The Baillon Collection

About

The Baillon Collection stands as one of the most poetic and extraordinary barn finds in automotive history. Hidden for decades at Château Gaillard, a quiet rural estate in Échiré near Niort in western France, this trove of over 100 historic automobiles reflected the unique vision of French industrialist Roger Baillon and his son Jacques.

Baillon began assembling the collection in the late 1940s and 1950s, during France’s postwar industrial recovery. Motivated not by profit, but by a deep admiration for automotive design and craftsmanship, Baillon bought many of these vehicles from scrapyards and liquidation sales—often at extremely low prices—with the explicit goal of saving them from destruction. He viewed them as mechanical artworks worth preserving, especially at a time when French motoring heritage was rapidly disappearing.

The collection grew to include iconic marques such as Bugatti, Delahaye, Talbot-Lago, Delage, Panhard-Levassor, Ferrari, and Maserati, many of which were rare coachbuilt examples or prewar French luxury cars in original, unrestored condition. Baillon housed them in barns and makeshift shelters on the grounds of Château Gaillard, intending to one day open a museum to the public.

That dream never came to fruition. Financial setbacks in the 1970s forced the sale of a portion of the collection, and after Roger's passing, the rest quietly remained in storage under the care of his son Jacques. Forgotten by the world for decades, the collection was only rediscovered in 2014, following Jacques' death.

In 2015, 59 of the surviving cars were auctioned by Artcurial at the Rétromobile show in Paris, drawing international attention and selling for over €25 million. The event was hailed not only for the cars themselves, but for the story they told—a story of one man's preservationist passion, and the forgotten beauty of automobiles nearly lost to time.