The Stewardship of Historically Important Automobiles – Book Review

Review by Rick Carey, Auction Editor
Everyone involved in the collector car hobby – mechanics, restorers, parts suppliers, archivists, judges, historians, concours organizers, transporters and most especially owners, even (and maybe most importantly) owners of mass-produced Model As and Chevy 3100 pickups – should acquire, read and contemplate this book.
“Stewardship” is, like the cars it talks about, that important.
The description ‘historically important’ applies to every old car; there are no historically unimportant old cars. It deals with Duesenbergs, Delahayes, Ferraris and Rochet Schneiders, but its principles are equally applicable to mass-produced Chevrolets, DeSotos, Edsels, MGs, Renaults, Fiats and Isettas.
Dr. Fred Simeone (his brief biography in “Stewardship” only hints at his contributions to neurosurgery and the lives he has saved) is the steward of a Philadelphia collection of racing cars of consistently outstanding quality.
“Stewardship” has a point of view.
It advocates preservation in preference to restoration, but it does it with a breadth of viewpoint from experienced collectors, restorers, curators, owners and agents that is refreshing in its equanimity.
As Dr. Simeone expressed, “The overriding purpose of this book is to encourage one who discovers a truly preserved important car to keep it in its preserved condition as safely as possible.” And, while “Stewardship” is focused on preserving highly original artifacts of automobile history, the thought processes and competing considerations it sets forth apply even to the treatment of already-restored autos in the never-ending process of maintaining them.
The content of “Stewardship” presents often-overlapping and subtly contrasting views of the dichotomy between preservation and restoration, as well as the innate contradiction between static preservation and active demonstration. Automobiles are by their very nature dynamic creations with sights, sounds, smells and – if you’re lucky enough to ride in or drive them – physical sensations that re-create the experiences of their original owners and drivers.
It’s to the credit of the Simeone collection that it regularly demonstrates its irreplaceable automotive artifacts in the collection’s ample parking lot near Philadelphia International Airport and “Stewardship” makes a valuable contribution to formalizing the challenge of deciding what, when and how to fire up that irreplaceable original lump to hear, see and smell it run.
There are nits to pick. Most are attributable to the editors’ decision to treat contributions with a light hand.
There’s no shortage of grandiloquent verbiage.
“Provenantial [sic] research is again required to elucidate its cloistered pre-existence” could be reduced to something reasonably readable.
“Classically, material theory of conservation admits that the purpose of this theory stresses that for a scientific conservation, the integrity is to preserve the object’s material proof, sometimes called a truth reinforcement operation. Physical features and constituents which are added at a later date or replicated simply do not carry the material truths of the object as defined by conservational thought. As Tusquets commented, ‘The fact that is for many people, the authentic material has a numinous [“filled with a sense of a supernatural presence,” in case you, like the reviewer, have never encountered this term] quality … that renders it very powerful in comparison with replicas of virtual experiences.” Wouldn’t it be easier to say simply, “It’s only original once”?
On the other hand T.E. Berrisford and L. Scott George’s pictorial presentation of the authentication of the Collier Collection’s Bugatti Type 35B is a lesson in sympathetic documentation, research and inference of the evolution of an old car. Evan Ide’s description of the vagaries of the Larz Anderson Auto Collection’s history is an object example of the effect of well-meaning but ill-considered efforts.
Similarly, Malcolm Collum’s description of his experiences at The Henry Ford are a gut-wrenching exposition of the innate contradiction between conservation, i.e., static preservation, and active demonstration. It’s impossible to read his description of the failure of the Buick Bug [not a Henry Ford artifact] during a demonstration run without feeling his agony.
Fortunately, throughout “Stewardship” Dr. Simeone and his contributors offer lists of attributes to be taken into account in making the preservation/restoration/demonstration decision. Miles Collier lists seven ways we interact with cars:

• Nostalgic appeal
• Aesthetics
• Mastery
• Technical
• History
• Competition
• Fellowship

Dr. Simeone’s interpretation of the National Air and Space Museum’s importance criteria is central to the approach of “Stewardship”: