There was a time—long enough ago now to be easily forgotten—that the great Full Classics of today were not classics at all, but simply used cars.

Yet there were a handful of men who knew better, and Robert J.

Gottlieb, a young attorney in Southern California, was one of these.

In 1948, he bought a 16-year-old Chrysler off the lot at the Greene-Warner Hudson agency on Hollywood Boulevard for the grand sum of $225, becoming, he believed, its third owner.

An earlier caretaker, likely the second, had been Joe Reindl, the famous Mercedes-Benz mechanic known as one of the drivers in the Duesenberg-Mercedes “match race.” Chrysler guru Joe Morgan notes that the car was originally finished in Everglades Red, an unusually colorful livery for these often sober-hued automobiles.

In a letter to the current owners in 1989, Mr.

Gottlieb noted that the Chrysler “was the first classic as we know them today, to be restored in California.” Following completion of the work, the car was featured in s...