The 1925 Lincoln limousine used in Cinderella Man, starring Russell Crowe and Renée Zellweger. The 1925 Hupmobile Roadster seen in Chicago with Richard Gere and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The 1959 Cadillac Coupe de Ville shown in Truth, Justice and the American Way with Ben Affleck and Diane Lane.

These are three of the roughly 400 cars in the Ron Fawcett Movie Car Collection due to be auctioned off this week.

‘My family…has been restoring cars for three generations,’ explains Ron Fawcett, 78. ‘We started supplying cars for movie and TV shoots back in the early ’60s. People initially just wanted to rent cars for a few days, then came to us looking for vintage cars and specially equipped vehicles with roll bars and such for stunts. The business just took off from there.’ The auction will be held at his company’s lot in Enniskillen, a small town in the southern tip of Ontario, near Sarnia.

It was the SARS-related slowdown in the Toronto film industry, coupled with the difficulty of finding good help that convinced him it was time to sell. The result: literally hundreds of cars and trucks dating from 1917 to the mid-’70s are on the block. Some are in pristine condition, like his personal favorite, a 1931 two-tone Auburn 8-98 convertible coupe. ‘There’s also a ’38 LaSalle, a ’38 Cadillac coupe, and a ’32 DeSoto sedan,’ he tells Playback Daily.

Looking back on his collection’s movie career, Fawcett is proud of what he achieved. ‘When a director needed a car or truck, we did our very best to get it for him,’ he says. ‘This meant that we had to search from California right across North America, but we were usually able to come through.’

Fawcett doesn’t so much dwell on who used what car for what film, but rather the conditions his cars had to work in. ‘It was really rough during the winter,’ he says. ‘You’d have to drive the car back from Toronto after a long shoot, wash off all the salt very carefully, then be prepared to take it to the set again. It thus took fives times as long to serve a winter shoot than it did a summer one, due to the road salt and slush. That and the long hours made this pretty wearing work.’

Once his collection has been sold, Fawcett intends to keep his involvement with the silver screen limited to watching television at home. ‘But I’m still working on cars,’ he says. ‘Right now, I’m restoring my personal collection of Pierce-Arrows.’

The Sept. 15-16 sale will be hosted by RM Auctions. All vehicles will be sold for whatever price they can raise; there are no reserve bids. See www.rmauctions.com for a full listing of the cars.