Only One! Provence Moulage 1:43 Facel Excellence Series 1 'Ava Gardner'

This is a very RARE model!!

The Excellence is a luxury saloon automobile that was unveiled by Facel-Vega of Paris, France, at the Paris Auto Show in October 1956 to rave reviews by the motoring press.

Production started in 1958 and lasted until the company ceased production in 1964. The car was based on an elongated chassis from the Facel Vega FV Coupé. It was the only four-door model the company ever made. Production ended after only 156 cars had been built. The low production figure is a direct result of the car's exorbitant purchase price. When new, it cost about as much as four Citroën DS saloons, which themselves were hardly to be considered cheap cars. The towering price could still be boosted by ordering optional equipment, which gradually became available over the car's production run, such as power steering, power brakes, electric windows, wire-spoke wheels, and air conditioning.

The Excellence features some styling elements usually found on American cars of the era, like tailfins, the wraparound windshield, and the "hardtop" roof without B-pillars. But the overall design is distinctively European, with its stacked quad-headlights and rakishly low profile. Its low beltline and comparatively high greenhouse predicted the automotive architecture that became mainstream in the late Fifties, and lasted throughout the Sixties. The Facel-Vega Excellence also incorporates a pillarless four-door mechanism, allowing the car to be designed with rear-hinged "suicide" styled rear doors for easier access and egress. This layout could also be found on the limited production Cadillac Eldorado Brougham, which was unveiled later in 1956, and on the mass-produced 1961-1969 Lincoln Continental.

Inside, the car has a lavish interior with seats covered in aromatic leather, a fake walnut dashboard with full instrumentation, and a make up kit located in the back of the centre armrest, consisting of a chrome-handled brush and comb, and two perfume bottles, the latter albeit being supplied empty by the factory. Still, the interior is not nearly as roomy as one would expect from a car with a wheelbase exceeding three me

The Excellence was a top performer and could hold its own among the best GTs Europe had to offer. Some high-performance American cars, most notably Chrysler's 300 'letter series' models, could probably outrun an Excellence in straight-line performance, but they were neither as refined, well built, nor had they the 'panache' of a Facel-Vega. Although the Excellence could match the wheelbase of most full-sized American cars of the time, it was considerably shorter, narrower, and most of all, lower. Its comparatively compact measurements gave it the edge in the handling department, which came in handy, especially under European road conditions.

In an article for the November 1985 edition of Collectible Automobile Magazine, noted automotive historian Richard Langworth stated his opinion that "The Excellence is a large vehicle...better suited as a car of State rather than a daily driver." How he came to this conclusion despite the unanimously positive reviews regarding the roadability of the Excellence from the contemporary motoring press as well as its owners, has been a matter of debate ever since

Ava Lavinia Gardner (December 24, 1922 – January 25, 1990) was an American actress and singer.

She was signed to a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1941, and appeared mainly in small roles until she drew attention with her performance in The Killers (1946). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her work in Mogambo (1953), and also received BAFTA Award and Golden Globe Award nominations for other films.

Gardner appeared in several high-profile films from the 1940s to 1970s, including The Hucksters (1947), Show Boat (1951), Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), The Barefoot Contessa (1954), Bhowani Junction (1956), On the Beach (1959), 55 Days at Peking (1963), Seven Days in May (1964), The Night of the Iguana (1964), The Bible: In the Beginning... (1966), The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean (1972), Earthquake (1974), and The Cassandra Crossing (1976). Gardner continued to act regularly until 1986, four years before her death in London in 1990, at the age of 67.

She is listed 25th among the American Film Institute's 25 Greatest Female Stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.

Gardner was born near the farming community of Grabtown, North Carolina.[2] She was the youngest of seven children. She had two older brothers, Raymond and Melvin, and four older sisters, Beatrice, Elsie Mae, Inez, and Myra. Her parents, Mary Elizabeth "Molly" (née Baker) and Jonas Bailey Gardner, were poor cotton and tobacco farmers. While accounts of her background vary, Gardner's only documented ancestry was English.

She was raised in the Baptist faith of her mother. While the children were still young, the Gardners lost their property, forcing Jonas Gardner to work at a sawmill and Molly to begin working as a cook and housekeeper at a dormitory for teachers at the nearby Brogden School. When Gardner was seven years old, the family decided to try their luck in a larger city, Newport News, Virginia, where Molly Gardner found work managing a boarding house for the city's many shipworkers. While in Newport News, Gardner's father became ill, and died from bronchitis in 1938, when Ava was 15 years old. After Jonas Gardner's death, the family moved to Rock Ridge near Wilson, North Carolina, where Molly Gardner ran another boarding house for teachers. Gardner attended high school in Rock Ridge, and she graduated from there in 1939. She then attended secretarial classes at Atlantic Christian College in Wilson for about a year