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Rare 1938 Talbot-Lago subject of heist lawsuit

The T150C-SS Teardrop Coupe was stolen in 2001. It turned up restored in 2016.

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In Wisconsin there's a legal drama unfolding that involves dueling claims to a $7 million piece of automotive history, a rare French 1938 Talbot-Lago T150C-SS Teardrop Coupe that was stolen back in 2001, exported to Europe, returned to the U.S. and is currently owned by an Illinois dental magnate.

As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel notes, the car, coachbuilt by the Parisian company Figoni et Falaschi and one of fewer than two dozen ever made, is cited as a pinnacle of pre-World War II Art Deco automotive artistry, sometimes called the "most beautiful car ever made" and a frequent award winner at collectible car shows. A different example sold for 3.13 million euros at RM Sotheby's in 2011.

The theft took place in 2001 in an old plastics factory in Milwaukee, where its elderly owner, Roy Leiske, had been keeping it disassembled and had been trying to restore it since 1967, when he had purchased it in pieces for about $10,000. As the Journal Sentinel notes, Leiske said someone had cut the phone lines in his home that night, and the car's parts and paperwork were all hidden in various parts of the building, yet they had all vanished, with on signs of forced entry. Some neighbors had seen a white box truck backed up to the building's big door that morning but thought nothing unusual about it.

Leiske reportedly asked the police to keep quiet about their investigation into the heist so he could ask his international car-collector connections to keep an eye out for it. But neither Leiske, local police, the FBI or Interpol turned up the car by the time Leiske died in 2005 at age 93.

His cousin, Richard "Skip" Mueller, has teamed up with Joseph L. Ford III, a lawyer and former classic car seller who helps recover stolen niche cars. They found the car in 2016 after Illinois officials got an alert that an obscure LLC had tried to register the now fully restored Talbot-Lago with the state's DMV. They contacted Milwaukee police, who advised them not to register the car, then contacted Mueller. He and Ford contacted the new buyer, Rick Workman, the founder of Heartland Dental and a high-end car collector, demanding that he return the stolen property to Mueller, who inherited Leiske's estate. Workman, who bought the car for nearly $7 million from a European brokerage in 2015, declined to return it, so Mueller and Ford filed suit.

A Circuit Court judge in Milwaukee granted Workman's motion to dismiss the lawsuit, agreeing with his contention that the plaintiffs were too late to make a claim on the car, citing state statutes that said they had six years from when it was first stolen. But a Court of Appeals panel later reversed that ruling, arguing that the statute actually kicked in when Workman refused to return the car. One of the attorneys representing Workman says they plan to ask the Wisconsin Supreme Court to review the latest ruling.

The car itself is being housed at Paul Russell and Co., a high-end auto restoration firm in Essex, Mass., while the legal case plays out. It's been there at least since the foiled registration attempt.

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