- San Francisco’s Academy of Art is auctioning off its vast collection of classic cars.
- Many of the cars are examples of prewar coachbuilding—beautiful, but perhaps not particularly relevant to modern car design.
- Not everything from the collection is priced out of reach, with over 100 lots meaning plenty of variety.
The only constant in art is change. After all, style, design, and technique are constantly evolving, being destroyed, and rebuilt from basic elements. It’s the same thing in car design, where ideas and elements can be brought forward from the past and reimagined or break from tradition entirely. Thus, while no one would classify a 1933 Chrysler Custom Imperial Dual-Windshield Phaeton as anything other than a hand-built rolling piece of art, it’s perhaps not the best teaching tool for training car designers in 2025.
This Phaeton, along with over 1o0 other vintage cars, goes up for sale this weekend, part of the San Francisco Academy of Art collection being auctioned by Broad Arrow. There are plenty of significant cars going under the hammer, including a 1934 Packard Twelve said to have been owned by Cesar Romero, a V-16-powered 1932 Marmon convertible sedan, and a fabulous 1937 Squire Corsica Drophead coupe.
Many of these cars are Pebble Beach Concours veterans, their hand-shaped bodies crafted the traditional way. But there are also plenty of more modern cars in the auction listing mix, including fare that doesn’t require deep pockets. Yes, you’ll probably have to pony up well over $1 million for the 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing that’s on offer, but there’s also a perfectly restored MGB GT Special in a fetching shade of green or a ’67 Volvo 1800 S with just 10,000 miles on it. Neither is expected to fetch more than what a new CR-V would cost.
The Academy of Art’s car collection was amassed by the late university president Richard A. Stephens, son of the academy’s founder. Together with his daughter Elisa Stephens and the current president, he built a large and varied collection that was open to the public. Elisa Stephens has said the auction’s intent is to rebuild the collection around more modern cars, those from 1960 and after.
All the classics you might expect are here, from a Jaguar E-type to a split-window Corvette Sting Ray. There are also some fun oddballs too, such as an aquatic Amphicar, a Messerschmitt Kabinenroller, and a very early ripple-bonnet Citroën 2CV. One of the coolest no-reserve cars is perhaps an unrestored 1963 Buck Riviera in Regal Black with the 340-hp 425-cubic-inch engine and hideaway headlamps. It’s a close match for the car driven by Leonard Nimoy when he was playing Spock in the original Star Trek series.
As for the cars that will take the place of these mostly early classics, the academy has only vaguely indicated that there will be more muscle-era cars and more Japanese cars. However, it’s easy to make an educated guess as to two museum-quality Mazdas that might be showing up.
After all, the head of the Academy of Art’s auto design program is run by none other than Tom Matano, who had his hands on both the NA-chassis Miata and the third-generation RX-7 twin-turbo. Both those cars have stood the test of time long enough to go from mass-produced sports cars to works of art in their own right. And it can only be a good thing if tomorrow’s car designers find inspiration in the pop-up-headlamp-friendly face of a happy little Mazda.
Brendan McAleer is a freelance writer and photographer based in North Vancouver, B.C., Canada. He grew up splitting his knuckles on British automobiles, came of age in the golden era of Japanese sport-compact performance, and began writing about cars and people in 2008. His particular interest is the intersection between humanity and machinery, whether it is the racing career of Walter Cronkite or Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki’s half-century obsession with the Citroën 2CV. He has taught both of his young daughters how to shift a manual transmission and is grateful for the excuse they provide to be perpetually buying Hot Wheels.
Source: Motor - aranddriver.com
