearbox, and a new IFS transverse spring layout. He asked Figoni et Falaschi to design and build the bodies. The car was a sensation. The first teardrop coupe was shown in 1937.

The young Californian loved his Talbot Lago T-150C SS. He raced it on the street, and he raced it on the dry lakes such as Muroc, in stock form and against the hot rods, which must have been quite a sight. When Tommy owned it, he called it “Stinky”, probably after finding a dead rodent in the car, the hard way.

This car was one of two with this type of coupe body style. Its sister car had an entirely different, more conservative front end and was driven by Rosier/Huguet in the 1938 Le Mans, run as #6 and entered by Luigi Chinetti. The coupes were also called “Faux Cabriolets”. These two coupes were in addition to the fourteen “goutte d’eau” (teardrop) fastback cars bodied by Figoni et Falaschi. Tommy Lee owned four of the Figoni et Falaschi bodied Talbots.

With good looks and unlimited wealth, Tommy lived a life that today’s car collector can only fantasize about (I’m talking about the cars here). On Friday, January 13, 1950 he flew from Palm Springs to LA for an appointment with his dentist at the Pellissier Building. He left the dentist’s office, and, while his chauffeur and nurse waited in the car, took the elevator up one floor, climbed out the window to the fire escape, and jumped to his death, at age 44. No one knows why.

Roger Barlow, who owned International Motors in L.A., bought the Lee Talbot in 1948, still called “Stinky” and raced it at the Goleta time trials in 1949. But the coupe then disappeared around 1951, to be disassembled and left in a barn for a generation.

This is a significant car, and for the last 50 years it was presumed lost. But it was just hiding, in a barn somewhere in Central California. And then, for The Quail, the owner had it disinterred and re-assembled in pieces on the show field, so people could see what an original, 70 year old unrestored car looks like.

Many people believe that the Figoni et Falaschi Talbots are among the very most beautiful cars ever built, which is why the mis en scene was so dramatic: one of the most desirable cars in the world looking like it was just dragged out of a junkyard, and dropped in the middle of the manicured greens of Quail Lodge! And so our vote for the Quail’s Most Interesting Car.