A Delage to Die For

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We’ve all been there: stumbling across a car one has never seen before and falling head-over-heels in love. So what happens when the object of your desire is an exotic, coach built one-off that most definitely is not for sale?

If you’re anything like Australian collector Phillip Schudmak, you take matters into your own hands and build your own.

Phillip’s 1931 Delage D8 SS – that’s the tuned, triple-carburetter version of the D8S marketed by the British Delage agents, by the way – had long since lost its original Australian coachwork by the time he acquired it in the 1990s. He wanted to do justice to the high-quality engine and chassis by fitting a most suitable body but was unsure which route to take until he found inspiration in a most unlikely place: a private collection in Majorca.

The car he had discovered was also a D8 SS, with beautiful lines by the little-known Parisian coachbuilder de Villars. “It was a long, low two-seater and it simply blew my mind,” Phillip later explained. He soon set a plan in motion to replicate this show-stopping body on his own car. The results, we think you’ll agree, speak for themselves.

The full story of the D8 SS and the restoration of Phillip’s example are told in the latest issue of The Automobile, which is out now.

Photographs by Glenn Gibson.

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