Cadillac V16 Hartmann

The Cadillac V16 Hartmann is a unique roadster of 1937 built on the chassis and engine of a Cadillac V-16 Series 90, with coachwork by the Swiss coachbuilder Willy Hartmann. It was made for Philippe Barraud, a wealthy heir of a Swiss family of industrialists, who ordered the chassis from the Cadillac dealer Edelweiss in Morges, near Lausanne on Lake Geneva. The engine was the 7.5 litre Cadillac V-16, quoted at 165 horsepower and a top speed of 160 km/h, and its power and Streamline Moderne Art Deco lines put it among the elite cars of the 1930s. The car was found wrecked and abandoned in 1968, then sold several times, restored, modified and repainted by successive owners, among them the Paris coachbuilder André Lecoq, and was for a time shown at the Blackhawk automobile museum near San Francisco.