The fifteenth annual Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance this weekend will kick off with not one but two auctions. Tonight Gooding & Company will host their inaugural sale on the Floridian island at the Amelia Island Plantation. RM Auctions will follow suit tomorrow afternoon with their traditional sale in the yard of the Ritz Carlton hotel, which will also host the main show on Sunday.
Quite a few of the cars offered by RM are from the John O'Quinn estate. Until his untimely passing late last year, he had gradually built up one of America's finest collection of classic cars. One of the most famous machines from his collection to be offered on Saturday is this Duesenberg J Murphy Sport Berline. Better known as the 'Whittell Mistress' car, it sports a very striking four-door body and was gifted by Duesenberg's best customer Captain George Whittell Jr. to his lady friend Jessie McDonald. It has since been owned by some of America's best known collectors including J.B. Nethercutt, Bill Harrah and Oscar Davis. The pre-sale estimate on the one-off Duesenberg is a cool $1.2 - 1.5 million.
From the fine selection cars to go under the Gooding hammer tonight we picked two beautiful French creations that come from the same collection. For us the star car is the Voisin C20 'Mylord' Demi-Berline, which was awarded the 'Best of Show' award at Amelia Island last year. It combines Gabriel Voisin's trademark styling with a beautiful sleeve-valve V12 engine. As far as we know, this is the only surviving V12-engined Voisin. The only other known Voisin V12 engine is found in the equally spectacular Bucciali. Before its Amelia Island appearance the Voisin was completely restored and it should run as well as it looks.
Built slightly later in the decade as the first two cars is the Peugeot 402 Darl'mat. Instigated by Parisian Peugeot dealer Emile Darl'mat, this small sports cars featured Peugeot underpinnings and a light, aerodynamic body designed by Georges Paulin and built by Pourtout. The competition version was driven to a class win at Le Mans in 1938. It is believed that less than two dozen examples of all versions have survived and this Roadster must rank as one of the finest; it won the special Paulin / Pourtout class at Pebble Beach in 2004.

Enjoy the links:

1930 Duesenberg J Murphy Sport Berline - Images, Specifications and Information

1937 - 1938 Peugeot 402 Darl'mat Roadster - Images, Specifications and Information

1931 Voisin C20 'Mylord' Demi-Berline - Images, Specifications and Information