An admission that we’re not too sad to make is that we really want to someday own an old right hand drive European sporty car. Eventually, said car would probably end up with a blown Hemi in it, but to start we’d want something that was well balanced and able to hit the road course for some vintage and historic action. This car, an ultra-rare 1956 Talbot-Lago T14LS does all of that and even packs a V8 punch, albeit a small BMW one, but a punch nonetheless.
This car was one of the few custom, race-bred machines to emerge from France after WWII took a huge toll on the country. It was shown in 1955, some 60 examples were produced, and no one knows how many are still intact today. Like all cars that were designed with the race track in mind, their numbers are probably few.
This particular car has lived an interesting life. It lived in France until the early 1970s and then made the trip across the channel to England were it stayed until 1988 when it came to America. The American owner brought it over for the purpose of vintage racing and this car did lots of it. The roll bar was installed here and other non-intrusive safety upgrades were made as well.
The original motor is a BMW V8. Displacing only 3.1L and wearing a pair of 1bbl carbs, it certainly is not a maker of huge horsepower, and that’s kind of charming if you ask us. The skinny tires and undoubtedly slow manual steering ratio would make this car feel fast, even if it technically isn’t in the BangShift realm. The car has a 4-speed manual transmission to boot.
The paint shade is French racing blue (remember, back then cars raced wearing their national racing colors) and has held up well for 20 years after a repaint.
Sure, this is not a fire breathing strip blazer, but it would be an awesome car to compete in. Learning to drive on the wrong side of the car and push the limits of technology that was cutting edge in 1956 would be fun nearly beyond compare.
It all comes with a price of course. This one is listed at $184,995.
Source — AutoTraderClassics.com — 1956 Talbot Lago
