Famously macabre New York cartoonist with a passion for vintage cars
Best known for his ghoulish cartoons of The Addams Family, Charles Samuel ‘Chas’ Addams had a lifelong interest in cars, particularly Bugattis. Born in Westfield, New Jersey, USA, Addams loved to scare himself – at school his nickname was ‘Chill’ and, as well as hanging out at the local cemetery, he’d often explore empty 19th-century houses around his neighbourhood.
From an early age, Addams had a “different” sense of humour. After giving up architectural studies and art school, he found a job with True Detective magazine doing layouts and retouching photos of corpses. By the late 1930s, his distinctive ink-and-wash drawing style had been published in The New Yorker, including a series that later became known as The Addams Family. Among his many fans were Alfred Hitchcock and Greta Garbo.
Although a well-known collector of gothic artefacts, ghoulish prints and creepy photos, Addams always maintained that his love of cars was his principal hobby and they often featured in his cartoons. After WW2 he acquired a Ford hot rod, which he drove in drag races around New Jersey, but when he joined the Sports Car Club of America his taste changed to more thoroughbred European machines.
A passion for vintage cars started in style with a Mercedes-Benz S-type gifted to him by playwright Philip Barry. Disinterred in a sad, dilapidated state, the supercharged grand tourer was restored by Addams and later entered in a support race at the Watkins Glen Grand Prix in 1948. The Mercedes was followed by an Alfa Romeo 8C Zagato Spider (now in the Simeone museum), a 1933 Aston Martin Le Mans restored by English specialist Derrick Edwards, and a rare 1923 Targa Florio Mercedes-Benz, but Bugattis were his favourite. “Almost never do I have the urge to take an automobile to bed with me, but the exception is my Bugatti Type 35C,” joked Addams. “So, rather than give in to auto-eroticism, I have settled
