Italian manufacturer FIAT (its name, at this point, still being an acronym) produced some of the most distinguished automobiles of the Brass Era, not least among them the 24/32 HP, introduced in 1903 and built through 1905. Three different iterations were produced, the second in, somewhat amazingly, three different lengths of wheelbase, carrying a 6.9-liter T-head four-cylinder engine that produced 32 horsepower at a lazy 1,200 rpm, delivered to the rear wheels by a four-speed gearbox and double chain drive. Reportedly a US-delivery example cost its owners some $9,000, making its 120 km/h top speed expensive, indeed—but few monied owners complained!

The 24/32 HP model offered here was ordered by George Agassiz and his new bride, Mabel, during their honeymoon in Europe. Delivered by the FIAT importers Hollander & Tangeman in New York in the early summer of 1904, it was kept at the Agassiz home at Yarmouth Port on Cape Cod and was actually driven most frequently by Mabel’s brother Charles Ritchie Simpkins. This continued until Charles’s untimely death in 1931. Too sentimentally attached to the car to sell the FIAT, but too distraught to drive it, Mrs. Agassiz had its original body removed, then the chassis literally buried on the family property—upside-down and with the wheels on the belly pan. It must have seemed a good idea at the time.

In 1942, a trio of early enthusiasts, led by Ted Robertson, followed up on rumors of a car being interred on the Agassiz property. They began digging in the dead of night, locating the car by probing the soil with rods, only to be discovered by the nephew of the owner. After they convinced him not to contact the police, Mrs. Agassiz was contacted and, delighted by the idea of her prized automobile being lovingly rebuilt and used by enthusiasts, sold it to Mr. Robertson for $50. The car was soon brought back to the surface to live another day. Amazingly it remained largely well-preserved, having been fortunately planted in sandy soil with good drainage.

The FIAT, still unrestored, was sold on to revered early collector D. Cameron Peck of Chicago; in 1949 to Clay Claberg of Oxnard, California; and finally in 1952 to prominent enthusiast David Uihlein of Germantown, Wisconsin. Mr. Uihlein eventually undertook a restoration of the car in the 1990s, complete with a new body built by the talented metal man Joe Silnes to designs by Quinby of Newark, New Jersey, which had bodied many of the American-delivery FIATs of this era.

In 2007 the car was sold from The Uihlein Collection, after 55 years, to Jan Bruijn of the Netherlands, who had long admired and pursued it. Mr. Bruijn secured a date of 1904 for the car from the Veteran Car Club of Great Britain, based upon number 745 being stamped on numerous locations throughout the car—indicating that, at least mechanically, it had remained substantially original despite its one-time burial. From 2007 through 2017 it reportedly ran in every London to Brighton Veteran Car Run—and finished each time, an impressive roster of achievement.

Acquired for the consignor’s collection in early 2018, the car was afterward freshly cosmetically and mechanically restored; he notes that all mechanical components were checked and repaired as necessary, and the body faithfully recreated to be identical to an original 24/32 HP body in-period, with high-quality paint and upholstery. It went on to be judged Best in Class at the Hampton Court Concours in 2020, featured in several UK national papers the day after it won, and has since continued to participate in London to Brighton in 2021, 2023, and 2024, as well as in numerous veteran car runs in Ireland—reportedly never failing to complete an event. Today it is accompanied by a fascinating history file, including much correspondence from the Uihlein ownership, restoration photographs, and other documentation.

It is one of the few potent FIATs of this era to survive on American shores, appropriate given that it started and spent most of its life here—a wonderful Brass Era machine with rich provenance, from, you might say, the ground up.