Coys Auction - Fine Motor Cars
Blenheim Palace,
Woodstock,
Oxfordshire OX20 1PX

Saturday 5th July 2008 at 14.30

Built by the French Derby company with an Italian Maserati 4CM engine, and prompted by a British engineer for an English woman driver: this is the lineage of the unusual Derby-Maserati which appeared in voiturette road-racing and at Brooklands in the mid-1930s. The French Derby concern built front-wheel drive cars and won a considerable sporting reputation with an ex-Indianapolis Miller 91 front-drive machine, originally brought to France by Douglas Hawkes. This car became progressively ''Derbyised'' between 1930 and 1934, during which period Mrs. Gwenda Stewart smashed many world records with it, most notably at the Monthlery Autodrome just outside Paris.

It was in 1935 that the car''s channel frame chassis was built up for road-racing powered by a 1,496cc, twin-overhead camshaft, supercharged, four cylinder Maserat