Determined to acquire this entire collection, Schlumpf made Shakespeare a lump-sum offer of $70,000. But the latter demanded at least $105,000, whereupon Schlumpf had the collection assessed by Bugatti connoisseur Bob Shaw from Illinois in 1963. Shaw arrived at a critical conclusion: “Most of the cars are kept in a part of the building with a dirty floor, broken windows, leaking roof and nesting birds. Every car is in some state of disrepair and none of them have been running for at least 18 months.”
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