The cover of the Aug. 26 issue of Megawheels had a wonderful photograph of two Peugeot Darl'mat, a green coupe in the foreground and a blue roadster in back.

The Darl'mat, named for a car dealership in Paris, were a limited-run special coach-built car based on a Peugeot chassis. There were around 50 of the roadsters built and only two coupes.

I know all of this for two reasons: The other coupe, similar to the car that appeared at Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance this year, was offered to me three years ago as a barn find. Stupidly, I did not buy it and I found no one else interested in putting up the $100,000 to buy it. (I say stupidly because the car sold as a restored piece for much more than the investment.)

Ed Fallon, a good friend and fellow car enthusiast from Scottsdale, Arizona, owns the second of the two Darl'mat that appeared in the Megawheels photo, the blue roadster.

It was Ed who had offered me the coupe when he found it and who, this spring, asked me if I would like to restore his 1938 Darl'mat 402 Pourtout Roadster. I did not have the luxury of enough time to help him, so he forged ahead on his own.

Most cars take one or two years to restore to Pebble Beach standards, so to start a car in April that is headed for the Concours in August is a tremendous gamble. I spoke with Ed often as he restored the car and to further complicate the effort, Ed was trying to accomplish it without his wife, Judy, finding out.

He also had to balance his restoration time with business trips to Japan and Europe and his day-to-day tasks looking after clients and their wishes. (He is a classic car dealer with a multinational clientele.)

Ed is an authority on French cars and was meticulous in the restoration, exactly matching European hardware and even the thickness of pre-war Baltic plywood used in areas of the car not usually visible.

As the Concours approached, the little Peugeot miraculously neared finishing. But just hours before it was to be loaded on to a trailer to make the journey from Scottsdale to Monterey, Calif., the car began to ingest water from its cooling system.

Pulling the head revealed that it had warped and needed remachining. As there was no time to waste, the car was loaded without its valve head that was to be shipped separately.

Unfortunately, there had been no time to machine it so the warped head and used head gasket had to be reinstalled when the Darl'mat arrived in Monterey. Large amounts of epoxy glue were used to create a seal and solve the problem long enough for the car to be driven on to and off the field

This worked and the car ran, but it was then discovered that the brakes refused to operate. A mechanic from Peugeot in France discovered, by looking at a similar car chassis, that one of the brake rods was installed incorrectly.

This was reversed and the brakes tried again, but they were still not working and time was running out. If it was not running properly soon, the car would be disqualified: thousands of hours of work and tens of thousands of dollars for nothing.

Everyone helping Ed wanted to walk away at that point, tired, disgruntled and frustrated but he encouraged one more try. Hoisting the car back into the air, he had someone apply the brakes and readjusted them one more time. They worked.

On the Sunday of the Concours weekend, Ed drove the little roadster from the loading area at the Polo field down to the Delmonte Lodge at Pebble Beach.

Later in the day, he was asked to drive the car across the stand, signifying his car was in one of the top three positions in its class. He and his friends celebrated what they though was likely a third-place finish.

Later, when the class awards were presented, another car was announced as third-place winner. Ed was jubilant, thinking he had second. When another was announced as second in class, Ed realized that his little Darl'mat had not only managed to struggle out onto the lawn at Pebble Beach, it won first place in its class (Class R, Georges Paulin and Peugeot Design).

This is a grand testament to Ed, his perseverance and knowledge and finally, to the hundreds of hours he personally spent working on it in the few short months before the event. I wonder if Judy is speaking to him yet.

David Grainger owns an

automotive restoration company