Latest / BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show / What's so special about... The Bianco Speciale?

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What's so special about... The Bianco Speciale? · BREAK/FIX the Motorsports & Vehicle Enthusiast Variety Show

0:00
John Summers is the motoring historian.
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He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept
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sports bike rider hailing from California.
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He collects cars and bikes built with plenty of cheap and
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fast and not much reliable.
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On his show, he gets together with various co-hosts to talk about new
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and old cars driving motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.
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Good day.
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Good morning, good afternoon.
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It is John Summers, the Motoring historian.
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A bit of a special episode.
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This one got, uh, producer Eric and, uh, William Ferrari.
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Guy Ross with us Mika are auctioning the only white Ferrari, GTO.
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William's been doing some work around it, and we got talking about it.
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We realized that really there's some interesting material about the car's
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past in history, especially its early racing history, which maybe the Meum
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guys aren't leading with because nobody sells more muscle than Meum.
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Nobody.
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But maybe other people do sell more prancing horses or bulls or Stuttgart.
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Scroll dot.
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Well, John, always good to be back with you in studio and to your point,
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I think there's three major topics that we wanna cover about this.
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1962 Ferrari, two 50 GTO.
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William, what's the serial number on that one?
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Three seven.
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Two nine.
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Gt.
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Yes, the Bianco Spial, as they like to call it these days.
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You being the motoring historian, you've got a lot of facts rolling
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around in your head, and one of the names that keeps popping up in this
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conversation about the Bianco Spial is John Coombs and being a fellow Brit.
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I figured you'd just be able to whip this out off the top of your head.
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So let's dive into the legacy of John Coombs a little bit
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as it leads into the Ferrari.
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The way to think about John Coombs is you hesitate to say Carol Shelby
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because a sort of Texan cowboy.
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He certainly wasn't.
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The Coombs firm were a firm of car traders and coach builders and Coombs himself.
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He, he was a Jaguar dealer in the post-war period and very involved with
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racing Jaguars and tuning jaguars.
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If you visit the Goodwood Revival, they always have British Saloon car races.
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As if they were from the 1960s.
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That's really what Goodwood does well, you know, the little minis battling the
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Jaguar mark twos, and one of the most recognizable Jaguar mark twos is a gray
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one with the plate, BUY, the number one.
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Buy one that was a John Coombs built and prepared Jaguar.
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It's most regularly associated with Roy Salvadori, but Coombs
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built and prepared the car.
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I guess I first encountered that the name of Coombs when
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I was looking really closely.
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Mike Hawthorn and I wrote a piece.
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It's the only academic piece that I've ever had included in
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an actual academic history book.
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The book is The Ledge Companion to Automotive History, and I wrote a piece
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about Mike Hawthorn and specifically about Mike Hawthorn's death.
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This is a whole separate can of worms and it's not a conversation for today.
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But the point is that Mike Hawthorne wrapped his Jaguar around a tree
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just down the hill about 200 yards from Coombs workshop, just outside
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Guilford, his Jaguar dealership.
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So after the wreck.
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Hawthorne's Jaguar was taken to Coombs and there's photographs of
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it being at Coombs and Coombs were involved with getting it transported
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back up to Brown's Lane and Coventry.
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So because of of that, I looked into who John Coombs was a little
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bit more than, uh, he was this bloke that did hot Rod Jaguars.
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When Hawthorn crashed, wasn't he?
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And obviously racing against somebody, but wasn't he going, wasn't there
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another individual in another car?
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Yes.
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Horse playing around.
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Yes.
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Horse playing around is a good way to describe it.
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The language that the other individual used in court was that they were dicing.
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So this is not quite motor racing.
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We're not racing on the road.
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And the other individual was Rob Walker.
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There we go.
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Who was a fellow, one team owner and was the heir to the
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Johnny Walker Whiskey Fortune.
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And something that has only come out in fairly recent years is that
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it is thought that Rob Walker.
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Pulled up outside Mike Hawthorne's house in the Mercedes and revved the
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crap out of his Mercedes 300 SL in order to get Mike Hawthorne out of bed.
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So he gave Hawthorne enough time to get dressed and out the front door, and
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then he ripped up the gravel and got out on the hog's back, and Hawthorne
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was killed on a bit of the A three just close to the junction with the
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A 30 and the A 30 at that point runs along that top of a ridge of hills.
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Based upon personal experience nowadays it's tragic, absolutely tragic.
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There's a very low speed limit along there, but as recently as when I was
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a sales rep and worked in Goleman, you could do the vehicle's maximum
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speed along the hogs back, but you really needed to worry about the wind.
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Hawthorne in his Jaguar had managed to catch Rob Walker in the Mercedes
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300 SL by the time they merged off the Hawk's back a 30 onto the A three
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Hawthorne passes Walker and then spins right in front of him off into a tree
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and it's like a driver door head.
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So that was why haw.
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Did not stand any chance at all.
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Jaguar destroyed the car and there's a whole lot of stuff about was it the tire?
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Was it the fact that Hawthorne was an absolute bloody hooligan?
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There's really a lot of of interesting mythology around it.
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And look, we have Rob Walker's account of what happened from court.
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You have to say, when he was speaking to the judge, you know, the judge
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pressed him on the speed and, you know, he's very vague about the
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kind of speed that they were doing.
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And that was what prompted me to really go and look at what
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happened and try and stand there.
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And, you know, the roads changed a lot.
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And you know, f for me, the reason it stuck in my mind was I was a
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sales rep at the time doing about 60,000 miles a year in somebody
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else's car in my early twenties.
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It's somebody else's car, somebody else's gas card, somebody else's tires.
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So.
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Company cars got used up and I used to be up and down that bit
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of the A 30 all the time in the a.
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Well, after a bit you begin to think, well, which corner was
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it that Hawthorne lost it on?
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Yeah.
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Which was the one that caught him out.
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Right.
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So I don't wanna be put out on that.
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It had a little bit of that kind of feel to it.
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Let's pull on that Mike Hawthorne thread just a little bit longer.
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So that Jag that he was killed in.
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Was a Coombs prepared Jag, or was that just an off the shelf one?
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Oh, it was not a Coombs prepared Jag.
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I just described how close Hawthorne lived to Coombs, you know, the
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length of the hog's back maybe five miles, something like that away.
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Hawthorne had his own Jaguar dealership, the TT garage, his father did.
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Riley's then did Lancers.
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He himself did Jaguars and Ferraris.
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Was Coombs in competition with Hawthorne?
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I think so.
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I think they were competitors on the track in terms of Roy Salvadori and in
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Buy One and Mike Hawthorne in VDU 8 81.
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But I also think what they were competing for was whether or not you as a Jaguar
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buyer or somebody who wanted your Jaguar hot rotted, either for racing
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or just 'cause you wanted a faster car.
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They were competing against each other as to whether you took the car to the
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TT garage to have Hawthorne's guys do the work, or whether you took it to
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the main Jaguar dealer, John Coombs.
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What makes a die hard Jaguar tuner and dealer turn and buy a Ferrari.
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This is a awesome story, Eric.
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Why couldn't buy a Ferrari?
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Because as a Jaguar dealer, he was keen that.
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He could win with Jaguar products and he'd been racing E types,
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but they really weren't a match.
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They were too heavy.
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And I was lucky when I was 12 or 13, my dad bought me a subscription to
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Motorsport Magazine and on the cover at the time, it described it as the
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authoritative voice of the sport.
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I think for this particular period.
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And in, you know, for this particular niche, I love motor sport as a source.
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In 2009, Simon Taylor went and had lunch with John Coombs, where he
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lived in Monaco and over that meal.
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Coombs told him that he'd had a meal with Bill Haynes Jaguars chief engineer,
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where he'd described the engine of the Jaguar as a bloody pendulum and
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how he was forced to go buy Ferrari.
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So that he could win some races.
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Yeah.
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Well, down to obviously being competitive, he wants to win and
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that's where the story comes in.
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Him loaning 3 7 2 9 GT O2 Jaguar to reverse engineer it or just
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go over it and scrutinize it a bit to see what they can do.
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That created the Jag e type of lightweight.
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The thing that struck me as well is if you go to Goodwood and you see the
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E type lightweights that are active.
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Car that you see often is the car with a number plate four WPD.
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Well, four WPD was the Coombs E type, which after the Jaguar guys had looked
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at the GTO, that was the E type that had been originally raced and prepared by
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Coombs that went back to Brown's Lane, the Jaguar factory, to be turned into.
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The first lightweight E, you know how much they really
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scrutinize or reverse engineer.
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I mean, did they like rip it apart?
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Do we know?
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I mean, they just kind of look it over and take some measurement.
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How in depth do they get into that GTO in regards to really scrutinizing it?
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I mean, that meeting, the impression is that.
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Bill Haynes wanted the car to come to Coventry, and I think if the car
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came to Coventry, there is one article knocking around written by a guy
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called Nathan Chadwick, and his article had even pulled out the performance
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figures that Jaguars, hes driver, Norman Deis extracted from the car.
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In comparing it.
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With the Jaguar E type, it did 137 miles an hour.
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I remember from the article, yeah, Norman himself wasn't quite the
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character and I, I'm sure he had some fun in that GTO testing it for
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Jaguar to find out what it could do.
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But you know, memory serves me.
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They made that E type lighter by a decent amount than the GTO
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to get that thing competitive.
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In reality.
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I mean, it didn't blow its doors off, it made it more competitive.
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It's called balance of performance these days.
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There you go.
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Yeah.
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But it, but it did shift the balancer.
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'cause the other interesting thing I read about was the Ferrari three 30
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LMB at another point in its life, I read one account where it compared
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the performance of the three 30 LMB.
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With the two 50 GTO and the top speeds were similar, but the way
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they got there were different.
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The Axel ratios were different.
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I think one's a four speed, one's a five speed.
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Yeah.
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Going back to Norman Jus, I remember the quarter mile times, I think
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the Ferrari did a 13 and a half and the E type did a 13 seven.
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I mean, that's respectful.
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There's nothing to sneeze at.
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I wanna dive into before we get into the color, which is one of the most important
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parts of the car, is its racing history.
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What did he buy it for?
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What kind of racing was on his mind?
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Because he basically bought a LeMans prepared car to race in
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England, or am I wrong about that?
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John?
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The biggest race for cars of that type at that time was Lamont in
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terms of, you know, prestige.
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But he bought it to sell cars.
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Domestically.
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So that meant that it was going to do races like Silverstone
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International Trophy, for example.
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So this is a international race, but the vast majority of the entry
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is going to be British people.
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If you think of it, even Jaguar went to Lamar and made an effort to go
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there, but they didn't really make an effort to go to the nerve burging
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and do the thousand kilometers there.
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They certainly didn't make an effort with the tar Florio.
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The effort with the millet Milia was not really very serious.
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If you look back, Mercedes made a point of traveling a long way.
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The Italians made a point of going to Argentina, but I really get the
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feeling that the racing scene at that time was quite parochial in
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comparison to the way that it is now.
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And for John Coombs, the important thing.
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Was winning some races in and around the south of England and
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maybe a few in Northern France and Belgium and something like that.
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You wouldn't go too far away because nobody's gonna travel that far to
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come and buy, uh, Jaguar off you.
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So would you then classify that more as what we would say, you know, here
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stateside, it's more club racing for John Coombs than being on the
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international scene with that car?
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Yes.
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But then he would bring in Graham Hill and Salvadore and all these
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other drivers to drive that car.
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For him because at that time, although Graham Hill was a Formula One world
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champion, he was still very much involved in club racing at that time.
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One of the features of club meetings in Britain in that era
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was there would be 500 cc cars.
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Small engine saloon cars, you know, minis or Anglia.
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There would be Jaguars, bigger cars.
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There would be a race for cars that were similar to contemporary Formula One cars.
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You wouldn't get a full turnout of a full Formula one field, but
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there would be a mixed field and a feature of a lot of those meetings.
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Staunching to look backwards.
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If Sterling Moss was there, he would enter every event and typically win every event.
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I mentioned that partly to illustrate moss's dominance, but also to
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show the even the very best.
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Max Vapin, you know, all this business of him racing GT three cars now as Franz
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Herman, that was the norm back then.
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And, and if you think of Graham Hill, he famously did the Triple Crown, didn't he?
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In the he one, like the Monaco Grand Prix.
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Lamar and Indianapolis find that car.
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Obviously his competitors wanting to win, but to get Graham Hill and Roy
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Salvador to drive, they were like, well.
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Until you have a faster car.
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Was that something he got to, to entice them to come drive for him?
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Ooh, I'm not sure about that.
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I think that if you were going to race, I think he would want to win.
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So, yeah.
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But we talked about how Salvadori, he was the guy that Shelby won Lamont with.
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Yeah, he was handy in sports cars.
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Spent some time in Formula One.
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Not a compelling success in in Formula One, and I suppose.
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What's interesting to me about it is that I believe you can see a clear
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stack ranking between moss and Hawthorn, and then salvadori and coons in terms
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of skill sitting behind the wheel.
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So the reason I wanna go a little bit deeper down this path is.
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One of the other big bullet points for this car that makes
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it interesting or special to a buyer is that it's a two 50 GTL.
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There's only so many of those.
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It's white.
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We're still gonna get to that.
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And then thirdly, right hand drive, if we add that to its
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pedigree amongst everything else.
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There was a little bit of debate.
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Why did Coombs order it right hand drive?
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Is it just because he's a Brit and he wanted a right hand drive?
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Because right hand drives are more rare in the Ferrari builds sheets
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than the left hand drive cars.
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And then we started to kind of kick around the idea that.
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Because racing at the time in the early sixties, you wanted the driver
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on that side of the car, especially if you were gonna run the car in
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a longer race where you had driver changes, you want them to be on the
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side of the pit box where it's safer.
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And you'll also note that the fuel filler is on that side of the car.
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But you had an interesting take on that perspective as well, John.
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Well, I'm.
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Pretty certain that those things might be valid, Eric, but I'm certain that
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the reason he had it as a right hand drive car was because most circuits
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in Europe, and certainly most circuits in Britain, are clockwise circuits.
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So that means that there are more right hand turns than left hand turns.
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So what that means is it is better for you to be sitting on
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the right hand side of the car.
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Instead of the left hand side of the car because it's easier for you
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to place the car 'cause that's the wheel that you're right in front of.
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You can see the apex.
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And there's also an argument to be made about weight distribution.
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If you're all your weight is in the inside of the apex and not on the outside of
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it, it's gonna corner better as well.
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If you shifted the driver the other way on a clockwise track, now the centrifugal
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force is stronger 'cause there's more weight on the outside of the car.
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So moving him, inboard.
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Right hand drive makes a lot more sense too.
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I mean, this is very crude tuning and car setup and
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aerodynamics and everything else.
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There's part of me that thinks that the reason he had it as right hand drive was
17:38
because it had to be driven on the road.
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I mean, these, these cars had registration plates.
17:42
I mean, the thing that struck me about Hawthorne's, Jaguar, that Jaguar VDU 8 81,
17:47
he proposed in the car, he raced the car.
17:51
It was his daily driver.
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And he died in it.
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It's like ever, did he have sex in it?
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I'm sure.
17:56
I'm sure he did.
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The whole of life took place in that Jaguar.
18:02
Yeah.
18:02
So the other thing is, is I don't know, in the reading that I've done, I've not
18:06
encountered where Coom sourced the car.
18:08
If the car came directly from Ferrari or if it came from an import.
18:12
Because the name that you are probably familiar with,
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William is Colonel Ronnie Haw.
18:17
Mm-hmm.
18:18
Who was the British importer of Ferraris.
18:23
I don't know whether this was a car that Ronnie Hor had imported and sold to Coons.
18:27
I don't know if Coons went direct to Marella.
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In that Nathan Chadwick article that I was referring to earlier, he refers to there
18:37
having to be some special jiggery pokery.
18:40
The UK agent to be able to order the car in the afo.
18:44
Is that an official term?
18:45
John Jiggery Pokery.
18:48
I like that.
18:52
William, you mentioned when we were talking to Sam and to Chris about the very
18:58
limited number of two 50 GTOs there are.
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And then inside of that, the even smaller number of right hand drive.
19:04
Two 50 GTOs and, and I, and I'm harping on this only because John Coombs couldn't
19:08
have been the only British person to buy a two 50 GTO back then when the
19:13
majority of them were left hand drive.
19:15
So what is that real number of right hand drive?
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Two 50 GTOs.
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Out of the 36 GTOs, there's only eight right hand driver.
19:23
This one is number 12 of the three six built.
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But if you look at the production on these, the majority of the right
19:31
hand driver cars were all built.
19:32
Within the first build series of the cars, first year and a half, whatever it was.
19:37
So my thought is one, hey, it's a road registered car.
19:40
So yeah, and a good portion of the people that bought 'em were in countries IE, the
19:45
UK or what have you, where it was gonna be right-hand drive and racing wise.
19:48
But then as.
19:49
Popular in regards to other series and around the globe in that you know, you
19:53
had more people I drive on the left side, the backend majority of almost
19:57
all the cars are all left-hand drive.
19:59
You know, my mind, it has a lot to do with location where it's at.
20:02
And from my understanding, Coombs went direct to Ferrari, but then
20:05
to do make the transaction happen, he had to go through the importer
20:08
'cause he had that kind of pull.
20:09
But from my understanding, what I can tell is just.
20:12
They bought it 'cause he is in England, so I want right hand drive.
20:14
I wanna say there's one more after that or two more after
20:17
that, that are right hand drive.
20:18
But that was like within the next couple cars that were built.
20:20
So like within the first 15 cars, all the right hand drives were done.
20:24
So then the balances were all left hand drive.
20:25
And then according to the information we got, that was the.
20:28
Third car destined for the uk.
20:30
So it's like one of very few.
20:33
Yeah.
20:33
So I mean, but you look back then there was still a large portion,
20:37
especially in Europe where you know they were driving the wrong way.
20:40
On the right hand side.
20:44
Obviously had like Australia's, because there is a lot of European
20:47
countries that actually started out driving right hand drive, but then
20:51
they switched like in the fifties and sixties just 'cause of production stuff.
20:54
The Italians had a weird system where in towns and cities.
20:57
Particularly Milan, you drove on the left, but out on the main road you
21:02
would drive as the Italians do now.
21:05
So there was a transition point in some towns and cities where as you came into
21:10
the town city, you would stop being on the left and move to being on the right.
21:14
And the logic around that was that.
21:16
You didn't want to be walking in the road when you got out of the car.
21:19
Obviously you wanted to be on the curbside 'cause it was easier you to spot parking
21:24
and when you pulled up it was easier.
21:25
You know, there was um, a lancia that won Pebble some years ago and I
21:29
think that was right hand drive car.
21:32
I remember learning it.
21:34
It was a sort of luxury feature almost for Italians to have
21:38
like the right hand drive.
21:41
So that meant that there's more right hand drive Maseratis than actual
21:46
cars that came to Britain because quite a lot of Italians bought them
21:49
in, you know, in that configuration on the right hand drive GTOs.
21:53
William, what does it do for values is a right hand drive car
21:56
worth more than the left hand.
21:58
I mean, in my opinion, I would say yeah.
22:00
'cause I mean, look at it, you only have eight outta 36 of
22:03
already extremely rare car.
22:05
So then now you're just need to make it more rare because you have only
22:08
one of the eight that were built.
22:10
That's how I view it.
22:11
But as with any car though, you're gonna have both sides of the coin in
22:14
regards to how someone's gonna view that.
22:16
They're not gonna drive this thing hardly on the street, ever.
22:18
I mean, it's gonna be on track, historic racing stuff like, so it's gonna be
22:21
race, so it's not like you gotta really worry about it all that much, but.
22:24
My opinion, it adds value.
22:26
How much?
22:26
I don't know.
22:27
But I mean, just look at the numbers you got, you know, one of the 36, well
22:31
these cars average 40 to $80 million.
22:33
Then you got one of the eight out of those things.
22:36
So it's gotta add some intrinsic value to it.
22:40
You know, make it a little bit more special.
22:41
And then obviously we get into the color here shortly.
22:44
That just kind of icing on the cake, so to speak.
22:46
The motor, I was bibbling around on Ferrari chat just before we came online.
22:51
The quote that stuck in my mind.
22:53
The only GTO that doesn't have its original engine.
22:56
No, that's the only one.
22:58
No.
22:59
And my understanding is what happened to the engine and that's.
23:02
From that awesome lunch with John Coombs article.
23:05
He reckons that after he had the car, Jack Sea had it, and then it ended up
23:10
with a sort of, not quite a scrap metal dealer, but a sort of secondhand racing
23:15
car dealer called J Pierce in slo.
23:19
Yeah, it ended up there, but the engine was somehow separated from it and was.
23:24
Put into a Cooper Racing car or something like that.
23:28
And so the engine has become separated from the car.
23:30
So when the car's been put back together, they used to use, uh, anos, didn't they?
23:35
The two 50 anos?
23:37
Yeah.
23:38
Cheapest, sacrificial.
23:39
V 12 that you could buy.
23:41
They dropped that in just.
23:43
To put a motor in the car, obviously for a motor, but then they actually
23:46
got one out of a, uh, 2 75 comp.
23:49
So they actually got the hot rod motor.
23:50
It's got some ooof to it, very rare engine.
23:53
So right there value that.
23:55
But when John Shirley bought the car and had it for a while when he sent
23:59
it back to Ferrari for, to get class C certification and get painted back to
24:04
white Ferrari, cast a new block for it.
24:07
So it's got the proper correct stampings on it.
24:10
Everything like that.
24:11
I mean, you can't get much more authentic than that.
24:13
That motor is the one that's in it now.
24:15
And then the comp motor that they were using for the longest time,
24:19
like Jack Sears had, and everything of that is now sitting on a stand.
24:22
'cause that's got a lot of value to itself there.
24:24
So these were racing cars.
24:26
Motors blew up.
24:27
They replaced motors all the time.
24:29
For them to say, oh, it's the only one not having its original motor,
24:32
you're gonna have something that don't.
24:33
The racing cars.
24:34
That's what they did.
24:34
They beat the hell out of 'em, blew things up.
24:36
It's crash.
24:37
And this goes back to that conversation.
24:39
We had the three of us, about the mil Melia, which then leads into
24:42
that presentation by Trevor Lister and Don Kapps about the family
24:46
lineage of all these Maserati and Ferrari engines that into your point,
24:50
William, when something would blow up, they'd scrap it and get another one.
24:53
They weren't really about.
24:54
Numbers matching back then.
24:55
As much as we're obsessed with that today, and even then there's numbers matching
25:00
didn't really match because they would change the serial number of the car.
25:03
To match the motor.
25:04
Yeah, it's all sorts of craziness that makes absolutely no sense
25:07
to anybody except the Italians.
25:08
Yeah, exactly.
25:09
Then they'd change the block and engine number didn't match the car
25:12
number, but then the car would go back to get repaired or some shit.
25:16
Then they changed the VIN again.
25:17
It was insane how they did it afterthought so you don't feel like
25:20
this non-original engine hurts.
25:23
This car's value.
25:25
I don't.
25:26
You have Ferrari.
25:27
The manufacturer built that card.
25:29
They had all the original castings.
25:31
They had everything from that when that, when it was originally built
25:34
and done and cast back in the sixties, they just pulled that out and redid it.
25:38
I mean, I don't know how much more authentic you can get.
25:41
It'd be one thing if you sent it down to, what's his name?
25:44
He's got a casting factory down the street and hey, just kinda eyeball it.
25:48
We'll make something close, you know, do some dimensional checks.
25:50
You can't get more authentic that, like I said, they stand
25:52
you with the correct numbers.
25:53
You can't go wrong with that, in my opinion.
25:56
Basically, get a brand new motor.
25:58
In essence.
25:58
All right, so now the So what moment?
26:01
Getting to what, you know, one of our big topics of discussion we were having
26:05
with the guys at Mecu and also Chris Bely from Prancing Horse of Nashville,
26:09
'cause it was never really stated why that is the only white Bianco Especi.
26:16
That Ferrari painted from the factory.
26:18
That's why I've been saving this color conversation.
26:20
This is the so what moment of this car, because a lot of our listeners
26:24
are probably, it's, it's white.
26:26
Who cares?
26:27
It's black.
26:27
So what?
26:28
Most Ferraris are red.
26:29
Yeah, we know that.
26:30
Why is white so important?
26:32
And so I think there's a huge debate around the why here.
26:36
And the why becomes a what?
26:38
Very quickly in this conversation, you know, you hear kind of stories like,
26:42
hey, it could be about nationality 'cause being British, but Kons had
26:45
an affinity for having light white.
26:48
Or he had, it wasn't like white, but it was like a off
26:50
white or something like that.
26:51
But then also a gray.
26:52
Did he have all his that way?
26:53
I mean, you think that's probably what the case for why this was he had enough
26:57
pull that he could go to Ferrari, order this car and get it without much hassle.
27:01
And this is where I'm confused and I wanna lean on your expertise, John.
27:05
Because I hearken back to conversations I hear at the Argen Singer Symposium
27:10
from people like Paul Baxa talking about nationalism and patriotism,
27:14
and the colors are political.
27:16
Like all the Italian cars are always red.
27:18
Look at the old alphas and the Ferraris.
27:19
They're always red, and the French cars are always blue.
27:21
It didn't matter if it was EO or DHE or, or whoever it was,
27:25
you know, the Brits were green and the the Germans were silver.
27:28
White is such an, in my mind, an odd choice.
27:32
For a British racer or, I wanna put, I'm gonna say it that way.
27:36
So why white?
27:38
Do we have any idea as to why John Kunz's cars were white and black?
27:41
I think they were his racing colors.
27:44
They were the colors that he'd used on the Jaguar, so it was
27:48
natural that he put those colors onto the Ferrari when he bought.
27:52
If those colors said Coombs, that's the important thing.
27:56
And if you look at all those pictures of saloon car racing, as the jaguars
28:00
are against each other, the gray car with the buy one plate, if that one's
28:05
winning, you're gonna go to Coombs to buy a Jaguar, not to Mike Hawthorn.
28:09
And I'm glad you said that because if we go back to that ideology of the color
28:13
signifies the country at that time, even though we're 30 years past the 1920s and
28:19
the milam and all that kind of stuff, in its heyday of nationalism, American cars
28:24
were generally white and famously the Cunningham cars and the camaraderie cars.
28:29
Were white and black or white and blue.
28:31
So that's what made me also think Motorsport at that time was a small,
28:35
small world compared to the global trillion dollar market that it is today.
28:40
So I wondered, was there some influence, there was some cross
28:42
pollination, you know, was he trying to be like Cunningham or one of those.
28:46
No, no, I, I don't think so.
28:48
I think Briggs Cunningham adopted the white and the blue, didn't he?
28:53
That was originally when Briggs Cunningham went racing.
28:56
The chassis was gonna be blue and the body was gonna be white.
29:00
And then when Shelby went racing, he flipped it around and the body covered
29:03
the chassis by the time Shelby was racing.
29:06
So he put the stripe over the top, and that's why.
29:09
Every Chavelle you ever see has got the double stripe over the top of the roof.
29:13
I think that with Shelby and, and hence Cunningham, to thank for that
29:19
I shared with you guys a photograph of the British Empire Trophy race.
29:24
One year and you know our car's like leaping off the line in the middle of
29:28
the grid and right next to it is the red Colonel Ronnie Haw, official works entry.
29:33
And behind it on the grid there's a green GTO and then there's
29:37
another red one at the back.
29:39
And alongside it on the grid there are two of the Aston Martin
29:42
project cars 2 1 4 and 2 1 5.
29:45
They're both dark green.
29:47
The white car in, in the modern parlance, the white car pops Eric.
29:50
I'm not really sure if that would've been on John COO's mind, but anybody who went
29:56
out of the way to have buy one as a number plate, which is that is very aggressive
30:01
advertising for England at the time.
30:04
There is no sponsorship on the side of these cars, and Coombs drove Walt
30:10
Hanskin and at the end of the race, Jack Sears apparently said to Walt Hanskin.
30:15
What we usually do is, uh, we usually keep the car straight on the straight so the
30:20
faster chaps can come by if they want to.
30:24
Side note, since we're talking about special colored Ferraris, Rob Walker
30:28
British, but he had like that SWB that he drove out, that was pretty famously owned.
30:33
It was blue with white.
30:34
Yeah, did that really sharp blue.
30:36
And you look at the Scottish rugby colors, it's exactly the
30:40
same color as Scottish Rugby's.
30:43
I feel like the kind of man who prepared cars for people like Walt
30:49
Anson to race in England, buy one.
30:52
That's what it was all about.
30:54
It was that white, you wanted it to be in Coombs White and you made
30:58
a really interesting remark during one of our exchanges, it opened up
31:02
something I had been thinking about, which was, was the car actually
31:06
painted white from the factory?
31:08
'cause you made the joke.
31:09
It might have just been repaid.
31:10
Jaguar White when it got to England, and I was like, you know what?
31:13
That's probably not far from the truth.
31:15
Who knows?
31:15
Because record keeping was what it was back then.
31:18
I mean, there are databases of this type of information and the
31:21
paperwork that we have says the car left the Ferrari factory in white.
31:25
But in every joke there's a hint of truth.
31:28
And so that picture that you showed of all those GTOs together
31:32
for me was sort of mind blowing.
31:34
There's only 36 of these cars to begin with, and in that picture alone, you
31:38
have four of them that were all built relatively close to one another because
31:43
they would've had to have been, especially considering the white one is number 12.
31:46
To have been produced, period.
31:48
So I thought that picture was just a snapshot in time.
31:51
That was impressive.
31:52
But you did make me think when you said, what if that was just Jaguar
31:55
White, because he had it laying around.
31:57
'cause all his other cars were painted the same color.
31:59
My thought was not so much that he had it laying around, but you
32:02
know, I read this morning about them pushing extra louvers in the bon.
32:05
After the first outing, well, that bonnet probably would've needed repainting
32:10
right after you'd cut the extra.
32:12
So are you gonna order to Italy to get the whatever color?
32:16
No, you're not.
32:17
You're gonna hit it with the Jaguar white that you've got in your own body shop.
32:21
So is there a chance that car came naked from the factory?
32:25
No, they would've painted it something.
32:27
'cause especially back then, by the time that thing showed up to
32:30
England, it would've been rust.
32:31
Who knows?
32:32
Unless you go back in time and sit in the off thing.
32:35
When that order sheet came through and Enzo signed off on and says,
32:38
yeah, hey, you know, do it.
32:39
It's good Ferrari lore because there's no definitive, no, this
32:43
was why, this is why it was done.
32:45
Everything like that.
32:45
It's it.
32:46
It is interesting, the car's almost in a sense because of was involvement with the
32:50
lightweights, the car's almost as much a part of Jaguar history, more a part
32:55
of Jaguar history than Ferrari history.
32:57
You guys have mentioned it a couple times, even on the previous episode,
33:00
and I have a clarifying question that I, I'm sure our listeners might be
33:04
confused about as well, unless they're in the classic Ferrari collector.
33:07
No.
33:08
You talk about the vents and when I look at.
33:10
Reference pictures in period of this car and look at it now.
33:14
And I look at other two fifties, 'cause there's not a
33:16
lot of two fifties to look at.
33:18
There's three vents in the hood which have these little plates you can put
33:22
in, which actually can close the nose.
33:24
So it looks like it has no vents whatsoever.
33:26
Then there's three vents below the grill.
33:29
Then there's either two vents or three vents on the side,
33:32
basically in the fender.
33:34
And then on this particular car, they hot rotted the hood.
33:37
And it looks like, you know, the side of a return vent in
33:39
a house, like a HVAC system.
33:41
There's like all these louvers.
33:42
Yeah, go like you would see on a Jaguar.
33:44
Right.
33:44
When you guys are talking about the vents, you know, oh, it left as a three vent car.
33:48
Oh, they modified it and added the vents.
33:50
I'm trying to understand, and I'm sure the listeners are trying to understand
33:53
what exactly are you talking about And the GT os, obviously they modified
33:57
the hood itself, but those three vents on the fishbowls, where you wanna
34:00
call 'em, those are on all of 'em.
34:02
But those were so depending on where you're racing and open close.
34:04
And this is on the two 70 fives as well.
34:06
It's the side vents they're talking about, you know, earlier production ones,
34:09
they'll only have the couple on there.
34:11
Then later production ones they'll have three.
34:13
I mean, some will go up to six depending on the car.
34:15
So I just about if it's an alloy, if it's a comp, what have you.
34:17
So that's one key indicator.
34:20
Kind of like you can tell when the car was built, production wise,
34:23
where it sits in the range, or if you can tell, like especially with
34:26
the two 70 fives, there's like a two cam, four cam, that kind of stuff.
34:29
But all it does is boil down to is just venting, get air out from the motor.
34:32
'cause those things are hot.
34:33
So this thing's an oddity then, right?
34:35
Because it's number 12 and it's got three vents, whereas all
34:39
the other early cars had two.
34:41
Yeah.
34:41
Was this the first one with three?
34:42
I believe it was the first one that put the three on there.
34:45
I think I'd have to go back and look, but I think it, it's one of
34:48
the first ones that they did it on.
34:49
Why wouldn't all the subsequent two fifties just have three
34:52
events after that point?
34:53
All the previous ones, the first 11 that were built prior started
34:56
racing and they realized that.
34:58
It's running hot.
34:59
Okay, let's put another vent in.
35:01
So subsequent ones, they got to another vent.
35:03
So it's a race car and it wasn't like they were cranking out 20 a
35:06
day, they were doing one a month.
35:08
If that.
35:09
If it's going through, you could reach back out and you know, send the telex,
35:12
telegram, hey, put more vents in the side 'cause it needs to cool better.
35:16
Okay.
35:16
Our next ones we building, we'll put more vents in.
35:18
So was that an option then that would've been presented to Coombs to either be a
35:22
two vent or a three vent at that point?
35:25
Or did he cut the vent in the car?
35:27
That's the other part I was confused about my understanding.
35:30
He did it himself.
35:32
Danny, is it left with two?
35:33
But then, I dunno if Coombs did it or it went back and the factory did it.
35:37
It looks, it's not, someone just knocked it out, you know, in their garage.
35:40
I don't know a hundred percent on that.
35:42
Do we know how soon after the car was delivered that it got the third vent?
35:46
We'd have to look and.
35:47
John got all the books here with the car and I know Chris has a ton
35:51
of the documentation on or copies of it, but that's a good question.
35:54
This also leans back into what we were talking about with the paint.
35:57
If you cut it, now you've got all this exposed metal, you're gonna have to
36:01
finish it to keep it from rusting.
36:03
Those fenders would've needed to be repainted and you're doing this
36:06
hood, which is the amount of loures in this hood, is insane compared
36:09
to any of the other ones I've seen.
36:10
Yeah, looking at the pictures, it's like the whole front end was resprayed.
36:14
We know it left a factory in white.
36:16
It's documented in the bill sheet, but what could have been the only white one is
36:19
when they shipped it, they could have just sent all that white paint with it because
36:23
knowing full and well that they're gonna have to do repainting on the car anyways.
36:26
So they could have just sent that paint with the car and they'll go, here you go.
36:30
'cause it wasn't like they have paint matching technology like they do today.
36:33
So they could have just sent that along.
36:34
'cause knowing good and well that they're gonna have to
36:36
repaint this car at some point.
36:38
It'd be interesting to know if they did that with all the other ones
36:41
too, saying, Hey, we painted the car.
36:43
Here's a couple extra gallons of paint.
36:44
'cause we know you're gonna have to repaint it.
36:45
Coons never like this is why or anything like that.
36:48
And so it's one of those things that goes down.
36:50
'cause I mean, it was before Sears bought it.
36:52
Someone repainted it red because back then it like Ferrari should
36:55
be red so it got repainted.
36:57
They did it in red instead of doing it in the white.
36:59
So it wasn't repainted white until Shirley had it, unless it
37:02
was red underneath the white.
37:04
Oh.
37:05
It's sort of like the Model T, right?
37:06
You can have it in any, any color when you want black.
37:09
Um, you could go back some cars and look, you look in the door jamb.
37:11
If you look somewhere, you're gonna find original color somewhere.
37:14
If you dig deep enough, not on a restoration like this, it would've
37:17
been stripped all the way down, right?
37:19
Yeah, exactly.
37:20
There were really no way to kind of do any investigative work on the car itself
37:23
and try and find something that's showing.
37:25
What it was originally.
37:27
So Coombs gets this car with a five gallon bucket of paint, a thing
37:31
of ravioli and a spare interior.
37:34
None of this stuff adds up at the end of the day.
37:36
The interior is the puzzling part.
37:38
Yeah.
37:38
What we know is it left with the blue interior, which means Ferrari built it.
37:42
The same way they build all the other ones, which is why I sort of feel like
37:46
the white is kind of suspect in the sense that maybe it left a factory red like
37:50
every other two 50 was at that time.
37:52
And then to John's point, they did all these modifications and then they
37:56
said, well, we're gonna respray the car to match all the rest of our cars.
37:59
Nah.
38:00
'cause merely had the.
38:01
Build sheet on the car from Ferrari.
38:03
He went down the list.
38:04
That's how you could see it left the factory blue.
38:06
So we, we know it left in white.
38:08
When we think about this, when we are talking about it leaving the factory,
38:11
we're like imagining the Corvette factory with like a production.
38:14
It wasn't like that was it?
38:15
Was it Scte?
38:17
That built the GTO.
38:18
William.
38:19
Yeah, the bodies.
38:19
Yeah.
38:20
So let's be clear that the rolling chassis is being built in
38:23
Marine and Scte is where Nearby?
38:27
Is he nearby?
38:28
I don't know.
38:28
Yeah, he wasn't that far.
38:29
I'm trying to remember off the top of my head.
38:31
But then the Kai is having these handmade body panels put on it.
38:35
So I guess Eric, what I'm envisaging is.
38:38
I feel like if Luigi and Mario were short on blue leather that day, that's
38:44
why that car got a black interior.
38:46
No, the black got put in it after it was delivered.
38:50
Yeah, so it came with a spare interior.
38:52
Like would you just go pick up a two 50 interior?
38:54
Like that's that all it was is the seats.
38:56
I mean, everything else is just.
38:58
Bear.
38:59
It's not like there's carpeting and everything in that car.
39:01
So it was just the seat itself.
39:02
But it's not like it would've, they got torn.
39:05
It wasn't like it was, oh, it raced about 50 times and the seats were shot.
39:09
So he got reupholstered.
39:10
It was two weeks after they got the car.
39:12
They all of a sudden they changed the interior.
39:14
No one ever fessed up.
39:15
Why showed up?
39:17
He got hill to race, uh, scheduled to race the car.
39:19
It had blue interior.
39:20
Then when Hill came to go race the car, it had black interior.
39:23
Was it Hill requesting, Hey, he wanted black interior instead.
39:26
I mean, who knows?
39:27
Maybe he was sliding around because it went from that, I wanna say al and tear
39:31
almost type material, whatever that was, and it went into the sidewalk.
39:34
It was, uh, leather.
39:36
So maybe better grip on the seat so you weren't sliding around as much.
39:39
'cause I mean, you're not talking 5.6 point harness
39:42
and all that stuff back then.
39:43
You have some shoulder straps and stuff like that, but maybe that
39:45
helped stick his ass in the seat so he wasn't sliding around much.
39:48
I mean, pretty deep in those seats to John's point, right, it's sort of like we
39:52
cut the hood to add the, the air passages or whatever, so we had to respray it.
39:56
So we resprayed the car or whatever to, so everything matched the interior.
40:00
If it was a livery thing where it's gotta be white and black,
40:03
nobody's really gonna see those.
40:04
Seats.
40:04
They were bucket seats.
40:05
They were low.
40:06
Yeah.
40:06
You couldn't made the argument.
40:07
But Italy's not a hop, skip and a jump from the UK in the 1960s.
40:13
I mean, there were airplanes and stuff, and trains, whatever.
40:15
But to get a new interior, even though it's two seats, let's say two seats
40:19
from the factory in less than two weeks, they either came with the car.
40:23
No.
40:23
That they would've been upholstered in-house.
40:26
Oh yeah.
40:26
They would've done it.
40:27
Yeah, they would've done it.
40:27
Where did the original blue seats go?
40:29
'cause nobody knows where they are.
40:31
This gets to the, so what is.
40:33
The white that important.
40:35
I mean, we're making a big deal about the fact that it is the only one in white.
40:40
I mean, to me it is.
40:41
I don't like red Ferraris.
40:43
I'm not a fan.
40:44
I mean, they look great in red.
40:45
You know, I want something else besides red.
40:47
I think it looks really good and white.
40:49
I mean, that car looks really good and white.
40:51
I don't think it's important at all.
40:52
Ooh, okay.
40:53
I mean, as I'm sopping and thinking about GTOs, what color
40:57
do I think works best on A GTO?
40:59
I mean, my favorite GTO is the Enni island one in that pale green.
41:04
It's the only one in that pale green that's a color that's
41:06
like diluted Mopar Limelight.
41:09
It's, but that's the British racing partnership color that was
41:12
in this islands team at the time.
41:13
So, you know, I like that car.
41:15
I just don't think it's important at all.
41:17
I just think Coombs painted his team color and that was it.
41:21
Eric, you talked about that photo and how we talked about how the car kind
41:24
of stands out from the other cars.
41:25
I think it does, but the motor sport lunch with article talks about,
41:30
typically his cars were immaculately turned out in white or gray with.
41:36
That immaculately turned out, it made me think a little bit about, you know,
41:40
the way that Ron Dennis is at McLaren, this sort of business of you were
41:45
successful at racing because you do all the other things very precisely, and I
41:48
don't know much about what Coombs did in the war, but you get the sense the,
41:53
the way that he approached mojo racing.
41:55
Was with a sort of military kind of precision.
41:58
And so, you know, it's like saying, you know, all of the foreign tanks are red.
42:01
How come your tanks green?
42:02
Well, tanks are green, dude, we paint tanks green.
42:05
You know, you red ones over there.
42:07
But our tanks are green tank.
42:09
You know, I feel like it wasn't, and Eric, I think what Paul Baxter is talking about
42:14
when he's talking about the nationalism particularly, he talks a lot about Italy.
42:19
Yeah.
42:19
The Italian cars were red and certainly.
42:22
I think for the Italian marks in the post-war period, there's very much
42:25
a sense of building back, building the country that was destroyed in
42:30
the war, and therefore there is a big sense of national pride that
42:34
you are going to be in Italian Red.
42:36
Remember the Ferrari badge as the Italian flag on it?
42:39
Ferrari was racing, you know, with Italy against the world.
42:43
Coombs wasn't like that.
42:45
Coons was me selling Jaguars more than you, Michael Hawthorne.
42:49
So I'm gonna paint the car in, in my color, do a bit of club racing with it.
42:54
And that point about, you know, so many of them being here, I wonder if there wasn't,
43:00
you know, so many on the grid, like four of the first dozen, two dozen GTOs,
43:04
four of them on grid for that one race.
43:06
I just feel like there was.
43:08
Small community of people who were wealthy enough to go motor racing.
43:13
There was a window, 62, 63, 64 when if you wanted to go sports car
43:19
racing, that was the best car to buy.
43:21
So although there were only 39 of them made those 39, that was enough, right?
43:26
If Ferrari could have sold 390, he would've done those 39.
43:31
That was the size of the sport at the time.
43:34
So I just feel like the guys racing them had grown up in the pre-war era when
43:39
every car was completely individual.
43:40
So the fact that this is the only white GTOI just, I mean, I think
43:44
it makes it special, but it's how much adds value wise, it's up
43:48
debate, and again, it goes back to.
43:49
Who's gonna buy the car?
43:51
You said 40 to 80 million.
43:53
It's interesting that, because one of the things I wanted to ask you about,
43:56
you know, in, in my mind there's sort of good GTOs and bad GTOs.
44:01
Yeah.
44:01
And my perception of a bad GTO was that.
44:05
Pierre Baron, I think that was the family name, but it was a car that
44:10
had been bought new in France.
44:11
Yeah.
44:11
And I guess the owner had wrecked it, been killed, and then the family had
44:15
hung onto it for ages and ages and ages.
44:18
Yeah.
44:18
It had no actual race history and it just sat for ages.
44:23
And then Bonum sold it some years ago, and that Carm made 35.
44:26
So that seemed to me, yeah, the sort of bottom of the market.
44:30
And then, oh, Dave paid a rumored.
44:33
75 million didn't he?
44:36
For the only silver GTO if I'm right.
44:38
McNeal from WeatherTech, yeah.
44:40
Yeah.
44:41
MCDA McNeil 75 was the number that I'd heard on that.
44:44
Yeah, imagine 18.
44:45
2018. But that's the creme.
44:47
That's the best of the best.
44:48
That's the best.
44:48
Although it was a long time ago.
44:50
I feel like the market, if anything, is gone up since 2018, but it's
44:54
come down since 2018 as well.
44:56
Yeah.
44:57
As the resident expert.
44:58
Where does this car fall?
45:00
Is it a good one or is it a bad one?
45:01
Where does it fall?
45:03
I was hoping we were gonna go here.
45:05
We avoided this on the other episode.
45:07
William was like, I'm not talking about, yeah, I didn't wanna get into it.
45:11
I mean, I hate throwing out there.
45:12
'cause you don't know.
45:12
I mean that's what auction's for.
45:14
I put it out between 45 to 55 in my opinion.
45:17
It's a well-known car.
45:19
It's had long-term.
45:20
Ownership history.
45:22
It was Jack Sears, then John Shirley.
45:24
Yeah.
45:24
Prior to Sears owned it.
45:25
There's a couple here and there, but he's owned it for 30 years.
45:28
Sears was the same boat.
45:29
He owned it close to 30 years.
45:31
You have a car that's had long-term ownership history
45:34
in, in the life of the car.
45:35
It's very well known.
45:37
One of only one of the.
45:38
Factory white cars, one of only eight of the right hand
45:42
drive cars, brand new block.
45:44
It comes with a spare motor as well.
45:46
You're adding all these things and then, you know, having some of those
45:48
little special touches to it, you know, and that's where we got into too,
45:51
about the interior color of that car.
45:53
Almost all of 'em came with that bluish color, interior that like light blue.
45:58
This one's got black interior, which as Eric mentioned, was done like
46:02
two weeks after he got the car.
46:04
It was delivered that, but then for some reason, still don't know why, before
46:08
Graham Hill raced it or he drove it once.
46:10
Then all of a sudden it showed up.
46:12
It had all new interior.
46:13
It was black, so it's always had black interior.
46:15
From then on.
46:16
It's got a lot of these special features to it that separate itself
46:20
from all the other cars that were built.
46:22
I mean, you're gonna have a very unique car when you go to the, you know, the
46:26
owner's meetings that they have every few years that they do in private.
46:30
Any GT O's gonna get in, but you tell 'em, oh, I got, you know, the only white,
46:33
they're gonna pay for that thing to come.
46:34
You might have to spend a nickel of your own money.
46:36
I put it in there.
46:37
It just, just because of where the market's at.
46:40
Still a very, very valuable car.
46:42
But it didn't win Lama, you know, anything like that.
46:45
Yes, it's got some great race history.
46:46
And who's driven it?
46:48
Yeah, it's got a couple wins, but like a Goodwood to tee, that kind of stuff.
46:51
It's not something where it's gonna, all of a sudden because of race history
46:53
jacket up to the 80 million mark.
46:55
That's not gonna happen.
46:56
And I, I don't know if you ever see that kind of number again,
46:58
unless McNeal sells his car.
47:00
Then that one.
47:01
Yeah, because that's like the perfect one.
47:03
What's so great about Dave McNeil's car?
47:05
The only silver one.
47:07
It's got a ton of race history.
47:09
That one original numbers matching the whole nine yards.
47:12
Not so much necessarily restored, but like just they say sympathetic
47:15
restoration type of deal.
47:16
It's the best one out there regards to originality, it's got everything
47:20
you want for the boxes to tick.
47:22
If someone's got that kind of money and they want that specific
47:25
one, they're gonna pay up for it.
47:26
Hard to say if someone else would, something's only worth
47:28
what someone's gonna pay for it.
47:30
But if you want it and you got the deep pockets for it, just here's a blank check.
47:34
Just fill the amount I want the car.
47:35
Yeah, that was 2018.
47:37
I mean, you do inflation now, stuff like that.
47:39
You're over a hundred million dollars valuation now.
47:41
Mm-hmm.
47:41
So if you go comparing it, certain things kinda a sudden created that perfect
47:45
storm to all create a very special car.
47:47
You know, you could say it is the most, I mean your Mercedes, what you would
47:50
call it, that's a one off at 140 million.
47:52
And you looked how that whole deal was structured.
47:54
That person really doesn't even own the car technically.
47:57
I mean, they paid all that money, but Mercedes still
47:59
basically kind of controls it.
48:01
I don't know, I, I, I don't see it.
48:02
You know, everyone's touching on like, oh, the McLaren F one's.
48:05
The next GTO is that, well, McLaren F1 pricing has been stuck at between
48:10
18 million to low twenties, mid twenties million range forever.
48:14
How many McLaren Act ones either think it's 64 road going cars, and then they
48:18
built like a hundred, something like that.
48:19
But then the balance are all the race cars.
48:21
Okay.
48:21
I think they built more race cars than the street cars.
48:23
Remember?
48:24
Serve me.
48:24
You say that the values on McLaren F ones are stagnant.
48:27
You know, I believe you that they have been, but I feel like, you know,
48:30
we're in a time where certainly people under the age of 40 are having to
48:34
tighten their belts a little bit.
48:35
I feel like if the economy booms again, then you'll see McLaren F1.
48:41
True.
48:41
The old GTO.
48:42
'cause I just, I feel like, you know, the values of cars like
48:46
Packards and Deusenberg are sustained by the people in their seventies
48:50
and eighties passing them around.
48:52
Yeah.
48:52
And it's like little chairs amongst themselves, more cars than there are
48:55
old Coutts left to buy them and sooner or later there are too few old Coutts
49:00
still in circulation trying to buy them.
49:03
And eventually the price goes down.
49:04
Well I feel like GTOs.
49:05
Or a while away from that.
49:07
But they're gonna get there, aren't they?
49:09
They're gonna get there.
49:10
Oh yeah.
49:10
It's not like they're gonna come down to like 5 million bucks,
49:12
but circle of life, so to speak.
49:15
It reaches that value point where, okay, that's pretty much where it's gonna be at.
49:19
It might go a little bit higher, a little bit lower, but you know,
49:22
you've weed out the old kouts and you got some people that still
49:24
appreciate it and that kind of stuff.
49:26
But you know that.
49:27
Pool of buyers and people that wanna own the car and have it, it
49:31
is shrunk down in about 20 years.
49:33
It's gonna be really interesting to see where things go and how things transition.
49:35
'cause it's like all of a sudden you're getting into Fox Body Mustangs
49:38
and stuff from the eighties and you know, the I Rocks and stuff like that
49:41
are starting to do very, very well out in the, you know, marketplace.
49:44
Just on a personal level, I weighed a long, long time for Fox Body Mustangs
49:49
to come and then when they came.
49:50
I rushed out of the market too quickly and left money on the table.
49:54
It's not quite as bad as rushing out of Nvidia too early, which I did as well.
49:58
But, uh, I thought a five x game was enough.
50:01
Yeah, I left quite a lot of money on the table there, but
50:04
it's gonna be a lot of fun.
50:06
'cause other great thing about this for what they're doing at Mecu, they
50:10
have close to almost 80 Ferrari that are gonna be crossing the block.
50:14
During Kissie, you know, we tag the line moniker to it on Super Saturday.
50:18
Not only you have that GTO, but that Bachman collection man, it's got some
50:22
very big heavy hitting cars in it as well.
50:25
So they have a lot to build up to.
50:27
So you're gonna have a lot of is on there, not just showing up
50:29
just to see what the GTO does.
50:31
There's a lot of other Ferraris they're gonna be crossing that block
50:34
that people wanna get their hands on.
50:35
So there's gonna be a lot of energy in that room.
50:37
Why Meko?
50:39
I would've thought it was one of what my wife calls the past,
50:42
the butter auction companies.
50:44
Yeah, English auctioneer.
50:46
Right.
50:46
What's happened behind the scenes for Meum to have not just this Batman
50:51
collection and this white company, Mecca's really stepped up their game in
50:54
regards to, I don't wanna say quality, because their bread and butter muscle
50:58
cars, that they've always gotten the best of the best in those, but they've
51:01
slowly started emerging in that market in regards to the higher end of Ferrari's,
51:06
Lamborghinis, everything like that.
51:08
The interesting story behind this, Chris Neely, who's the Ging horse of Nashville,
51:12
which is the Ferrari dealer in Nashville, put all these together not only for
51:16
the GTO but for the Bachman collection.
51:18
Long story short, right place, right time driving.
51:20
Someone that knew John Shirley, well, this, that, and the question got
51:24
asked, Hey, do you know anyone that might be interested in John's car?
51:26
Da da, da.
51:27
Chris was like, yeah, I probably do.
51:29
And he thought of Dana.
51:30
'cause Dana Mecca's got an unbelievable personal collection
51:33
himself, and he's a Ferrari collector.
51:35
Wasn't that interest where he'd wanted to open up his own checkbook.
51:37
Then they had several conversations, Hey, let's do this.
51:40
'cause we're working on some other things in regards to exposure, you
51:43
know, with these other Ferrari and that.
51:44
And it came across the board.
51:46
I mean, MECU does an awesome job.
51:48
You're not talking some backwoods, something like that where
51:51
they're run it through a barn or something like that where they
51:53
got some tractors and stuff going.
51:55
Mecca's really kicked up the game.
51:57
They're getting a little more picky to what they're taking and trying to curate
52:00
and cultivate a great selection of cars.
52:03
And kissing me has pretty much got to the point where that is kicking off the year.
52:07
But kicking off auction season, I mean, that's the first one.
52:10
That's the biggest one.
52:11
It's a special event and I think it's well deserving it.
52:14
So Mecca are trying to steal some of Elia Island that like Gooding at Emelia
52:20
Island that was traditionally the auction, the one that people hung their hats on
52:25
for what the year was gonna look like.
52:26
You saying now that increasingly Mecca won their event in to be the event
52:32
that sets the tone for the classic car?
52:34
There's a couple things happening here, John, to add clarity to
52:37
the story that I even heard on the previous episode, which is.
52:41
Williams point, right place at the right time.
52:43
Chris is friends with Dana.
52:44
Went to Dana on a personal level, said you might be interested in this car.
52:47
He turns it down, he says, but I run an auction company.
52:50
Right?
52:50
So it was sort of logical conclusion.
52:52
I think if Mecu hadn't been able to handle this type of car, which they can.
52:57
It probably would've gone to a Bonhams, or to a Gooding, or to a Sotheby's,
53:00
or to whoever he would, Chris would've shopped it around right to,
53:03
because they wanna get it out there.
53:04
But on the other side of this, this isn't the first time that
53:07
Mecca's gone down this path.
53:09
We know about the nine 17, we know about Seinfeld's, Porsches,
53:12
you know, stuff like that.
53:13
And so they've been trying for a while now to bring in, you know,
53:17
some more of these higher level cars.
53:18
And I think this just happened to be a moment where it's like, well, shoot,
53:22
let's go for gold and see what happens.
53:24
I think the other thing that Williams' mentioning here that I
53:27
don't wanna conflate is that they're not kicking off auction season.
53:30
What they're doing is they're kicking off the auction season for Ferrari
53:34
for 2026 because all the numbers of the 71 cars, if we include the Bianco
53:40
Speciale with the Bachman collection, are going to dictate the prices of
53:44
Ferrari for the rest of the year.
53:46
So because Kissimmee is in January.
53:48
Before Amelia, before Gooding, before car week, it's a huge
53:52
responsibility for them and it's going to dictate the rest of the year.
53:56
Yeah, it's gonna be a bellwether 'cause the baling collection has such a, a
53:59
broad spectrum in regards to new and old, you know, the GTOs its own thing.
54:03
So setting tones, setting dollar value, that's when, but for
54:06
what the rest of the cars are.
54:08
I kinda look this way.
54:09
Yeah, like Eric mentioned.
54:10
Yeah.
54:10
I mean, you're gonna go wherever service-wise, give you the white
54:13
glove just as any other gooding, wood, everything like that.
54:16
I like Mecca more because it's not so just say nose up in the air.
54:20
People that are there, like, oh, look at me, mecca's more, Hey, you know,
54:23
it's more, I wanna say, I don't, I wanna say wholesome, but you know, it's more.
54:26
Friendly, I guess you could say.
54:28
People will talk to people and stuff like that.
54:29
I, I think it's a great arena for it.
54:31
It's gonna do well and especially the audience that's gonna be able to be
54:35
there, not only in person but worldwide.
54:37
They have their own Roku channel now as well.
54:40
They did a special on this that might have already dropped the first time.
54:43
They're gonna show repeatedly, but it's gonna be interesting to see.
54:45
I, I think Mecca's really stepping up in where they go in subsequent
54:49
auctions throughout the year.
54:51
I think it kind of dictate that's the route they're gonna want
54:53
to go and I think they will.
54:54
So I think they'll do a great job.
54:56
I'm gonna investigate this Backman collection and have a little look at it.
54:59
'cause that's an interesting thought that you had about, as Meum become more
55:05
serious players in European collectibles rather than just domestic stuff that
55:10
traditionally they were involved in.
55:12
I can see a time where they would be setting the trend for
55:15
pricing and therefore it'd be interesting to see what happens
55:18
with Ferrari's going forward, gents.
55:20
Thank you very much for your time.
55:22
It's been a pleasure.
55:22
Oh, it's been fine.
55:23
I very much appreciate you going the extra mile for us to help us with this
55:28
project because it has been really an interesting project to work on.
55:31
And obviously there's more to come, but getting to the bottom of what
55:34
I consider kind of a motorsport mystery has been fascinating.
55:37
And you're a wealth of information, so I I very much appreciate it.
55:40
Yeah, well, I've appreciated, been involved.
55:42
I love the story.
55:43
Love Ferrari's.
55:44
Thank you.
55:45
Drive through.
55:57
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