Like other premium French luxury marques such as Bugatti, Delahaye, and Delage, Talbot-Lago became one of the interwar period’s most impressive continental manufacturers, winning races while producing some of the most beautiful bespoke grand touring machines ever built.

Unlike some of its competitors, however, the company made its greatest strides despite the lack of an established racing pedigree.

Prior to the arrival of Anthony Lago in 1934, the Talbot company was best known for building solid but unspectacular touring sedans, despite being the successor to the competition-leaning Darracq.

But when Lago was dispatched by the company’s British ownership group to oversee the French division’s flagging financial state, he quickly realized that transitioning Talbot to a sporting identity would be key to the marque’s resuscitation.

By the mid-1930s the onetime engineer—who had designed the Wilson preselector gearbox—obtained complete control of the company, and the glory days of Talbo...