This Museum In Tampa Bay Is Auctioning Off A Set Of Exceedingly Excellent Cars, And You Should Buy One (Or Several)

If you’re like most readers of The Autopian, one of the biggest problems you face every day is a painful overabundance of money. There are stacks of the stuff everywhere, and you just don’t know what to do with it all! The alerts you get on your phone announcing new, high-dollar deposits are so loud and nonstop that it’s like having an alarm going off constantly. And the checks! Don’t get me started on the checks! Huge, chaotic wads of checks coming in your mail slot every day, looking like bouquets of cubist white lilies dumped on your floor, waiting to be deposited. It’s nonstop! But what can you do about it?

Luckily, there’s an answer. You can relieve yourself of some of that pesky money by trading it for cars – cars that are up for auction right now from the collection of the Tampa Bay Automobile Museum! And holy crap, is there some good stuff in here. There are 18 cars up for auction, and this is one of those rare cases where pretty much any of the cars in this auction would be a fascinating car to have.

I should mention that this auction, done in conjunction with our pals at Hagerty, does not mean that the Tampa Bay Automobile Museum is in any danger of closing – they’re doing just fine. According to the museum’s president, Oliver Cerf,

“This is a thoughtful, limited release of vehicles that are no longer central to the Tampa Bay Automobile Museum’s curatorial direction, allowing the museum to stay focused on the engineering history it exists to share.”

So, the good news is that the museum is fine, and it’s even better news if you can get one of these cars, which, as I mentioned, are all fantastic. The Tampa Bay Automobile Museum has a curatorial focus on innovative cars, ones that attempted to do things a bit differently, which is why we see cars from front-wheel-drive pioneers like Citroën or rear-engine streamliner proponents like Tatra, or even early hybrid gasoline-electric cars like the Owen Magnetic.

Here’s a full list of the cars up for auction, from oldest to newest:

• 1916 Owen Magnetic O-36 Touring Chassis

• 1929 Durant 6-66 Coupe

• 1931 Hanomag 3/16 Coupe

• 1935 Georges Irat FDW Roadster

• 1936 Tatra T75 Convertible

• 1937 Citroën 7CV Berline

• 1939 BSA Scout Series 6 Roadster

• 1943 Volkswagen Kübelwagen Type 82

• 1950 Allard P1 3.6-litre Saloon

• 1950 Tatra Tatraplan

• 1951 Hotchkiss-Grégoire Sedan

• 1954 Citroën 2CV

• 1955 Salmson 2300S

• 1957 Talbot-Lago America Chassis

• 1968 Ford Zephyr Mk IV AWD Police Car Prototype

• 1973 Citroën SM

• 1998 Renault Sport Spider

See what I mean? What a great list! Let’s take a look at my, oh, five favorites here.

1950 Tatra Tatraplan

A Tatraplan! Oh, I love these Czech wonders so very much. The Tatraplan was a sort of modernized, postwar take on the Tatra rear-engined formula, and in some ways can be considered the rebirth of the 1936 Tatra 97 – the smaller of the rear-engined Tatras with a flat-four engine, and the car that Hitler prevented from being sold because of its resemblance to Porsche’s KdF-Wagen, the car that would become the Volkswagen Beetle.

The Tatraplan was a similarly-sized car to the old T97 – think a bit bigger than a Beetle, and with four doors – and also had a flat-four air-cooled engine. The bodywork is still streamlined, but with a more updated design vocabulary. It’s a fascinating car, a vision of what the future could have looked like, had history taken a different, and arguably more exciting, path.

This example seems really well maintained – not too perfect that it couldn’t be driven, but definitely show-car quality. In looking at the pictures of the car on the auction, I’m struck by a couple of things I think the Tatraplan doesn’t usually get much credit for: first, the luggage capacity. Like a Beetle, it has two cargo areas, one up front in the nose, the other behind the back seat. That back seat area is surprisingly roomy:

You can also see the funny rear window setup there, where you look through one set of glass panes and then again through another curvier set on the rear of the car to see behind you:

The engine room is between the two sets of windows. It’s weird.

Back to the luggage room, though: look how much space is in the front trunk:

Okay, sure, that spare tire is taking up most of that space, and it sure seems like there would have been a better way to mount that thing to take up less room, but it’s a surprisingly big compartment in there.

Also, the Tatraplan has one of the weirdest interior rear-view mirror setups that I’ve ever seen:

It’s mounted from the ceiling, but at the height of a dash-mounted mirror? Why? Is it adjustable on that long arm? I have so many questions. Bidding is currently at about $70,000 for this thing, so that should help clear out some of those pesky stacks of cash.

1953 Citroën 2CV

I know I’m a little 2CV-obsessed lately, but I think that’s understandable. This one is a beautiful example of an old “ripple-bonnet” 2CV, and it’s currently only $7 more than the $5,000 I paid for my 2CV. I doubt it’ll stay that cheap, but that did catch my attention. This one is kind of an ideal example of what I picture when I think of an early 2CV – that particular color gray, the plaid lawn-chair-style seats, the delightful utilitarianism.

This one even still has the canvas trunk lid, which wasn’t replaced by an actual steel lid until 1957. It does have the 425cc engine, good for an Earth-rending 14 horsepower, a nice jump up from the original 9 hp 375 cc flat-twin.

Why is this kind of austerity so damn appealing? What’s the matter with me?

1943 VW Kübelwagen Type 82

Also austere and utilitarian, but in a very different way, is this Kübelwagen, the soldier version of the Beetle. While I’m not crazy about the original owners of this car or how it was used, I’ve always been fascinated by Kübels because of my love for the Beetle. Considering that the Beetle was designed to be an economical family car, the fact that it could be adapted into such an effective military vehicle is pretty amazing.

This one looks really authentic and has all the proper details; this isn’t some body stuck on a postwar VW pan with a postwar engine, everything here looks to be from the right period, like that strange air cleaner setup you see above there that was unique to Kübelwagens.

Oh, and since I was going on about unexpectedly roomy cargo areas, have you ever seen how much room is behind the rear seat of a Kübel?

That’s a pretty good-sized trunk back there! I’m not sure I’ve ever really gotten a good look under that lid before!

Because people seem to like WWII stuff, this one is currently at $19,250, so maybe less of a bargain.

1950 Allard P1 3.6‑litre Saloon

Okay, enough utilitarian stuff – let’s look at something with a deeply strange, ethereal beauty, like this 1950 Allard. I usually equate Allard with small track-focused sports cars, so seeing the traditional inverted-T Allard grille on something larger always kind of throws me, but in a good way.

The Ford Flathead V8 gives good power (for the era) and is not so exotic that upkeep would be a nightmare. This feels like something you could actually drive. And driving it should be a pretty great experience, with a well-tuned suspension and light body made of aluminum and wood, two materials that at least tend not to rust.

One of these won the Monte Carlo Rally in 1952! The pewter gray/blue two-tone is also an interesting choice, even if I thought it was half primered when looking at it in the thumbnail.

It’s currently still under $10,000, which seems like a great deal for such a rare and novel car like this!

1968 Ford Zephyr Mk IV AWD Police Car Prototype

For my last pick to feature, I was tempted to go for this wonderful Citroën SM, but then I really looked at this amazing thing, and noted that it’s currently only at $4,400, which feels like a steal. What makes it interesting isn’t that it’s a Ford Zephyr police car – though that definitely doesn’t hurt – but that it’s an AWD prototype police car, with engineering by Harry Ferguson Research.

You may recognize the Ferguson name from the term Ferguson Formula, which was what the FF stood for in the Jensen Interceptor FF, one of the first true all-wheel drive GT cars.

This Zephyr was one of 22 cars fitted with the advanced FF AWD system, along with Dunlop-developed anti-lock brakes, one of the first cars to employ both of those advanced bits of engineering in actual driving situations. These also got the larger 3-liter Ford Essex V6 engine, the same one I had in my old Reliant Scimitar, so I can attest how good that motor is.

This car is such an amazing technological milestone; the technology being tested here is now commonplace on many modern cars, and in the case of anti-lock brakes, almost everything. Plus, it’s all wrapped up in a really cool-looking police car package, complete with chromed bumper-bells! How cool is that?

I’ll be really curious to see how these cars do at auction; if any of you Autopians pick one of these up, please let us know!

Top graphic image: Tampa Bay Automobile Museum