Stuart Murdoch

That's the way it was looking until 1983.

Enter a man named Stuart Murdoch of Australia.

Remember the seemingly ill-fated Delage S I had mentioned earlier, the one that actually was using a desmodromic valve train? All of those cars had disappeared, starting with Louis Delage when he parked them in the corner, then he sold them off to America where they went through the same tough business as the Peugeots had, and all of the four cars that were built were supposed to be gone.

One was destroyed in 1916, others were raced into the early 20s, and even by then most of them had engine swaps and it was more just the chassis being beat up on local dirt tracks and circle tracks.

It is certainly something amazing that this car was able to have one of those lives that saw it saved and cared for and restored.

So without being able to donate the car, it was placed up for sale.

That year, 1975, a young man, a judge named Stuart Murdoch, purchased the car, the only remaining Delage Type S on the planet.

And like so many stories, Murdoch was just a guy.