Delaunay-Belleville seeks a new custodian (upd. Lea & Perrins nobility)

“The body by Rothschild of Paris was handpainted in the correct old paints, 14 layers, each of them with a drying time of 3 to 4 weeks required, so only the painting took one and a half year. Even the correct head- and side lamps signed by Rothschild were found. The quality of the make is unquestionable, not surprisingly the make was sold to nobility only.”

What a fine example of auctioneer-speak. So the make was sold to nobility only, was it? Mr Perrin of Lea and Perrin’s famous Worcester sauce had several Delauney-Bellevilles at his house in Malvern. One might regard the sauce as a noble ingredient of Welsh Rarebit but Mr P had not been enobled. He was an industrialist. He was, whisper it, in trade! One always thinks of Rolls-Royce as the appropriate car for Royalty and names from Burke’s Peerage, but I bet they sold twenty to bookies for every one they sold to a baronet. Selling only to the nobility would be the direct route to Carey Street.

Eighteen months to paint the car? Pull the other one. The rebuilders may well have taken a year and a half for reasons of their own, but it does not take that long to coach paint a car. By the time the customer got his motor, it would be the year before last’s model. Mr Perrin’s Delauneys, by the way, were bodied by a local coachbuilder, McNaughton’s of Malvern. I wonder how many customers they would have kept if they took two years to complete a body.