No coincidence that the nose of Brooks Stevens’ Die Valkyrie concept car not only had the shape of a giant V but also a smaller V-8 emblem within the V: He wanted to make sure the first car he designed specifically for European car shows unmistakably announced its American V-8 powerplant. While it thoroughly impressed European showgoers, that big V and the car attached to it will soon get its first chance to impress the American collector car market as it heads to auction.

“He knew that one of the high points of the American market was its V-8s, as opposed to all the four-cylinder and six-cylinder engines in Europe at the time,” seller Joe Bortz said. “So he wanted to put it in their face.”

While Stevens considered himself a “self-styled aristocrat,” in the words of biographer Glenn Adamson, up until the mid-1950s the Milwaukee-based designer’s work almost exclusively focused on baseball-and-apple-pie American brands: Miller beer, Harley-Davidson, and the postwar Willys Jeep. However, according to Adamson’s “Industrial Strength Design: How Brooks Stevens Shaped Your World,” his work as a consultant for Alfa Romeo’s 1800 Sprint Series earlier in the decade got him to think beyond American shores.

Well that big V is now ready for the right person with the right money.