Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / The Bianco Speciale: The Remarkable Journey of the Only White Ferrari 250 GTO

Transcript

The Bianco Speciale: The Remarkable Journey of the Only White Ferrari 250 GTO · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

0:00
Welcome to Automotive History Live, where the stories drive us.
0:05
From the grand lawns of Concours to the icons that shape the road ahead, we
0:10
celebrate the machines, the makers, and the moments that define automotive history
0:19
All right, folks.
0:20
Well, we'll gather again here to move on to our next presentation.
0:23
We have a special panel called What's So Special About the Bianco Specials?
0:27
It will pr- be presented by Crew Chief Eric, William Ross, and John Summers.
0:31
And I want to mention, hopefully all of you got a, uh, tire gauge.
0:34
Appreciate you bringing those.
0:35
That's- More to come … a gesture that does not fall flat, so to speak.
0:39
They also have swag bag- Yeah, sorry.
0:42
They also have, uh, swag bags on the way out, too, folks, if you'd like to
0:45
grab one, filled with some car care products and other goodies as well.
0:48
Without further ado, Eric, I'll turn it over to you to, uh, lead the session.
0:51
Thank you, Matt.
0:52
Folks, we're gonna have a little fun with this.
0:53
This is gonna be a live version of one of our Motoring Podcast Network
0:57
podcast episodes, so we're gonna put the final chapter on the Bianco Speciale.
1:02
So today, we're diving into the remarkable story of the Bianco Speciale,
1:06
the only factory white Ferrari 250 GTO ever built, Chassis Number 3729 GT.
1:14
Featured across multiple of our MPN shows, we tapped experts, historians, and even
1:19
legendary racers to help us trace this car's journey from John Coombs' right
1:24
hand drive '60s British club racer to its modern status in a class containing
1:29
the most valuable and culturally significant Ferraris in existence.
1:33
Its provenance, its drivers, its engineering, and its impact on the
1:37
collector market all converge in this presentation to show why this singular
1:41
GTO stands apart from all the others.
1:44
That said, as Matt introduced us, I'm Crew Chief Eric from the Motoring Podcast
1:47
Network, and joining me is William Ross from the Exotic Car Marketplace, and
1:51
John Summers, the motoring historian.
1:53
So gentlemen, let's explore what truly makes the Bianco Speciale special.
1:58
So William, it's not very often that we get called to do a project of this
2:04
caliber, to a car so special as this, but more importantly, cars of this
2:08
status do not come into the public eye very often, especially at auction.
2:13
Can you tell us about how this story kind of fell into our laps?
2:16
Well, it was a great opportunity for all of us to be involved with
2:19
Mecum at the get-go when they had the opportunity to auction this car off.
2:24
Chris Mealy, who is the vice president at Prancing Horse Nashville, was
2:27
actually driving to the airport after Amelia Island, and he was driving
2:31
with John Shirley, who was the previous owner of the car, and this
2:35
gentleman just casually mentions it.
2:36
Chris says, "Hey, you know anyone that might want to buy John's car?" And
2:39
Chris was rather like, "Oh, that's kind of a, a significant statement and
2:43
question to ask." Their actual first thought was, "Let's call Dana." Chris
2:47
is very good friends with Dana Mecum.
2:49
I don't know if you're aware, you know, Dana's got an unbelievable
2:52
collection of cars of all brands, makes, models, everything like that, but he
2:55
does have some really good Ferraris.
2:56
But it wasn't something that he felt fit in his, and it just wasn't
2:59
gonna work, so after some meetings and that, they felt it was probably
3:02
best to bring it to Mecum Kissimmee.
3:04
Due to the fact is the Bachman collection was coming there as well, 'cause
3:08
Chris was very familiar and friends with the Bachman family themselves.
3:12
All their cars got serviced at Prancing Horse Nashville, so
3:15
it just coincided very well.
3:16
That seemed to work as the best opportunity then for selling.
3:19
That got them to Mecum, and that got us involved in regards to
3:23
promoting and building up the hype for the car and getting eyes on it.
3:26
And I got a quick shout-out to Don at Garage Style for also hooking us
3:30
up with the Mecum folks as well and getting us involved in this project.
3:33
But let's move on to what makes the Bianco Speciale special.
3:37
John, you're our resident Brit, so it's appropriate that you talk
3:41
about the original owner of this vehicle, the infamous John Coombs.
3:46
So let's talk about the who, the what, the where, and most
3:49
importantly, the why of this Ferrari.
3:51
Why this 250 GTO?
3:53
Let's, uh, let's sort of position up John Coombs a little bit first of all.
3:57
In the immediate post-war period, there was a big motivation in Britain to do some
4:04
kind of motor racing, because motor racing made people feel a bit like the war.
4:07
You know, you built the machine, you put the guy in the machine, the
4:11
machine went off, it did great things.
4:13
Sometimes it came back, sometimes it didn't.
4:15
There was a sense of adventure.
4:17
There was a sense of winning and losing.
4:19
So motor racing took the place, I think, for a lot of people that were
4:23
involved in the RAF and in preparing tanks and that kind of thing.
4:27
It sort of took the place of the war.
4:29
So John Coombs was one of those.
4:31
Formula 3 at the time was Fiat 500 engines in the back of, I guess what we'd call,
4:38
like, go-karts now But fundamentally, Coombs was involved in this, was quite
4:42
good, was a handy Formula Three racer, but realized he wasn't gonna be the
4:46
same, in the same league as somebody like Mike Hawthorn or Stirling Moss.
4:51
So he becomes a Jaguar dealer, and he's a Jaguar dealer in the
4:55
southeast of England, in a town called Guildford, just near London.
4:59
Because he's involved in selling Jaguars, he races Jaguars,
5:03
win on Sunday, sell on Monday.
5:04
So the car that we've got pictured behind us is a car that was extremely well-known
5:09
to the British public in the late 1950s.
5:12
Really, it's pretty unusual for a British manufacturer, you know, for a
5:16
British guy to advertise as aggressively as Coombs is advertising here with
5:21
that number plate, "Buy one." Buy one.
5:24
You see the car race, it's got the plate on it, buy one.
5:27
Now, the car's not in British racing green, is it?
5:29
That's because most Jaguars were in British racing green.
5:32
So Coombs decides he will have his own livery and will paint
5:36
the car… It's not quite white.
5:38
It's sort of gray, isn't it?
5:40
Did that answer your question, Eric?
5:42
I'm anxious that I don't talk on too much- … and, uh, and spoil the
5:46
information later in the presentation.
5:48
It did, and I think it sets the stage for our audience to
5:50
understand John Coombs' motivation.
5:52
But the one thing you missed, John, is why did he buy a Ferrari?
5:55
Well, 'cause it was the fastest thing out there.
5:57
There, and he was getting beat.
5:58
The Jags were slow.
5:59
Yeah, the Jags were slow, and he was getting beat by Ferraris, which actually
6:02
segues into where we took this next.
6:04
And William, during our research, you stumbled across something really
6:09
interesting about this particular 250 GTO that John Coombs owned, and I can't
6:13
do air quotes with a microphone in my hand, but it might have been studied at
6:17
Jaguar, hence reverse engineered, for the benefit of the lightweight E-Type
6:22
Jag, at which point, John, you asserted that this story about this particular
6:27
Ferrari might be more important to the history of Jaguar than it is to Ferrari.
6:31
Yeah, I th- I think it very much is more important to the history of Jaguar than
6:35
it is to the history of Ferrari, and I think this is why Mecum didn't really
6:39
seem that clear on, on how to tell this element of the story of the car's life.
6:45
Because Coombs used the car, raced it, made modifications to it, and then,
6:51
because he had this close relationship with Jaguar, you know, as part of, uh,
6:55
regular, you know, meetings up at Browns Lane, the Jaguar factory, he had lunch
6:59
with Bill Heynes, Jaguar's chief engineer, and said to Bill Heynes, "Look, unless you
7:05
do something about the E-Type, I'm gonna have to carry on racing the Ferrari."
7:11
And Heynes was like, "No, no, you know, you represent us." Combs
7:15
was like, "No, I'm gonna need to race the Ferrari in order to win.
7:19
The E-Type's just not up to it." So the outcome of that lunch was our
7:25
GTO, the Bianco Speciale, spending the winter of, I think it was 1962 or 1963,
7:33
but spending that winter at Jaguar's factory in Browns Lane in Coventry
7:37
being studied by Jaguar engineers.
7:41
So it seems quite likely The lightweight E-Type which emerged the following year
7:49
and was more competitive with the GTOs, it wasn't actually faster, it was, uh,
7:52
better than, than they had been before.
7:53
It seems very likely that that lightweight E-Type was a direct result
7:57
of looking at not just Ferrari GTOs, but specifically the Coombs GTO.
8:03
Coombs never actually said, "Yes, that happened." He denied it, but it's very,
8:08
very well known that that's what happened.
8:10
So he's gonna say, "No, I didn't do that, no," but everyone
8:12
knows that that's what they did.
8:13
Everyone besides Coombs knows that that's what happened.
8:14
So I think it's a great honor for that car, 'cause look, taking someone
8:18
else's car, let's, "Hey, let's make it like that and make it go faster."
8:20
So it kinda showcased what that car was right out of the gate.
8:24
Yeah, it's a very valid point, and we're gonna put a pin in that because we're
8:26
gonna come back to another special tangent of this particular research that we did.
8:31
There's someone else in the mix.
8:32
As we know, history is not linear.
8:34
It is links in a chain.
8:35
That's how I like to look at things.
8:36
There's a lot of other things happening at the same time.
8:38
There happened to be some other now famous people at Jaguar at the
8:41
same time that this car may or may not have been there, and this car
8:44
may or may not have been on track.
8:46
So we're gonna get to that as we go along, but William, let's talk about the so what.
8:49
What makes this 250 GTO stand out from all the 35, 36 plus or minus
8:56
3 others that exist in the world?
8:58
Being the only white one produced from the factory is the big one.
9:01
One of only eight right-hand drive cars also makes it stand out as a
9:05
little more special than, I guess, the other ones, I guess you could say.
9:08
Everyone understands these were race cars.
9:10
Yes, you could put a number plate on them, drive them on the street,
9:11
but they were built to race.
9:13
It wasn't like they were cranking these things out one
9:15
every week or one every day.
9:16
This was built over a couple year span.
9:18
You're only talking 36 cars, so they were spaced out pretty well.
9:22
Isserini designed the car, but then after the pals revolt happened, he's gone.
9:26
But Scaglietti, who did the bodies for it, followed along the lines of what everyone
9:31
else was doing subsequently down the line.
9:32
But now Coombs, obviously, this being a race car, modified it pretty quickly.
9:36
It wasn't like it's something over a long period of time, is adding
9:38
vents to the hood and adding another side vent to the car.
9:41
As you can see here, when it first raced, it had two on the side.
9:45
But then as, I believe it was its second race, when it showed up a couple months
9:49
later at Brands Hatch, it had three vents on the side and it had a louvered hood.
9:53
Now, the three vents became standard on all the Scaglietti cars 'cause they
9:57
were following the whole progress, said, "Well, we might as well just put them
9:59
on there 'cause everyone's doing it."
10:00
Not so much with the vents on the hood, 'cause then you're getting
10:03
into aesthetics, but that's how it changed, I guess separating itself
10:07
from some of the other cars, but it, it really helped with cooling.
10:10
If you look at other GTOs, the nose, the front end changed.
10:14
On a majority of them, there's the three portholes that you can remove
10:18
those You had to take them off by hand.
10:20
That's gonna give you better airflow, but on later models, the nose on the
10:24
front changed, the air intakes and the, your marker lights that were
10:27
on the front also changed in style, design, and function in regards to
10:31
brake duct cooling and what have you.
10:33
So this car came out, I wouldn't say different out of the gate, but what
10:36
set it apart was after it was built, manufactured, and started being raced by
10:40
Coombs, you know, they realized, "Hey, we gotta do some tweaks and adjustments
10:42
to this car to make it even better."
10:44
Far followed, so Galletti saw that and said, "Well, we might as well
10:47
just do that right out of the gate for everyone else 'cause they're gonna
10:49
end up having to do it anyways." So I guess you'd say it proves it out.
10:52
Yep.
10:53
So it was, uh, a, a nice progression of it.
10:55
I guess that's one way it helps, too, when you have a car that's
10:57
got a gestation period of several years instead of something that's
11:00
just done, "Here's a design.
11:02
Let's crank out thousands of them." You can tweak it as it goes 'cause
11:04
there's several things on those cars as they got later produced.
11:08
They incorporated it permanently, like the rear wing on it.
11:11
Like, on earlier cars, it's bolted on.
11:13
Later cars, it's actually built into the body work.
11:15
So there's a few little tweaks like that you look at, and that's what's neat about
11:18
these cars is you kind of see them grow in regards to style, design, and function
11:22
because you're gonna have issues with lift, especially Le Mans, down Mulsanne.
11:27
So that's where these cars were basically designed to really go fast at, so they
11:31
tweaked them to fit that parameter.
11:33
William, you mentioned there's really 36 plus or minus three 'cause
11:37
there's some series two stuff that gets things confusing in there,
11:40
but it's over a span of years.
11:41
But this car in particular, if I remember correctly, 'cause there's copious
11:44
amounts of data on this car, there's like records, just boxes and boxes of
11:48
them that we went through that w- with help from Chris and things like that.
11:51
This car was in the first 12 that were built, so its influence on the rest of
11:56
the 24 plus or minus three that exist is huge because it set the standard
12:00
for GTOs that followed after it.
12:02
Correct.
12:03
You know, laid the groundwork for all the subsequent ones after.
12:05
So then it becomes for collectability wise.
12:07
It's like, do you want an early car because that's the one
12:09
where they were fine-tuning stuff and just bolting stuff on?
12:12
Do you want a later car where it was actually then formed into the body?
12:14
So and especially being right-hand drive as well in the earlier cars,
12:19
then demand changed, so hey, we need to start making the rest in
12:21
left-hand drive 'cause that's where the market's at and that's how they went.
12:24
You know, so i- it's, it's really neat to follow that and see it.
12:27
You can pull this up on the internet.
12:29
You just look at all the serial numbers for all the cars.
12:31
You can see how they progress and just pull up photos.
12:34
You can kind of really look at this stuff and diagnosis
12:36
it and kind of see the tweaks.
12:37
I was just telling John a few minutes ago about looking at photos
12:40
this morning, like I was, on GTOs and just seeing the changes on it.
12:44
It was really neat.
12:45
I don't know, maybe it's just me 'cause I'm, I'm a fanatic about them
12:47
but it's really cool s- looking at that stuff, just the engineering.
12:50
And one thing I always, I love and, and mesmerized me is, you
12:53
know, that was all done by hand.
12:54
It wasn't like you had stamping machines.
12:56
You weren't creating dyes.
12:57
It was all done, and I guess that helps you with tweaking the cars because, hey,
13:00
you just changed a buck a little bit here, shaved this off on the wood buck there.
13:03
Let's, hey, let's do this.
13:04
Hey, let's just bolt it on.
13:05
Oh, then we can put it on later.
13:07
In reference to tweaking, this car constantly evolved through its lifetime,
13:11
unlike a lot of other GTOs that became static or became status symbols and some
13:15
that were still raced even to this day.
13:17
This car continually evolved over its lifespan.
13:20
So when it went to auction in January, it was not technically
13:24
in its original configuration.
13:26
It's not necessarily a resto-mod either.
13:28
Right.
13:28
So can you talk about multiple engines and other things that this car actually sold
13:32
with when it went to auction in January?
13:34
Due to the value of the car and that Colombo V12, the value
13:37
comes into that motor, and you're not gonna get another one.
13:39
But the beauty of this was is, especially Ferrari Classiche,
13:43
is they have the ability to remanufacture pretty much anything.
13:47
When John Shirley sent it back to Ferrari, the one thing was is the motor.
13:52
They actually recast a whole new motor for this car.
13:55
So technically you could say it, it, I mean, it's matched to the car and that.
13:58
It wasn't like they pulled it from another car, which happens
14:01
quite a bit with Ferraris.
14:02
They'll just take it from a different chassis number and
14:04
throw it into another one.
14:05
Usually people can trace it down and bring it back to its original car.
14:09
But again, how does that affect value?
14:11
Hard to say, but you still had the original motor with it.
14:14
But the beauty of that is, is you can enjoy that car, take it to events, race
14:18
it in historic stuff, and not worry about damaging the original motor- Mm-hmm
14:22
which is fantastic to be able to do.
14:24
'Cause then they get to share it, which is great to see, too.
14:26
John was very good about doing that, and the new owner, David Lee, he's really,
14:31
really good about taking this car out.
14:32
In the short period of time he's owned it, he's already been sharing it
14:35
immensely, which is great to see, 'cause that's where these cars need to be.
14:37
I mean, any car, any of these historic cars like that need to be shared,
14:40
seen, driven, put out in public, 'cause, you know, these things are
14:43
pieces of art, no matter what it is.
14:45
Look at a Pinno.
14:46
A Pinno is a piece of art.
14:47
Just look at it.
14:48
I mean, I think it is.
14:49
I, I just appreciate it.
14:50
Well, speaking of art, let's hyper-focus on the color a little bit more.
14:54
John, you and I debated this ad nauseam about this particular white.
14:58
Is this Coombs white?
14:59
Is this Alpine white?
15:00
Was the car originally white when it left the factory?
15:03
Both of you mentioned how Coombs's cars left Jaguar in that
15:06
particular white to stand out from the rest of the racing crowd.
15:09
This car's been repainted a bunch of times.
15:11
It's been repainted yet again even this year.
15:13
We'll talk about that a little bit more as we talk about the future of this car.
15:16
But my big conjecture was that because of the body work changes, which were
15:21
not done by Ferrari, adding the third vent, adding those hood louvers that
15:24
you saw, that's custom body work.
15:26
The front half of that car had to be painted at some point.
15:29
Whether that matched Ferrari's paint, I don't know if they sent buckets of
15:32
spaghetti and paint along with it, with the car, when it showed up in England.
15:35
But let's talk a little bit more about this Coombs white
15:38
and the legend behind it.
15:39
I think that is quite an interesting point, Eric, because y- William mentioned
15:43
this is one of the first dozen GTOs made.
15:46
I think it speaks to how much respect Ferrari held Coombs in that Coombs was
15:53
able to order a car- Yeah … at all, that he was able to get hold of a car at all.
15:56
I think that's pretty significant.
15:58
So clearly he's got it in his workshop, and as Eric just said, you know,
16:02
he's gonna have painted the car.
16:04
Would it have come from
16:05
I mean, was it Fantuzzi who built the car, William, or was
16:08
it Scaglietti who designed it?
16:10
And then I, I wasn't sure- Well, Pininfarina designed
16:12
it, and it was designed off of the 250 GT- Short wheelbase.
16:15
In essence, what the design was for was for Le Mans And that's
16:19
kinda how Enzo was trying to skirt the rules, 'cause for homologation
16:23
purposes you had to build X amount.
16:23
Bizzarrini is like, it's the same chassis, same wheel base, it's just
16:26
the body's tweaked a little bit.
16:28
It was Scaglietti that built the bodywork, but Bizzarrini was basically the designer.
16:32
Scaglietti did a lot of the changes upstream down the line.
16:34
So I guess it was my thought, is whether it left the factory in Italy in, in red,
16:39
how it got to Coombs' place in Guildford, and did it have the modifications then?
16:43
Probably not.
16:44
I've got a feel like Coombs and his guys went out and thrashed it- Mm-hmm … and
16:49
it overheated, so they cut the louvers.
16:51
And then in order to get it ready for racing, I mean, you saw how
16:55
perfectly prepared that Salvadori Jaguar Mark 2 was in the slide earlier.
17:00
I don't think it's a coincidence that Coombs' place is only about 15 or 20
17:05
miles from where McLaren are based now, and we all know the kind of McLaren
17:10
standard, that you win the race by being better prepared, by everything
17:13
being cleaner and more precisely made than what the other guys are doing.
17:17
So Eric, I think the white paint's really important, because I think the,
17:21
the car, you know, whether it came from Italy in red or white is not relevant,
17:25
but by the time Coombs had it and had raced it, it was in that white.
17:30
And I think Mecom were right to make a big deal out of the fact that it was white.
17:34
At the time I wasn't sure about that, but after we did the
17:37
research, I was like, you know what?
17:38
They were right to make a big deal- Yeah … out of it being white.
17:41
Well, it took a little… John ordered the car through Maranello
17:43
Concessionaires in, uh, England.
17:46
So, you know, when you ordered your car you went to the dealer.
17:48
There was a gentleman, though, in Italy at Ferrari, Alfredo Reali.
17:52
I don't know if I'm pronouncing his last name right.
17:53
I'm not Italian, so my apologies.
17:55
But this is, like, basically the precursor to the tailor-made programs
17:58
they have now where, you know, if you're a very well, high-place customer,
18:01
you can order whatever you want.
18:02
So there was internal negotiations in Maranello by Alfredo on John's
18:07
part, or Maranello Concessionaires' part, to get that car in white.
18:11
So, but again, did it leave there?
18:12
We don't know.
18:13
There's, there's no confirmation of that.
18:14
But there was some negotiating going on internally to allow that car to be white.
18:20
John unearthed this picture from somewhere.
18:23
I'm sorry if it's a little grainy, it just happens to be the quality of it.
18:25
But I, I absolutely adore this picture because it exemplifies
18:28
why the white was so important.
18:30
Just looking at this, you realize it stands out from the crowd,
18:32
regardless of what is with it.
18:34
And there are other 250 GTOs in this picture with the bianco speciale.
18:39
You have the red, the green, there's some Jaguar E-Types,
18:41
there's another red one in the back.
18:42
That white, it's grainy here, but it just pops when you see
18:45
this picture in real life.
18:46
I was gonna say, Eric, guys, just look at the grid.
18:49
This is the 1961 or 1962, I think it's '62- Yeah … Silverstone
18:54
International Trophy race.
18:55
Those two Aston Martins are one-offs, aren't they?
18:58
It's the
19:01
Aston Martin Project 212 and 214.
19:02
I, I think you're looking at probably half a billion dollars in terms of
19:07
current value on, on those racing cars.
19:10
So that's a freak of the moment.
19:11
But yeah, look how many green cars there are, look how many red ones there are,
19:14
and they just kind of fade into the background, but the white stands out.
19:18
And I feel like Coombs was aware of that.
19:21
It wasn't just the Mark II that was white, it wasn't just the GTO that was white.
19:24
The E-types he raced were in that- Yeah … were in that white as well.
19:28
Sort of dove gray, I think that was the Jaguar- I
19:30
think … brand name for the color.
19:31
So John, again, thank you for bringing this up, but this segues
19:34
us into a deeper conversation about its racing pedigree, especially
19:37
in the British club racing scene.
19:39
So let's talk about some of the famous drivers who drove this
19:42
car or, and/or owned this car.
19:44
Okay.
19:44
These, uh, these chaps that we've got driving it here.
19:48
No names.
19:48
All of them are no names.
19:49
I'm, I'm, I'm straining.
19:51
So we, we talked about Coombs already.
19:52
Graham Hill, you must know that name.
19:54
I mean, the guy won Le Mans, he won Indianapolis 500.
19:57
He's, he was Formula One motor racing champion a couple of times, and also a
20:01
great representative for our sport, right?
20:03
A funny bloke and a great storyteller, and a real tragedy that he went in
20:07
the, in, in the way that he did.
20:09
Coombs hired him to drive the car, right?
20:11
And the stories of the early tests where he drives the car and
20:14
is unhappy with it, and demands Coombs makes all these changes.
20:18
And Coombs says yes, and doesn't make the changes, and Hill comes
20:21
back and drives the car and says, "It's much better now. Thank you
20:23
for making those changes," right?
20:25
And I mean, look at his face, right?
20:27
You can see the kind of bloke that he is.
20:28
Salvadori.
20:30
Salvadori won Le Mans with Carrol Shelby.
20:33
He actually died, when Shelby died, Salvadori died just a few days later.
20:37
He did participate in Formula One.
20:39
He was a back marker in Formula One, I think for Aston Martin.
20:42
I think alongside Shelby when he, when at Aston Martin at that time.
20:46
But, you know, for Salvadori, this is somebody who would've
20:49
done all right in NASCAR.
20:50
He didn't mind.
20:51
Rubbing was racing.
20:53
And he said about after Mike Hawthorn died, "If I ever met Mike on the road,"
20:57
'cause the two of them lived in Southern England, "If I ever was driving on
21:00
the road and I met Mike, I knew we were gonna have a hell of a dice."
21:04
In other words, these were two guys who would race like Curtis Turner
21:08
and Joe Weatherly on the road.
21:10
Not quite as bad as Turner and Weatherly, I've gotta say, but you
21:13
know, the British version of Turner and Weatherly on the public highway.
21:17
Rose, you're also fantastic for that.
21:19
They are indeed.
21:21
And the third owner, Jack Sears, now Mecom's material didn't make a big deal
21:24
out of him, 'cause I guess, you know, Hill and Salvadori were, were the big names.
21:28
But Jack Sears was a big name in, in British touring car racing.
21:33
I guess the big thing about Sears was that he had the foresight to buy a
21:37
Holman-Moody Galaxie when they were racing in NASCAR, so it had this
21:41
honking 500 horse 427 motor on it.
21:44
So you imagine when you went to a circuit like Silverstone or something,
21:48
I mean, the story Jack Sears tells in this Galaxie is he was on pole.
21:52
Away from the start he didn't try that hard, a few of the Jaguars passed
21:56
him, but by the time he'd got down to Becket's, which isn't even the
21:59
main straight, he'd just blown all the Jaguars off without even trying.
22:02
Like, on part-throttle he'd blown them off.
22:04
So British saloon car racing, when we think of the early '60s,
22:09
and as an Englishman, you think of Galaxie's and Jaguars, and
22:12
Jack Sears is the driver of…
22:14
So what happens?
22:15
How come Sears owns the GTO?
22:17
He's around the British club racing scene.
22:19
Coombs can't get rid of the car, and it ends up with a guy called J.A.
22:25
Pearce, who's based in a town called Slough, that's just west of London.
22:29
Now, if you've been to Windsor Castle, if you've taken a trip to England,
22:32
you've been to London, you've gone out to Windsor Castle, Slough's
22:35
just the other side of the freeway.
22:37
Slough's horrible, Windsor's really nice.
22:39
Windsor's where the royals go to school.
22:42
Slough is where they built the Ford GT40.
22:45
Slough is also where J.A. Pearce was, and J.A. Pearce took the engine out
22:51
of our GTO and put it in the back of a Cooper single seater and raced it
22:56
pretty successfully in, in the '60s.
22:58
What happened to the body we're not really sure about.
23:01
It just sort of sat around with Pearce's for a little bit, and eventually a sale
23:06
is made of the body, the roller, to Sears.
23:10
Sears puts a normal 250 GTO motor in it, paints the car red, and for most
23:15
of its life, this is how it lives.
23:17
Right up until the John Shirley period, it's in this red,
23:21
it's carrying the wrong motor.
23:22
The real change was where in the early '90s when there was the first classic
23:28
car boom and when the 250 GTO became established as, quote, 'The most
23:33
valuable car in the world,' close quote.
23:35
All right.
23:36
Well, there is a driver missing from this list that we're
23:38
gonna get to in a little bit.
23:39
He didn't necessarily drive the 250 GTO that we're talking about, but
23:42
he was there in the paddock with some of these most favorite drivers.
23:45
But I want to take a minute to highlight some of the racing shots
23:48
that we were able to get from the various archives of the car in action.
23:52
William, is there anything you want to add about this while
23:53
I kind of flip through these?
23:54
You can see evolution, changes in the car in regards how it
23:58
just evolved over its life.
24:00
These are great, great photos.
24:02
I don't know about you guys, I spend hours online or on my phone just
24:05
looking at old stuff like this, 'cause there's so many resources
24:07
you have to be able to access them.
24:09
Definitely check out Revs Institute's site.
24:12
That is phenomenal.
24:13
But you can see how things change by seeing the three portholes.
24:16
Like I was talking about before, see the opening here on the nose, in subsequent
24:19
older cars, that got elongated.
24:21
Those were actually lights, but then you can see they removed the lights and
24:24
then turned them into cooling ducts.
24:25
Later built cars, that design all got changed and tweaked.
24:29
Again, for cooling.
24:30
I don't know if it was too much for aerodynamics and front end
24:32
lift to get a little more aero onto the front end to keep it down.
24:36
Even then, you know, you're reaching, you know, almost 200
24:38
miles an hour on the Mulsanne.
24:40
So Aerodynamics, I guess you would say, in its infancy.
24:43
Wasn't like they had all these computers and fluid dynamics
24:46
and stuff like that to study it.
24:47
It was kind of more along the lines of just eyeballing it, or
24:50
the old school ways, they put the tape on the strands- Yeah
24:53
and just watch it drive around and see where the wind flow
24:56
was going and stuff like that.
24:57
So they knew it was there, but you know, trying to understand it, it's a
25:00
black art as they say, and Adrian Newey seems to have it down to a science.
25:05
Not this year.
25:05
Not this year, no.
25:07
But, you know, I mean, they're just gorgeous cars.
25:09
Why they get to the value they are, I mean, yes, there are so few built, but
25:12
then you start really getting down in the nitty-gritty, it's like, well, why
25:15
is that one worth more than this one?
25:16
And, you know, a lot has to do with history and everything like that,
25:18
but this car was raced extensively throughout its life, so it wasn't
25:22
like it was put away and hid anywhere, so, which is also great to see.
25:26
And there's copious, copious notes and just history and everything on this car
25:30
itself, on this specific chassis, that you can follow through and just see its life.
25:33
And it's kinda interesting to see, because it's a race car.
25:36
I mean, yes, you can drive it on the street, but you know,
25:38
just see how it was utilized.
25:39
And like John was saying, "Hey, Jack Sears bought it, then he just stuck it
25:42
in a corner to pull the motor out of it." I mean, at that point in time, it
25:44
was worth a couple thousand dollars.
25:46
I mean, you hear the stories.
25:47
You know, the one that got donated to the school for high school kids
25:50
to work on and everything like that.
25:52
That's the one that Ralph Lauren owns now.
25:53
Uh-huh.
25:54
These stories are great, you know, and that's what's fabulous about
25:57
institutes like this, Revs, to keep that alive and give you that
26:00
opportunity to be able to study this stuff and just follow its history
26:03
because these, these stories are great.
26:05
Eric's got some great podcasts that he does in regards to, like,
26:09
an Evening With a Legend and that, you know, talking to these guys.
26:11
It's great that we're able to document that and record this for subsequent
26:15
generations and hear it because they pass on, those stories die with them.
26:18
They're not told and kept alive.
26:20
They're just awesome to see.
26:21
I love it when my colleagues do my job for me.
26:23
It's great.
26:26
As William mentioned, you know, we wanna segue into this hidden
26:29
driver, this mysterious person we've been talking about.
26:31
So to William's point, once we started connecting the dots and looking at how
26:36
all the evidence that we had lined up, the time period, where this car was,
26:41
who was in the car, who was racing, the teams, who they were competing against,
26:44
it dawned on me when I was sitting down with David Hobbs for an episode of
26:48
Evening With the Legends, some of you are very familiar with that program.
26:51
Yeah.
26:52
Nobody famous in the racing world at all.
26:54
So I'm sitting there talking to Hobbo and he's telling his, you know, after
26:57
dinner spiel, as John likes to call it.
26:59
He's very good at that.
27:00
He's recounting his life story and starting in the early days in the '60s and
27:03
racing in British Club Racing and racing for his dad and prototype transmissions.
27:07
And, and he mentions Graham Hill and seeing these people, blah, blah, blah.
27:11
And at the time, it didn't all come together because we had talked to Hobbo
27:15
before we started this project, but when we got midway through, I do what all good
27:19
hosts do, and I called him up and I said- "David, I am working on this project.
27:23
It involves this car, and these places, and these people.
27:25
I would like to have a conversation about your experience." Because as we
27:29
thought about it, there's nobody really left to tell stories about this car.
27:33
And for us, it is to William's point about capturing the living history.
27:36
So it m- felt right to call up David, and he was very, very cool about it.
27:39
He's like, "Absolutely. Let's get on and let's have a conversation. You know,
27:42
let me tell you about my experience club racing there with Graham Hill,
27:46
Roy Salvadori, and seeing this car in person at the track." I think this
27:50
next slide, hopefully the video plays.
27:51
The era of racing, club racing, obviously it was a feeder system
27:55
of sorts for young drivers.
27:57
Obviously there were, uh, some older drivers.
27:59
Not many, but I mean… And a lot of people that did club racing had
28:03
no interest in going any further.
28:05
The people like me, and Jack Sears, and Graham Hill, and Jimmy Clark
28:09
they had designs on, on going into, into professional racing, even though
28:13
there wasn't much money in it really, very little money at the time.
28:17
That was my, of course, obviously John Coombs was there at that meeting
28:20
as well because Graham Hill was driving his, uh, John Coombs' E-Type.
28:25
This is before the Ferrari came along.
28:27
Coombs was very successful.
28:28
Graham Hill drove for him in the, uh, in the 3.8 Mark II, which was also white.
28:33
He drove for him in the E-Type, which was white, and then of course
28:36
they got the, the 250 GTO, which of course was a hell of a car.
28:39
What we're thinking about is can you look at this Ferrari and say, well, the
28:43
guys at Jaguar obviously looked at this Ferrari and then made these changes to the
28:49
Jaguar as a result, and therefore we need a early lightweight E as a comparison.
28:54
I, I think really that the Jaguar were trying to, uh, I don't know about
28:58
crib, but to try and actually improve the E-Type by following the Ferrari,
29:04
some of the Ferrari practices, uh, rather than the other way around.
29:07
I mean, I think the Ferrari was always the quicker of the two cars.
29:10
All right.
29:10
The clip speaks for itself.
29:12
The most important part, the reason we left the question in from John, that
29:15
middle break, so he talks a little bit about the club racing experience, seeing
29:18
Graham Hill, all that kind of stuff.
29:19
That other part, the missing link here, is that at the same
29:22
time all of this is happening, David Hobbs is working at Jaguar.
29:26
So he's in the research and development department, and he's one of their
29:29
factory test drivers at that point.
29:30
Very young in his career, very early on.
29:32
So that's what kind of brought all this together, and so that's, if you
29:35
wanna see the rest of that interview, you can actually scan the QR code or I
29:38
can send you the link later, but it's very, very interesting to see it from
29:41
a racer's perspective who lived it and was there looking from the outside in.
29:45
So William, we need to get on to why is this so special today in 2026?
29:50
I think that conversation starts off with the exclusive GTO Owners Club.
29:55
Yeah, I mean, obviously more recent owners, say in the past 20 years, you
30:00
know, have obviously spent millions of dollars acquiring it, but you
30:03
still have several that have owned their cars for many, many decades.
30:07
But you got some great people that own them, and it's great to see a good portion
30:10
of them share their car with the world.
30:12
Lord Bamford's got actually two, so he's in that very unique club.
30:17
He's a JCB guy.
30:17
Yeah.
30:17
He's like earth moving.
30:18
Yeah, so I should say, yeah, Lord Bamford.
30:21
But I always love telling the story about Nick Mason.
30:23
I mean, I'm sure everyone here is familiar with the band Pink Floyd and who he is.
30:27
Well, in the '80s when they were doing, I say, a comeback tour,
30:30
relaunching their tour, they needed money to get things going.
30:34
They needed about a million bucks.
30:35
So I mean, you're talking about '80s, what's that?
30:37
Maybe like 10 million today, and you look at numbers.
30:39
Nick had the car.
30:40
So what do they do?
30:41
Put it up for collateral, got the loan against the GTO to pay for that tour.
30:45
Obviously, it was rather successful, so he got to keep the car.
30:48
They didn't repossess it.
30:49
But I always thought that was a great story regarding Nick and his car.
30:51
But again, he's one too that absolutely loves and enjoys car racing.
30:55
I mean, he's, he's a racer at heart.
30:56
His wife drives the car immensely, his kids do.
30:59
His son-in-law is Dario Franchitti's brother, Mario Franchitti.
31:01
Yes.
31:02
So I mean, there's racing through and through in that family.
31:05
But, you know, there's some very, very famous people.
31:07
Like I said before, you know, Ralph Lauren's got the car that was donated
31:10
to the high school for high school kids to work on and learn the car.
31:13
It kind of would blow your mind today, but again, back then, you
31:17
know, I wouldn't say it was just a car, but it was just a race car.
31:19
It was old.
31:19
Yeah, it was worth a few dollars, but it wasn't what it's worth today.
31:23
I would say it's either unfortunate or however you wanna view it You know,
31:26
maybe that's what drives the value today is because individuals like
31:30
that set the precedent that I have more than you, so they're willing to
31:34
pay more because they have the money to do it, so it drives up the price.
31:37
Yeah.
31:37
But fortunately, there's several individuals that do own them,
31:40
that do share it with everybody.
31:42
They drive them.
31:42
I know every couple years it's kept secret because they don't want people
31:46
knowing where all these cars are gonna be at once, but they have a, a GTO
31:49
Owners Club and they do, I dunno, every two, three, four years, something like
31:52
that, they put together a driving tour.
31:55
They meet somewhere.
31:55
I know they've done it in the United States several times.
31:57
They'll just pick a nice area and get an itinerary set up.
32:00
They'll stay at Motel 6, stuff like that.
32:03
You know, eat McDonald's.
32:04
Stuff like that, but anyways, they're real nice people.
32:06
I mean, a couple of them you can approach and talk to.
32:09
They're more than happy to talk to you about the car.
32:10
Yeah.
32:11
Other ones, you're never gonna get near them, but you always have the respect and
32:14
appreciate- Yeah … the individuals that they understand and want to share the car.
32:17
It's very impressive, that list of owners.
32:19
Yeah.
32:20
Two important things about this as we transition in, into the next slide
32:23
here is that David McNeil has the world record setting Ferrari 250 GTO,
32:28
and we're gonna talk about that as the high end of the value of these cars.
32:31
But more importantly, as you sort of alluded to there, it's longtime ownership.
32:35
They don't change hands very often.
32:37
That's something we want to hone in on, we want to reiterate.
32:40
And our GTO, as John likes to call it, has only changed hands
32:44
five times in 60 plus years.
32:46
And the first two owners were very, very short.
32:48
The guy with the used car lot- Yeah … and John Coombs only had
32:51
it for a couple of racing seasons.
32:52
But then Jack Sears and, um- John Shirley … John Shirley, over 30 years?
32:56
Yeah.
32:56
Yeah.
32:57
Yeah, so they, it, it was in long-term ownership.
32:59
Yeah.
32:59
I said a lot of these individual, like Nick's owned his car since '77.
33:03
Long time, yeah.
33:04
Yeah, so I mean, there, there's quite a few that have had, like Lord Bamford.
33:07
He's had his for ages too- Forever … as well, so.
33:09
Coming to market in the past 10, 15 years, we've seen a couple pop up at an auction.
33:15
You know, and obviously all the scuttlebutt starts, "All right, what's
33:17
it gonna go for, this and that?"
33:18
But majority of these cars, when they do change hands, they're
33:20
gonna change hands privately.
33:22
Individuals in that tax bracket usually like to keep all their stuff private.
33:26
They just work through individuals that have the means or knowhow and contacts.
33:31
Someone knows someone that wants another, wants one.
33:33
So it's usually not too difficult to find someone to purchase the car, but
33:37
you really don't hear about it a lot because they change hands privately.
33:40
And if you're interested, that's what he does for a living, so.
33:42
Talk to him after.
33:43
That being said, the range for these cars is a noted $35 to $75 million.
33:49
So David Mc- McNeil's being on the high end of that, $75 million,
33:52
that number was leaked out because that was a private sale.
33:55
Well, and that, and the McNeil car was considered a great car- Yep
33:58
because it's the only silver one, and it's one that won at
34:01
the Tour de France one year.
34:03
Correct.
34:03
So it has a, it has a good race history, and it's a very distinctive looking car.
34:07
And, and as William said, if the transactions are private, how do
34:10
we know what Dave McNeil paid?
34:12
The answer is we don't really know what Dave McNeil paid.
34:15
There's just gossip in the space- Yeah … and that number has
34:19
always been 70 or 75 million.
34:21
I've heard both of those numbers various times.
34:24
I just want to touch on, on the range here, and it
34:26
reflects on, on the white car.
34:28
The $35 million car was a car that Bonhams had probably about
34:32
10 years ago now, if you look back at their records, and this car was
34:37
considered as having a poor history.
34:39
Yeah.
34:39
And its poor history was because when it was bought new, it was
34:43
bought by a wealthy French guy.
34:45
Early in its career, it may have been at a motor racing event or it may
34:48
have just been on the road, but the guy wrecked it and was killed in it.
34:51
Now, I've not dug into the provenance.
34:54
I'm sure the people at Bonhams would know, but it seems very likely,
34:58
often in these kind of situations, the family just keep the car.
35:02
So you're probably waiting for a significant person, maybe a wife
35:06
or a mother, to pass on before the car can come back to market.
35:11
So that's what happened with that car.
35:13
But so that's had no history at all, and what history there has been has been poor.
35:18
So that car was clearly going to be the bottom of the range.
35:21
So when we approached the Mecum auction, the feeling was, if 35 is the
35:27
bottom and 75 is the top, but just last year we saw that Mercedes make 140,
35:34
well, gosh, could this, the white one, great provenance, pretty original, could
35:39
this be the first $100 million Ferrari?
35:42
Could it even do more than the Uhlenhaut Coupe?
35:45
That's what- Right … we were wondering up at Mecum, weren't we?
35:48
Yeah, that's right.
35:49
Yeah.
35:49
They had some ideas floating around.
35:51
So what we did is we called in our Canadian buddy, David Nyens, who runs
35:54
Motorcopia, and he has a fantastic analysis program that he's written,
35:58
and he came up with a valuation based on provenance, based on all this other
36:01
information about the car, and he came up with a number of $63 million.
36:05
That was what we went in for.
36:07
That's what we were thinking.
36:08
But let's talk about what actually happened.
36:10
Mecum was the chosen auction.
36:12
William, briefly, how did it end up at Mecum?
36:13
There's a story there, too.
36:14
There was crickets.
36:17
I, you know, Chris Beale from Prancing Horse was, you know, an individual
36:20
stated earlier bringing this to Mecum and bringing this to Dana, and getting
36:25
everything set up and agreeing to all the terms and all that kind of stuff.
36:28
So it was obviously very much hyped, and Mecum was obviously ecstatic
36:32
to have this car, 'cause that is a feather in an auction house's cap
36:36
to have a GTO cross their block.
36:38
You know, obviously they put a lot behind it.
36:40
As John was stating, you know, Mecum had very high hopes and people were
36:44
throwing around some very large numbers.
36:46
People say, "Well, it's only one of eight right-hand drive,"
36:48
this and that, you know.
36:49
I sa- I had my thing, I was at 40 to 45.
36:52
A few other people were on kind of my thought process too.
36:55
I feel being right-hand drive diminishes value because when an
36:59
individual that can afford that car, they want the car they want.
37:04
They won't just, "Well, we have one's available. It's only one
37:06
of the 36, so I better grab it." That's not how they think.
37:09
They're gonna get what they want.
37:10
So stepping up to it, and I believe where it hammered at- was at a price point that
37:17
the buyer, David Lee, was comfortable paying for it and wanting a GTO.
37:22
Would he probably have preferred a left-hand drive?
37:24
I'm sure, but then he was probably gonna pay 15, 20 million more.
37:27
But you never know what something's worth, what some- what
37:29
someone's willing to pay for it.
37:31
Yeah.
37:31
That's where auction process and going in front of an auction like that, it can
37:35
skew numbers, it can throw numbers off.
37:37
It can also set market values.
37:39
Those cars, it's when someone wants that specific car, 'cause
37:42
of provenance, history, someone will step up and pay for it.
37:45
The numbers were kind of getting way up there- Yeah … in regards to what
37:48
some people thought it was gonna bring.
37:49
And unfortunately, there's a lot of what if, there's a lot of speculation,
37:52
there's a lot of had it gone to Sotheby's, had it gone to Bonhams, had
37:57
it gone here, had it gone there, would it have hammered at different numbers?
37:59
Honestly, it's irrelevant, because the type of person that's going to buy that
38:03
car is going to be in a very slim margin of people that can afford that car, and
38:07
we know the window of opportunity in terms of its value, so 35 million to 75 million.
38:12
So y- you funneled everybody down, and I don't think it matters where it lands,
38:16
because if you're willing to pay what it's worth, which is different than its
38:20
value, then that is extremely important.
38:22
So that's why, in the end, what makes David Lee's purchase of the
38:26
250 Special is that somebody still wants to buy one of these in 2026.
38:31
And more importantly, some people might say, "Well, if you compare it
38:34
to Nick Mason or you compare it to Lord Bamford, you know, how many gray
38:37
hairs do they have versus David Lee?"
38:39
But you have to also think back, how young was Nick Mason when he bought his 250 GTO?
38:44
So now the clock is sort of resetting.
38:45
Are we going to see a new breed of 250 GTO owners going forward?
38:50
Which brings us really, John, to a conversation about the future of the
38:54
250 GTO, and maybe ours in particular.
38:57
Yes.
38:58
I thought we were gonna talk about the modern supercars now.
39:00
We are.
39:01
There's one more slide, though.
39:02
Oh, okay.
39:02
Because the future, the future of this car is really interesting.
39:05
Serendipitous, in a way, because right after the auction, of all
39:09
people, Mattel decided to cast it and immortalize it in their Vintage
39:14
Racing Highline series of cars, right?
39:17
What an incidence.
39:18
Or maybe something more.
39:19
I don't know how fast Hot Wheels can bring out a car, but it was I mean,
39:23
down to the very triple gill side vents and the number 10 every…
39:27
It looks a lot like David's car.
39:29
You never know, maybe one of you guys could be walking home with a car.
39:31
Yeah.
39:32
That being said, there is a special treat in this bin up here.
39:35
If you are interested in owning your own Bianco Speciale white 250 GTO, they are
39:40
in that bin for you to take home with you.
39:42
Not all of them have one in it, so have, you gotta be aware of that.
39:44
I said so.
39:44
Look for the green dot.
39:45
It's gonna, it's a, it's a random pick.
39:47
All right, John, you wanted to talk about this, the future of these cars.
39:51
I kind of did wanna talk about this, just because when we left Mecum,
39:54
I was left feeling a little bit like, oh, 'cause that, the white car
39:58
made 36, so that seemed low to me.
40:01
I felt like it was worth more than that, and I was very surprised by
40:04
that because this orange Porsche 918 that you see at the top of the screen
40:09
there, it strolled across the block just before, and the estimate on it was
40:13
three to five, and it made that six.
40:16
And we also watched this Enzo here.
40:19
The estimate was definitely under 10.
40:21
I think the estimate was, like, three to five, and then it went ahead and made 15.
40:26
Now, further to this, I've a neighbor who has a couple of Ferrari 308s.
40:31
He was telling me, I was, I was saying to him, "Oh, I listened to a podcast
40:35
last night, and they were saying 360 Challenge Stradale," so this is
40:39
the Ferrari 360, but the street race version of it, Challenge Stradale.
40:43
360s now, they used to be a 250 or $300,000 car.
40:48
I had read that one had sold for 600, and he said, "What? I heard about one
40:53
that went for 800 last week." So we're in a very, very strange place with
40:59
values for certain collector cars.
41:03
Now, the question, who's buying these cars?
41:05
We spent a long time talking about that at Mecum, but as we were walking back
41:09
to the car, I found myself thinking This is a passing of the baton, isn't it?
41:13
That those of us who have been around the space a little bit will remember when the
41:16
most valuable cars were Duesenbergs, the Olympian stuff of the interwar period.
41:21
And then all of a sudden, the post-war racing cars driven by
41:25
the Nick Mason generation buying cars, those cars went up in value.
41:30
And I still know people at Pebble Beach who look at a Packard and look at a
41:34
Ferrari and, like, roll their eyes.
41:35
They're like, "How can you even compare one with the other?" Well, I'm feeling
41:40
like that at the moment as the Bianco Speciale underperforms and the orange
41:47
918 does nearly double the estimate.
41:52
Now, I don't know, maybe if you like orange.
41:55
I don't know.
41:55
I mean, there are some teams- There are some, there are some football teams
41:59
that play in orange, aren't there?
42:00
You've got a- It's papaya.
42:01
That's what I keep saying … maybe, maybe if you, maybe if you
42:03
love the orange, you know.
42:05
But I just gotta believe that the person who bought that car bought it so that
42:10
when you go to an event, everyone knows, you know, you're there because you've
42:15
got the only orange, the paint to sample, the only orange 918 that there is.
42:21
So I think that's how the hobby's changing.
42:24
I think you can see it in the price, and I think this is the inflection point.
42:28
Yeah.
42:29
People are getting more about status and being able to say, "Oh, this is one of
42:33
one," and that instead of actually, hey, you know, just about what the car is.
42:36
And it's unfortunate 'cause it's pricing many and many people out of getting even,
42:41
I'd say, an entry level collector car.
42:44
It's not affordable.
42:45
Instead of something, you know, what was two years ago was, say, 150.
42:48
And again, that's not, you know, money to sneeze at, but it's definitely in the
42:52
realm of possibility for a lot of people.
42:54
Now, all of a sudden, it's worth $400,000.
42:55
Like, well, I can't do that.
42:56
Yeah.
42:57
You know, it just, it's unfortunate.
42:58
Well, folks, I know we went over time.
43:00
We could probably talk the rest of lunch and the afternoon
43:03
on this particular topic.
43:04
So we don't have room for questions, but we will take them during lunch
43:07
if you want, or during the break.
43:08
But if you are interested in learning more about what we do, the things
43:11
we talk about, each of us have our own shows on the Motoring Podcast
43:14
Network, or you can go back into the archive and learn all about the Bianco
43:17
Speciale and all the different things that we researched along the way.
43:20
So with that, I appreciate everybody's time, patience, and
43:24
appreciate you guys listening to us.
43:25
And if you guys want a swag bag, just raise your hand, and these two young
43:28
ladies right here will- And they shall pass them out … bring them out.
43:45
This episode is made possible by the Studebaker National Museum,
43:49
the home of South Bend, Indiana's automotive and industrial heritage.
43:53
The museum preserves and interprets the legacy of Studebaker through
43:57
its world-class collection of vehicles, artifacts, and archival
44:01
materials, including several nationally designated treasures.
44:06
As a center for history, design, and innovation, the museum inspires
44:10
enthusiasts and the community alike through its exhibits, programming, and
44:15
commitment to safeguarding the stories that shaped American transportation.
44:20
To learn more or plan your visit, check out www.studebakermuseum.org.
44:29
This episode is also brought to you by the Society of Automotive Historians.
44:34
They encourage research into any aspect of automotive history.
44:39
The SAH actively supports the compilation and preservation of papers, organizational
44:45
records, print ephemera, and images to safeguard as well as to broaden and
44:51
deepen the understanding of motorized wheeled land transportation through
44:55
the modern age and into the future.
44:59
For more information about the SAH, visit www.autohistory.org.
45:11
I hope you enjoyed another awesome episode of Brake Fix Podcast, brought
45:15
to you by Grand Touring Motorsports.
45:17
If you'd like to be a guest on the show or get involved, be sure
45:19
to follow us on all social media platforms at GrandTouringMotorsports.
45:24
And if you'd like to learn more about the content of this episode,
45:27
be sure to check out the follow-on article at GTMotorsports.org.
45:32
We remain a commercial-free and no annual fees organization through
45:36
our sponsors, but also through the generous support of our fans,
45:40
families, and friends through Patreon.
45:43
For as little as $2.50 a month, you can get access to more behind-the-scenes
45:47
action, additional Pit Stop minisodes, and other VIP goodies, as well as keeping our
45:53
team of creators fed on their strict diet of Fig Newtons, Gummi Bears, and Monster.
45:58
So consider signing up for Patreon today at www.patreon.com/gtmotorsports.
46:05
And remember, without you, none of this would be possible.