His car collection, a grouping of 170 vehicles going to auction with Artcurial Motorcars on September 13, may be the least interesting aspect of the life of 95-year-old Andre Trigano.
Trigano was born to Sephardic Algerian Jewish parents in 1925 in Paris and was 15 years old when a French police officer notified the family that it was listed on a Gestapo arrest warrant. Although the family fled to the mountains, young Andre became active in the Resistance, helping downed Allied aircraft pilots to escape to Spain.
For his work, he was arrested three times by the Nazis.
After the war, Trigano expanded his family’s tent-making firm with a business that organized camping holidays. The family became a supplier to Club Med, and Trigano founded the Campeole group and developed camp sites in Europe.
He also served for more than 20 years as the mayor of Mazeres, and later, actually for the past 25 years, as mayor of Pamiers. He also was a representative for the Ariege region in the French National Assembly.
Oh, we also should mention that he was a racing driver, and for the past 60 years has been building his car collection, which will be sold at auction by Artcurial Motorcars at his mountaintop home near Toulouse.
According to Artcurial, the collection includes barn-found vehicles, American cars purchased new by Trigano, other cars he has owned since new, and a variety of cars with low mileage.
Artcurial reports that the cars range in value as high as €600,000 ($706,550), the pre-auction estimate for Trigano’s one-owner 1967 Lamborghini 400 GT 2+2.
Among other 6-figure vehicles on the docket are a 1962 Rolls-Royce Phantom V limousine by James Young, a 1950 Delahaye 135 M cabriolet, a 1960 Facel Vega HK 500, and a 1957 Lancia B24 S Aurelia convertible by Pinin Farina.
The docket also includes a 1954 Cadillac Series 62 cabriolet and a 1966 Cadillac De Ville convertible.
To view the docket, visit the Artcurial website.
This gentleman is a true hero, a collector of both wide ranging and impeccable taste, and the type of genuine human being that our world seems to (sadly) have quit producing.
And he bought a new Lambo 400GT 2+2, the original and best thumb in Enzo’s eye- and kept it for decades! In red! Bwahahaha!
This cat deserves some sort of car culture award- if there’s not one, can it be created?
I’d bet my pension that if you put Monsieur Trigano and Jay Leno in the same room, no-one could get a word in edgewise, save for the potential translator.
Jeez-us wept, this guy is by all definitions a Mensch.