Driving Nicola Bulgari’s cars: Buick vs. everybody

• Car collection showcases American cars' design and engineering leadership
• N.B. Center for Automotive Heritage not open to the public, but works with car clubs and historians

ALLENTOWN, Penn. — Why does billionaire jeweler Nicola Bulgari think mass-market American cars of the 1930s, ‘40s and beyond were the finest vehicles in the world?

Because he’s right, based on driving a few cars from the N.B Center for the Preservation of American Automotive Heritage.

Driving a $1.4-million 1933 Marmon V16 back to back with a ’33 Graham Blue Streak and ’34 Buick 98C, I’m with Nicola: Leave the Marmon in the museum. I’d rather drive the Buick.

► Related:Italian billionaire treasures mainstream American family cars

Bulgari began his collection of 100-plus American cars because he was convinced that U.S. automakers – great and small, flourishing and failed – were leading innovators whose design and engineering made American cars the envy of the world for decades.

In addition to the trio from the ‘30s, I drove an unrestored 1941 Buick sedanette around the short road course on the center’s hilly campus.

The Marmon is a collector’s dream. Its silky paint job has three different shades of gray. The cabin offers more interior space than some college dorm rooms.

But it’s also a nightmare to drive. The hulking V16 engine puts huge mass over the front wheels. Combined with a leaf-spring front suspension, it gave the car a ponderous ride and steering so heavy it threatened to pull my arms out of their sockets.

The ’34 Lincoln convertible was a breath of fresh air after wrestling the Marmon around the track. Its straight-eight engine was smaller than the Marmon, but provided loads of power and torque. Its lighter nose and independent front suspension made steering feel as easy and natural as a modern car.

The ’33 Graham couldn’t match the Buick’s front suspension, but it benefited from a lower center of gravity thanks to an innovative method of attaching the axles to the leaf springs that Graham’s engineers pioneered. Its three-on-the-tree manual transmission was the only gearbox I drove that required double-clutching, a technique where you push the clutch in and out to shift from a gear to neutral, then push clutch in again to engage the next gear.

The ’41 Buick, with its sleek fastback styling, straight-eight engine and independent front suspension felt as easy to drive as a 2016 midsize sedan. It had been meticulously maintained, but every piece save the radial tires was the equipment installed when it was built more than 75 years ago.

It’s a car that makes it easy to understand why, when GM offered to build Cadillacs for its reentry to China more than 50 years later, Chinese leaders unfamiliar with post-1940s American cars said, “Forget that. We want the good stuff. We want Buicks.”

Contact Mark Phelan: mmphelan@freepress.com or 313-222-6731. Follow him on Twitter @mark_phelan.