Not Quite My Taste In Cars,

but a fine example of a coach builders craft, it is a Delahaye 175 S Roadster by Saoutchik, it boasts a 165 bhp, 4,455 cc naturally aspirated overhead valve inline six cylinder engine, four-speed electro-mechanically actuated Cotal Preselector gearbox, believed to have been the 1949 Paris and 1950 New York Show Car- One of only 51 of this chassis originally built,

well I have to say I have not seen many of these in the UK but it was once owed by a famous UK English movie star named Diana Dors, She was considered one of the blond bombshells of the period (along with the American “three Ms” – Jayne Mansfield, Mamie Van Doren and Marilyn Monroe), Her looks were most similar to Marilyn Monroe’s, and she played similar parts, Her acting skills were well respected, although her looks seemed to relegate her to parts that played upon her other attributes – the quintessential comedic “dumb blond,” financially, she did extremely well, ordering this lovely Delahaye when she was just 17 years old, and at age 20, she became the youngest registered owner of a Rolls-Royce in the UK,

when she died in 1984 she managed to hide away more than £2 million in various banks, more than a small fortune in those days, eighteen months before her death, after her diagnosis with ovarian cancer, she gave her son Mark Dawson a sheet of paper, which she told him was a code that would reveal the whereabouts of the money, at the same time, she told her son that her widower, Alan Lake, had the key that would crack the code, sadly, Lake committed suicide only five months after Dors died, leaving Mark Dawson a code that was now evidently unsolvable,

many doubted the story, and the code sheet certainly didn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary. Her son persevered and hired an expert who recognized the encryption as a form of the Vigenere cipher, which would require a ten character decryption key, ultimately, the encryption experts were able to work out the key “DMARYFLUCK,” which stood for Diana Mary Fluck, Diana’s real name, they were then able to use the decryption key to decode the entire message, while it was clearly linked to bank statements found in Lake’s papers, no money was ever found, and to this day her encrypted fortune remains the object of many amateur cryptographers, if you are interested it is up for sale on Saturday, August 14, 2010 at RM Auctions +1 519 352 4575 +1 519 352 4575 web: http://www.rmauctions.com

by the way did I mention the estimate:$4,000,000-$6,000,000 US, a bit rich for me, but a nice car for somebody else to own.