What's so special about... The Bianco Speciale?

This episode of The Motoring Historian focuses on the history of John Coombs' 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO, also known as 'Bianco Speciale,' the only white GTO from the factory. Coombs was a prominent British car dealer and race car tuner, known for his work with Jaguars in the post-war period. The discussion delves into Coombs’ pivotal role in car racing and his rivalry with other notable figures like Mike Hawthorn. It also explores Coombs' decision-making, including his choice for a right-hand drive configuration and the specific racing modifications made to the GTO. The narrative touches on broader themes of car manufacturing, racing strategies, and automobile culture in the 1960s, providing insights into the significance of this particular GTO in automotive history. The script culminates with a discussion on the car's market value and its auctioning by Mecum Auctions, highlighting its unique features and provenance.

===== (Oo---x---oO) ===== 00:00 Special Episode: The White Ferrari GTO 01:37 Legacy of John Coombs 03:20 The Tragic Story of Mike Hawthorn 08:10 Jaguar vs Ferrari: The Competitive Edge 15:53 Right-Hand Drive Rarity 26:01The Unique White Ferrari 32:57 Understanding the Vents: The Mystery of the Third Vent 35:57 The White Paint Conundrum 37:38 The Interior Puzzle 40:40 The Value of a Unique GTO 50:06 Auction Insights and Market Trends 55:20 Concluding Thoughts and Acknowledgements

====================

The Motoring Podcast Network : Years of racing, wrenching and Motorsports experience brings together a top notch collection of knowledge, stories and information. #everyonehasastory #gtmbreakfix - motoringpodcast.net

• More Information: Visit Our Website
• Become a VIP at: Patreon
• Online Magazine: Gran Touring
• Follow us on Social: Instagram

Jon Summers is the Motoring Historian. He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider. On his show he gets together with various co-hosts to talk about new and old cars, driving, motorbikes, motor racing, motoring travel. Copyright Jon Summers, The Motoring Historian. This content is also available via jonsummers.net. This episode is part of the Motoring Podcast Network and has been republished with permission.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
John Summers is the motoring historian.
He was a company car thrashing technologysales rep that turned into a fairly inept
sports bike rider hailing from California.
He collects cars and bikesbuilt with plenty of cheap and
fast and not much reliable.
On his show, he gets together withvarious co-hosts to talk about new
and old cars driving motorbikes,motor racing, and motoring travel.

(00:35):
Good day.
Good morning, good afternoon.
It is John Summers,the Motoring historian.
A bit of a special episode.
This one got, uh, producerEric and, uh, William Ferrari.
Guy Ross with us Mika are auctioningthe only white Ferrari, GTO.
William's been doing some work aroundit, and we got talking about it.

(00:55):
We realized that really there's someinteresting material about the car's
past in history, especially its earlyracing history, which maybe the Meum
guys aren't leading with becausenobody sells more muscle than Meum.
Nobody.
But maybe other people do sell moreprancing horses or bulls or Stuttgart.

(01:16):
Scroll dot.
Well, John, always good to be backwith you in studio and to your point,
I think there's three major topicsthat we wanna cover about this.
1962 Ferrari, two 50 GTO.
William, what's theserial number on that one?
Three seven.
Two nine.
Gt.
Yes, the Bianco Spial, as theylike to call it these days.

(01:37):
You being the motoring historian,you've got a lot of facts rolling
around in your head, and one of thenames that keeps popping up in this
conversation about the Bianco Spial isJohn Coombs and being a fellow Brit.
I figured you'd just be able to whipthis out off the top of your head.
So let's dive into the legacyof John Coombs a little bit
as it leads into the Ferrari.

(01:57):
The way to think about John Coombsis you hesitate to say Carol Shelby
because a sort of Texan cowboy.
He certainly wasn't.
The Coombs firm were a firm of car tradersand coach builders and Coombs himself.
He, he was a Jaguar dealer in thepost-war period and very involved with

(02:18):
racing Jaguars and tuning jaguars.
If you visit the Goodwood Revival, theyalways have British Saloon car races.
As if they were from the 1960s.
That's really what Goodwood does well,you know, the little minis battling the
Jaguar mark twos, and one of the mostrecognizable Jaguar mark twos is a gray
one with the plate, BUY, the number one.

(02:42):
Buy one that was a John Coombsbuilt and prepared Jaguar.
It's most regularly associatedwith Roy Salvadori, but Coombs
built and prepared the car.
I guess I first encounteredthat the name of Coombs when
I was looking really closely.
Mike Hawthorn and I wrote a piece.

(03:03):
It's the only academic piecethat I've ever had included in
an actual academic history book.
The book is The Ledge Companion toAutomotive History, and I wrote a piece
about Mike Hawthorn and specificallyabout Mike Hawthorn's death.
This is a whole separate can of wormsand it's not a conversation for today.

(03:25):
But the point is that Mike Hawthornewrapped his Jaguar around a tree
just down the hill about 200 yardsfrom Coombs workshop, just outside
Guilford, his Jaguar dealership.
So after the wreck.
Hawthorne's Jaguar was taken toCoombs and there's photographs of
it being at Coombs and Coombs wereinvolved with getting it transported

(03:50):
back up to Brown's Lane and Coventry.
So because of of that, I lookedinto who John Coombs was a little
bit more than, uh, he was thisbloke that did hot Rod Jaguars.
When Hawthorn crashed, wasn't he?
And obviously racing against somebody,but wasn't he going, wasn't there
another individual in another car?
Yes.
Horse playing around.
Yes.
Horse playing around is agood way to describe it.

(04:13):
The language that the other individualused in court was that they were dicing.
So this is not quite motor racing.
We're not racing on the road.
And the other individual was Rob Walker.
There we go.
Who was a fellow, one teamowner and was the heir to the
Johnny Walker Whiskey Fortune.
And something that has only comeout in fairly recent years is that

(04:37):
it is thought that Rob Walker.
Pulled up outside Mike Hawthorne'shouse in the Mercedes and revved the
crap out of his Mercedes 300 SL inorder to get Mike Hawthorne out of bed.
So he gave Hawthorne enough time toget dressed and out the front door, and
then he ripped up the gravel and gotout on the hog's back, and Hawthorne

(04:59):
was killed on a bit of the A threejust close to the junction with the
A 30 and the A 30 at that point runsalong that top of a ridge of hills.
Based upon personal experience nowadaysit's tragic, absolutely tragic.
There's a very low speed limit alongthere, but as recently as when I was
a sales rep and worked in Goleman,you could do the vehicle's maximum

(05:23):
speed along the hogs back, but youreally needed to worry about the wind.
Hawthorne in his Jaguar had managedto catch Rob Walker in the Mercedes
300 SL by the time they merged offthe Hawk's back a 30 onto the A three
Hawthorne passes Walker and then spinsright in front of him off into a tree

(05:48):
and it's like a driver door head.
So that was why haw.
Did not stand any chance at all.
Jaguar destroyed the car and there's awhole lot of stuff about was it the tire?
Was it the fact that Hawthornewas an absolute bloody hooligan?
There's really a lot of ofinteresting mythology around it.

(06:09):
And look, we have Rob Walker'saccount of what happened from court.
You have to say, when he was speakingto the judge, you know, the judge
pressed him on the speed and, youknow, he's very vague about the
kind of speed that they were doing.
And that was what prompted meto really go and look at what
happened and try and stand there.
And, you know, the roads changed a lot.

(06:29):
And you know, f for me, the reasonit stuck in my mind was I was a
sales rep at the time doing about60,000 miles a year in somebody
else's car in my early twenties.
It's somebody else's car, somebodyelse's gas card, somebody else's tires.
So.
Company cars got used up and Iused to be up and down that bit
of the A 30 all the time in the a.

(06:49):
Well, after a bit you begin tothink, well, which corner was
it that Hawthorne lost it on?
Yeah.
Which was the one that caught him out.
Right.
So I don't wanna be put out on that.
It had a little bit ofthat kind of feel to it.
Let's pull on that Mike Hawthornethread just a little bit longer.
So that Jag that he was killed in.
Was a Coombs prepared Jag, or wasthat just an off the shelf one?

(07:10):
Oh, it was not a Coombs prepared Jag.
I just described how close Hawthornelived to Coombs, you know, the
length of the hog's back maybe fivemiles, something like that away.
Hawthorne had his own Jaguar dealership,the TT garage, his father did.
Riley's then did Lancers.
He himself did Jaguars and Ferraris.

(07:32):
Was Coombs in competition with Hawthorne?
I think so.
I think they were competitors on thetrack in terms of Roy Salvadori and in
Buy One and Mike Hawthorne in VDU 8 81.
But I also think what they were competingfor was whether or not you as a Jaguar

(07:52):
buyer or somebody who wanted yourJaguar hot rotted, either for racing
or just 'cause you wanted a faster car.
They were competing against each otheras to whether you took the car to the
TT garage to have Hawthorne's guys dothe work, or whether you took it to
the main Jaguar dealer, John Coombs.
What makes a die hard Jaguar tunerand dealer turn and buy a Ferrari.

(08:17):
This is a awesome story, Eric.
Why couldn't buy a Ferrari?
Because as a Jaguardealer, he was keen that.
He could win with Jaguar productsand he'd been racing E types,
but they really weren't a match.
They were too heavy.
And I was lucky when I was 12 or 13,my dad bought me a subscription to

(08:38):
Motorsport Magazine and on the coverat the time, it described it as the
authoritative voice of the sport.
I think for this particular period.
And in, you know, for this particularniche, I love motor sport as a source.
In 2009, Simon Taylor went and hadlunch with John Coombs, where he

(08:59):
lived in Monaco and over that meal.
Coombs told him that he'd had a mealwith Bill Haynes Jaguars chief engineer,
where he'd described the engine ofthe Jaguar as a bloody pendulum and
how he was forced to go buy Ferrari.
So that he could win some races.
Yeah.

(09:20):
Well, down to obviously beingcompetitive, he wants to win and
that's where the story comes in.
Him loaning 3 7 2 9 GT O2 Jaguarto reverse engineer it or just
go over it and scrutinize ita bit to see what they can do.
That created the Jage type of lightweight.
The thing that struck me as well isif you go to Goodwood and you see the

(09:41):
E type lightweights that are active.
Car that you see often is thecar with a number plate four WPD.
Well, four WPD was the Coombs E type,which after the Jaguar guys had looked
at the GTO, that was the E type that hadbeen originally raced and prepared by
Coombs that went back to Brown's Lane,the Jaguar factory, to be turned into.

(10:06):
The first lightweight E, youknow how much they really
scrutinize or reverse engineer.
I mean, did they like rip it apart?
Do we know?
I mean, they just kind of look itover and take some measurement.
How in depth do they get into that GTOin regards to really scrutinizing it?
I mean, that meeting,the impression is that.
Bill Haynes wanted the car to cometo Coventry, and I think if the car

(10:28):
came to Coventry, there is one articleknocking around written by a guy
called Nathan Chadwick, and his articlehad even pulled out the performance
figures that Jaguars, hes driver,Norman Deis extracted from the car.
In comparing it.
With the Jaguar E type,it did 137 miles an hour.
I remember from the article, yeah,Norman himself wasn't quite the

(10:51):
character and I, I'm sure he hadsome fun in that GTO testing it for
Jaguar to find out what it could do.
But you know, memory serves me.
They made that E type lighterby a decent amount than the GTO
to get that thing competitive.
In reality.
I mean, it didn't blow its doorsoff, it made it more competitive.
It's called balance ofperformance these days.
There you go.

(11:12):
Yeah.
But it, but it did shift the balancer.
'cause the other interesting thing Iread about was the Ferrari three 30
LMB at another point in its life, Iread one account where it compared
the performance of the three 30 LMB.
With the two 50 GTO and the topspeeds were similar, but the way
they got there were different.
The Axel ratios were different.

(11:34):
I think one's a fourspeed, one's a five speed.
Yeah.
Going back to Norman Jus, I rememberthe quarter mile times, I think
the Ferrari did a 13 and a halfand the E type did a 13 seven.
I mean, that's respectful.
There's nothing to sneeze at.
I wanna dive into before we get into thecolor, which is one of the most important

(11:55):
parts of the car, is its racing history.
What did he buy it for?
What kind of racing was on his mind?
Because he basically bought aLeMans prepared car to race in
England, or am I wrong about that?
John?
The biggest race for cars of thattype at that time was Lamont in
terms of, you know, prestige.

(12:15):
But he bought it to sell cars.
Domestically.
So that meant that it was goingto do races like Silverstone
International Trophy, for example.
So this is a international race,but the vast majority of the entry
is going to be British people.
If you think of it, even Jaguar wentto Lamar and made an effort to go

(12:38):
there, but they didn't really makean effort to go to the nerve burging
and do the thousand kilometers there.
They certainly didn't make aneffort with the tar Florio.
The effort with the millet Miliawas not really very serious.
If you look back, Mercedes madea point of traveling a long way.
The Italians made a point of goingto Argentina, but I really get the

(13:00):
feeling that the racing scene atthat time was quite parochial in
comparison to the way that it is now.
And for John Coombs, the important thing.
Was winning some races in andaround the south of England and
maybe a few in Northern France andBelgium and something like that.
You wouldn't go too far away becausenobody's gonna travel that far to

(13:24):
come and buy, uh, Jaguar off you.
So would you then classify that moreas what we would say, you know, here
stateside, it's more club racingfor John Coombs than being on the
international scene with that car?
Yes.
But then he would bring in GrahamHill and Salvadore and all these
other drivers to drive that car.
For him because at that time, althoughGraham Hill was a Formula One world

(13:46):
champion, he was still very muchinvolved in club racing at that time.
One of the features of clubmeetings in Britain in that era
was there would be 500 cc cars.
Small engine saloon cars,you know, minis or Anglia.
There would be Jaguars, bigger cars.

(14:07):
There would be a race for cars that weresimilar to contemporary Formula One cars.
You wouldn't get a full turnoutof a full Formula one field, but
there would be a mixed field and afeature of a lot of those meetings.
Staunching to look backwards.
If Sterling Moss was there, he would enterevery event and typically win every event.
I mentioned that partly to illustratemoss's dominance, but also to

(14:32):
show the even the very best.
Max Vapin, you know, all this businessof him racing GT three cars now as Franz
Herman, that was the norm back then.
And, and if you think of Graham Hill, hefamously did the Triple Crown, didn't he?
In the he one, like the Monaco Grand Prix.
Lamar and Indianapolis find that car.

(14:53):
Obviously his competitors wanting towin, but to get Graham Hill and Roy
Salvador to drive, they were like, well.
Until you have a faster car.
Was that something he got to, toentice them to come drive for him?
Ooh, I'm not sure about that.
I think that if you were going torace, I think he would want to win.
So, yeah.
But we talked about how Salvadori, hewas the guy that Shelby won Lamont with.

(15:18):
Yeah, he was handy in sports cars.
Spent some time in Formula One.
Not a compelling success inin Formula One, and I suppose.
What's interesting to me about it isthat I believe you can see a clear
stack ranking between moss and Hawthorn,and then salvadori and coons in terms
of skill sitting behind the wheel.

(15:38):
So the reason I wanna go a littlebit deeper down this path is.
One of the other big bulletpoints for this car that makes
it interesting or special to abuyer is that it's a two 50 GTL.
There's only so many of those.
It's white.
We're still gonna get to that.
And then thirdly, right handdrive, if we add that to its
pedigree amongst everything else.

(15:59):
There was a little bit of debate.
Why did Coombs order it right hand drive?
Is it just because he's a Britand he wanted a right hand drive?
Because right hand drives are morerare in the Ferrari builds sheets
than the left hand drive cars.
And then we started to kindof kick around the idea that.
Because racing at the time in theearly sixties, you wanted the driver

(16:20):
on that side of the car, especiallyif you were gonna run the car in
a longer race where you had driverchanges, you want them to be on the
side of the pit box where it's safer.
And you'll also note that the fuelfiller is on that side of the car.
But you had an interesting takeon that perspective as well, John.
Well, I'm.
Pretty certain that those things mightbe valid, Eric, but I'm certain that
the reason he had it as a right handdrive car was because most circuits

(16:43):
in Europe, and certainly most circuitsin Britain, are clockwise circuits.
So that means that there are moreright hand turns than left hand turns.
So what that means is it isbetter for you to be sitting on
the right hand side of the car.
Instead of the left hand side ofthe car because it's easier for you
to place the car 'cause that's thewheel that you're right in front of.

(17:07):
You can see the apex.
And there's also an argument tobe made about weight distribution.
If you're all your weight is in the insideof the apex and not on the outside of
it, it's gonna corner better as well.
If you shifted the driver the other wayon a clockwise track, now the centrifugal
force is stronger 'cause there's moreweight on the outside of the car.
So moving him, inboard.
Right hand drive makesa lot more sense too.

(17:28):
I mean, this is very crudetuning and car setup and
aerodynamics and everything else.
There's part of me that thinks that thereason he had it as right hand drive was
because it had to be driven on the road.
I mean, these, these carshad registration plates.
I mean, the thing that struck me aboutHawthorne's, Jaguar, that Jaguar VDU 8 81,
he proposed in the car, he raced the car.

(17:51):
It was his daily driver.
And he died in it.
It's like ever, did he have sex in it?
I'm sure.
I'm sure he did.
The whole of life tookplace in that Jaguar.
Yeah.
So the other thing is, is I don't know,in the reading that I've done, I've not
encountered where Coom sourced the car.
If the car came directly fromFerrari or if it came from an import.

(18:12):
Because the name that youare probably familiar with,
William is Colonel Ronnie Haw.
Mm-hmm.
Who was the British importer of Ferraris.
I don't know whether this was a car thatRonnie Hor had imported and sold to Coons.
I don't know if Coonswent direct to Marella.
In that Nathan Chadwick article that I wasreferring to earlier, he refers to there

(18:37):
having to be some special jiggery pokery.
The UK agent to be able toorder the car in the afo.
Is that an official term?
John Jiggery Pokery.
I like that.
William, you mentioned when we weretalking to Sam and to Chris about the very

(18:58):
limited number of two 50 GTOs there are.
And then inside of that, the evensmaller number of right hand drive.
Two 50 GTOs and, and I, and I'm harpingon this only because John Coombs couldn't
have been the only British person tobuy a two 50 GTO back then when the
majority of them were left hand drive.
So what is that realnumber of right hand drive?

(19:18):
Two 50 GTOs.
Out of the 36 GTOs, there'sonly eight right hand driver.
This one is number 12of the three six built.
But if you look at the productionon these, the majority of the right
hand driver cars were all built.
Within the first build series of the cars,first year and a half, whatever it was.
So my thought is one, hey,it's a road registered car.

(19:40):
So yeah, and a good portion of the peoplethat bought 'em were in countries IE, the
UK or what have you, where it was gonnabe right-hand drive and racing wise.
But then as.
Popular in regards to other series andaround the globe in that you know, you
had more people I drive on the leftside, the backend majority of almost
all the cars are all left-hand drive.
You know, my mind, it has a lotto do with location where it's at.

(20:02):
And from my understanding, Coombswent direct to Ferrari, but then
to do make the transaction happen,he had to go through the importer
'cause he had that kind of pull.
But from my understanding,what I can tell is just.
They bought it 'cause he is inEngland, so I want right hand drive.
I wanna say there's one moreafter that or two more after
that, that are right hand drive.
But that was like within thenext couple cars that were built.
So like within the first 15 cars,all the right hand drives were done.

(20:24):
So then the balanceswere all left hand drive.
And then according to theinformation we got, that was the.
Third car destined for the uk.
So it's like one of very few.
Yeah.
So I mean, but you look back thenthere was still a large portion,
especially in Europe where you knowthey were driving the wrong way.
On the right hand side.

(20:44):
Obviously had like Australia's,because there is a lot of European
countries that actually started outdriving right hand drive, but then
they switched like in the fifties andsixties just 'cause of production stuff.
The Italians had a weird systemwhere in towns and cities.
Particularly Milan, you drove on theleft, but out on the main road you
would drive as the Italians do now.

(21:05):
So there was a transition point in sometowns and cities where as you came into
the town city, you would stop being onthe left and move to being on the right.
And the logic around that was that.
You didn't want to be walking in theroad when you got out of the car.
Obviously you wanted to be on the curbside'cause it was easier you to spot parking
and when you pulled up it was easier.

(21:25):
You know, there was um, a lanciathat won Pebble some years ago and I
think that was right hand drive car.
I remember learning it.
It was a sort of luxury featurealmost for Italians to have
like the right hand drive.
So that meant that there's more righthand drive Maseratis than actual

(21:46):
cars that came to Britain becausequite a lot of Italians bought them
in, you know, in that configurationon the right hand drive GTOs.
William, what does it do forvalues is a right hand drive car
worth more than the left hand.
I mean, in my opinion, I would say yeah.
'cause I mean, look at it, youonly have eight outta 36 of
already extremely rare car.
So then now you're just need to makeit more rare because you have only

(22:08):
one of the eight that were built.
That's how I view it.
But as with any car though, you'regonna have both sides of the coin in
regards to how someone's gonna view that.
They're not gonna drive thisthing hardly on the street, ever.
I mean, it's gonna be on track, historicracing stuff like, so it's gonna be
race, so it's not like you gotta reallyworry about it all that much, but.
My opinion, it adds value.
How much?
I don't know.
But I mean, just look at the numbersyou got, you know, one of the 36, well

(22:31):
these cars average 40 to $80 million.
Then you got one of theeight out of those things.
So it's gotta add someintrinsic value to it.
You know, make it alittle bit more special.
And then obviously we getinto the color here shortly.
That just kind of icingon the cake, so to speak.
The motor, I was bibbling around onFerrari chat just before we came online.

(22:51):
The quote that stuck in my mind.
The only GTO that doesn'thave its original engine.
No, that's the only one.
No.
And my understanding is whathappened to the engine and that's.
From that awesome lunchwith John Coombs article.
He reckons that after he had the car,Jack Sea had it, and then it ended up
with a sort of, not quite a scrap metaldealer, but a sort of secondhand racing

(23:15):
car dealer called J Pierce in slo.
Yeah, it ended up there, but the enginewas somehow separated from it and was.
Put into a Cooper Racingcar or something like that.
And so the engine has becomeseparated from the car.
So when the car's been put back together,they used to use, uh, anos, didn't they?
The two 50 anos?

(23:37):
Yeah.
Cheapest, sacrificial.
V 12 that you could buy.
They dropped that in just.
To put a motor in the car, obviouslyfor a motor, but then they actually
got one out of a, uh, 2 75 comp.
So they actually got the hot rod motor.
It's got some ooof toit, very rare engine.
So right there value that.
But when John Shirley bought the carand had it for a while when he sent

(23:59):
it back to Ferrari for, to get class Ccertification and get painted back to
white Ferrari, cast a new block for it.
So it's got the propercorrect stampings on it.
Everything like that.
I mean, you can't get muchmore authentic than that.
That motor is the one that's in it now.
And then the comp motor that theywere using for the longest time,
like Jack Sears had, and everythingof that is now sitting on a stand.

(24:22):
'cause that's got a lotof value to itself there.
So these were racing cars.
Motors blew up.
They replaced motors all the time.
For them to say, oh, it's the onlyone not having its original motor,
you're gonna have something that don't.
The racing cars.
That's what they did.
They beat the hell outof 'em, blew things up.
It's crash.
And this goes back to that conversation.
We had the three of us, about themil Melia, which then leads into

(24:42):
that presentation by Trevor Listerand Don Kapps about the family
lineage of all these Maserati andFerrari engines that into your point,
William, when something would blow up,they'd scrap it and get another one.
They weren't really about.
Numbers matching back then.
As much as we're obsessed with that today,and even then there's numbers matching
didn't really match because they wouldchange the serial number of the car.

(25:03):
To match the motor.
Yeah, it's all sorts of crazinessthat makes absolutely no sense
to anybody except the Italians.
Yeah, exactly.
Then they'd change the block andengine number didn't match the car
number, but then the car would goback to get repaired or some shit.
Then they changed the VIN again.
It was insane how they did itafterthought so you don't feel like
this non-original engine hurts.

(25:23):
This car's value.
I don't.
You have Ferrari.
The manufacturer built that card.
They had all the original castings.
They had everything from that whenthat, when it was originally built
and done and cast back in the sixties,they just pulled that out and redid it.
I mean, I don't know how muchmore authentic you can get.
It'd be one thing if you sentit down to, what's his name?

(25:44):
He's got a casting factory down thestreet and hey, just kinda eyeball it.
We'll make something close, youknow, do some dimensional checks.
You can't get more authenticthat, like I said, they stand
you with the correct numbers.
You can't go wrong withthat, in my opinion.
Basically, get a brand new motor.
In essence.
All right, so now the So what moment?
Getting to what, you know, one of ourbig topics of discussion we were having

(26:05):
with the guys at Mecu and also ChrisBely from Prancing Horse of Nashville,
'cause it was never really stated whythat is the only white Bianco Especi.
That Ferrari painted from the factory.
That's why I've been savingthis color conversation.
This is the so what moment of thiscar, because a lot of our listeners
are probably, it's, it's white.

(26:26):
Who cares?
It's black.
So what?
Most Ferraris are red.
Yeah, we know that.
Why is white so important?
And so I think there's a hugedebate around the why here.
And the why becomes a what?
Very quickly in this conversation, youknow, you hear kind of stories like,
hey, it could be about nationality'cause being British, but Kons had
an affinity for having light white.

(26:48):
Or he had, it wasn't likewhite, but it was like a off
white or something like that.
But then also a gray.
Did he have all his that way?
I mean, you think that's probably whatthe case for why this was he had enough
pull that he could go to Ferrari, orderthis car and get it without much hassle.
And this is where I'm confused and Iwanna lean on your expertise, John.
Because I hearken back to conversationsI hear at the Argen Singer Symposium

(27:10):
from people like Paul Baxa talkingabout nationalism and patriotism,
and the colors are political.
Like all the Italian cars are always red.
Look at the old alphas and the Ferraris.
They're always red, and theFrench cars are always blue.
It didn't matter if it was EOor DHE or, or whoever it was,
you know, the Brits were greenand the the Germans were silver.
White is such an, inmy mind, an odd choice.

(27:32):
For a British racer or, I wannaput, I'm gonna say it that way.
So why white?
Do we have any idea as to why JohnKunz's cars were white and black?
I think they were his racing colors.
They were the colors that he'dused on the Jaguar, so it was
natural that he put those colorsonto the Ferrari when he bought.
If those colors said Coombs,that's the important thing.

(27:56):
And if you look at all those picturesof saloon car racing, as the jaguars
are against each other, the gray carwith the buy one plate, if that one's
winning, you're gonna go to Coombs tobuy a Jaguar, not to Mike Hawthorn.
And I'm glad you said that because ifwe go back to that ideology of the color
signifies the country at that time, eventhough we're 30 years past the 1920s and

(28:19):
the milam and all that kind of stuff, inits heyday of nationalism, American cars
were generally white and famously theCunningham cars and the camaraderie cars.
Were white and black or white and blue.
So that's what made me also thinkMotorsport at that time was a small,
small world compared to the globaltrillion dollar market that it is today.

(28:40):
So I wondered, was there someinfluence, there was some cross
pollination, you know, was he tryingto be like Cunningham or one of those.
No, no, I, I don't think so.
I think Briggs Cunningham adoptedthe white and the blue, didn't he?
That was originally whenBriggs Cunningham went racing.
The chassis was gonna be blueand the body was gonna be white.
And then when Shelby went racing, heflipped it around and the body covered

(29:03):
the chassis by the time Shelby was racing.
So he put the stripe overthe top, and that's why.
Every Chavelle you ever see has got thedouble stripe over the top of the roof.
I think that with Shelby and, andhence Cunningham, to thank for that
I shared with you guys a photographof the British Empire Trophy race.

(29:24):
One year and you know our car's likeleaping off the line in the middle of
the grid and right next to it is the redColonel Ronnie Haw, official works entry.
And behind it on the grid there'sa green GTO and then there's
another red one at the back.
And alongside it on the gridthere are two of the Aston Martin
project cars 2 1 4 and 2 1 5.

(29:45):
They're both dark green.
The white car in, in the modernparlance, the white car pops Eric.
I'm not really sure if that would've beenon John COO's mind, but anybody who went
out of the way to have buy one as a numberplate, which is that is very aggressive
advertising for England at the time.
There is no sponsorship on the sideof these cars, and Coombs drove Walt

(30:10):
Hanskin and at the end of the race, JackSears apparently said to Walt Hanskin.
What we usually do is, uh, we usually keepthe car straight on the straight so the
faster chaps can come by if they want to.
Side note, since we're talking aboutspecial colored Ferraris, Rob Walker
British, but he had like that SWB that hedrove out, that was pretty famously owned.

(30:33):
It was blue with white.
Yeah, did that really sharp blue.
And you look at the Scottishrugby colors, it's exactly the
same color as Scottish Rugby's.
I feel like the kind of man whoprepared cars for people like Walt
Anson to race in England, buy one.
That's what it was all about.

(30:54):
It was that white, you wanted itto be in Coombs White and you made
a really interesting remark duringone of our exchanges, it opened up
something I had been thinking about,which was, was the car actually
painted white from the factory?
'cause you made the joke.
It might have just been repaid.
Jaguar White when it got to England,and I was like, you know what?
That's probably not far from the truth.

(31:15):
Who knows?
Because record keepingwas what it was back then.
I mean, there are databases ofthis type of information and the
paperwork that we have says the carleft the Ferrari factory in white.
But in every joke there's a hint of truth.
And so that picture that youshowed of all those GTOs together
for me was sort of mind blowing.
There's only 36 of these cars to beginwith, and in that picture alone, you

(31:38):
have four of them that were all builtrelatively close to one another because
they would've had to have been, especiallyconsidering the white one is number 12.
To have been produced, period.
So I thought that picturewas just a snapshot in time.
That was impressive.
But you did make me think when yousaid, what if that was just Jaguar
White, because he had it laying around.
'cause all his other carswere painted the same color.

(31:59):
My thought was not so much thathe had it laying around, but you
know, I read this morning about thempushing extra louvers in the bon.
After the first outing, well, that bonnetprobably would've needed repainting
right after you'd cut the extra.
So are you gonna order to Italyto get the whatever color?
No, you're not.
You're gonna hit it with the Jaguar whitethat you've got in your own body shop.

(32:21):
So is there a chance that carcame naked from the factory?
No, they would've painted it something.
'cause especially back then, bythe time that thing showed up to
England, it would've been rust.
Who knows?
Unless you go back in timeand sit in the off thing.
When that order sheet came throughand Enzo signed off on and says,
yeah, hey, you know, do it.
It's good Ferrari lore becausethere's no definitive, no, this

(32:43):
was why, this is why it was done.
Everything like that.
It's it.
It is interesting, the car's almost in asense because of was involvement with the
lightweights, the car's almost as mucha part of Jaguar history, more a part
of Jaguar history than Ferrari history.
You guys have mentioned it a coupletimes, even on the previous episode,
and I have a clarifying question thatI, I'm sure our listeners might be

(33:04):
confused about as well, unless they'rein the classic Ferrari collector.
No.
You talk about the ventsand when I look at.
Reference pictures in periodof this car and look at it now.
And I look at other twofifties, 'cause there's not a
lot of two fifties to look at.
There's three vents in the hood whichhave these little plates you can put
in, which actually can close the nose.

(33:24):
So it looks like it hasno vents whatsoever.
Then there's three vents below the grill.
Then there's either two ventsor three vents on the side,
basically in the fender.
And then on this particularcar, they hot rotted the hood.
And it looks like, you know,the side of a return vent in
a house, like a HVAC system.
There's like all these louvers.
Yeah, go like you would see on a Jaguar.
Right.

(33:44):
When you guys are talking about the vents,you know, oh, it left as a three vent car.
Oh, they modified it and added the vents.
I'm trying to understand, and I'm surethe listeners are trying to understand
what exactly are you talking aboutAnd the GT os, obviously they modified
the hood itself, but those three ventson the fishbowls, where you wanna
call 'em, those are on all of 'em.
But those were so depending onwhere you're racing and open close.

(34:04):
And this is on the two 70 fives as well.
It's the side vents they're talkingabout, you know, earlier production ones,
they'll only have the couple on there.
Then later productionones they'll have three.
I mean, some will go up tosix depending on the car.
So I just about if it's an alloy,if it's a comp, what have you.
So that's one key indicator.
Kind of like you can tell when thecar was built, production wise,
where it sits in the range, or ifyou can tell, like especially with

(34:26):
the two 70 fives, there's like a twocam, four cam, that kind of stuff.
But all it does is boil down to is justventing, get air out from the motor.
'cause those things are hot.
So this thing's an oddity then, right?
Because it's number 12 and it'sgot three vents, whereas all
the other early cars had two.
Yeah.
Was this the first one with three?
I believe it was the first onethat put the three on there.
I think I'd have to go back andlook, but I think it, it's one of

(34:48):
the first ones that they did it on.
Why wouldn't all the subsequenttwo fifties just have three
events after that point?
All the previous ones, the first11 that were built prior started
racing and they realized that.
It's running hot.
Okay, let's put another vent in.
So subsequent ones, theygot to another vent.
So it's a race car and it wasn'tlike they were cranking out 20 a
day, they were doing one a month.

(35:08):
If that.
If it's going through, you could reachback out and you know, send the telex,
telegram, hey, put more vents in theside 'cause it needs to cool better.
Okay.
Our next ones we building,we'll put more vents in.
So was that an option then that would'vebeen presented to Coombs to either be a
two vent or a three vent at that point?
Or did he cut the vent in the car?
That's the other part I wasconfused about my understanding.

(35:30):
He did it himself.
Danny, is it left with two?
But then, I dunno if Coombs did it orit went back and the factory did it.
It looks, it's not, someone just knockedit out, you know, in their garage.
I don't know a hundred percent on that.
Do we know how soon after the car wasdelivered that it got the third vent?
We'd have to look and.
John got all the books here withthe car and I know Chris has a ton

(35:51):
of the documentation on or copiesof it, but that's a good question.
This also leans back into what wewere talking about with the paint.
If you cut it, now you've got all thisexposed metal, you're gonna have to
finish it to keep it from rusting.
Those fenders would've needed tobe repainted and you're doing this
hood, which is the amount of louresin this hood, is insane compared
to any of the other ones I've seen.
Yeah, looking at the pictures, it'slike the whole front end was resprayed.

(36:14):
We know it left a factory in white.
It's documented in the bill sheet, butwhat could have been the only white one is
when they shipped it, they could have justsent all that white paint with it because
knowing full and well that they're gonnahave to do repainting on the car anyways.
So they could have just sent that paintwith the car and they'll go, here you go.
'cause it wasn't like they have paintmatching technology like they do today.
So they could have just sent that along.

(36:34):
'cause knowing good and wellthat they're gonna have to
repaint this car at some point.
It'd be interesting to know if theydid that with all the other ones
too, saying, Hey, we painted the car.
Here's a couple extra gallons of paint.
'cause we know you'regonna have to repaint it.
Coons never like this iswhy or anything like that.
And so it's one of thosethings that goes down.
'cause I mean, it wasbefore Sears bought it.
Someone repainted it red becauseback then it like Ferrari should

(36:55):
be red so it got repainted.
They did it in red insteadof doing it in the white.
So it wasn't repainted whiteuntil Shirley had it, unless it
was red underneath the white.
Oh.
It's sort of like the Model T, right?
You can have it in any, anycolor when you want black.
Um, you could go back some cars andlook, you look in the door jamb.
If you look somewhere, you're gonnafind original color somewhere.
If you dig deep enough, not on arestoration like this, it would've

(37:17):
been stripped all the way down, right?
Yeah, exactly.
There were really no way to kind of doany investigative work on the car itself
and try and find something that's showing.
What it was originally.
So Coombs gets this car with a fivegallon bucket of paint, a thing
of ravioli and a spare interior.
None of this stuff addsup at the end of the day.
The interior is the puzzling part.

(37:38):
Yeah.
What we know is it left with the blueinterior, which means Ferrari built it.
The same way they build all the otherones, which is why I sort of feel like
the white is kind of suspect in the sensethat maybe it left a factory red like
every other two 50 was at that time.
And then to John's point, they didall these modifications and then they
said, well, we're gonna respray thecar to match all the rest of our cars.

(37:59):
Nah.
'cause merely had the.
Build sheet on the car from Ferrari.
He went down the list.
That's how you could seeit left the factory blue.
So we, we know it left in white.
When we think about this, when we aretalking about it leaving the factory,
we're like imagining the Corvettefactory with like a production.
It wasn't like that was it?
Was it Scte?
That built the GTO.
William.
Yeah, the bodies.

(38:19):
Yeah.
So let's be clear that therolling chassis is being built in
Marine and Scte is where Nearby?
Is he nearby?
I don't know.
Yeah, he wasn't that far.
I'm trying to rememberoff the top of my head.
But then the Kai is having thesehandmade body panels put on it.
So I guess Eric, what I'm envisaging is.
I feel like if Luigi and Mario wereshort on blue leather that day, that's

(38:44):
why that car got a black interior.
No, the black got put init after it was delivered.
Yeah, so it came with a spare interior.
Like would you just gopick up a two 50 interior?
Like that's that all it was is the seats.
I mean, everything else is just.
Bear.
It's not like there's carpetingand everything in that car.
So it was just the seat itself.
But it's not like itwould've, they got torn.

(39:05):
It wasn't like it was, oh, it racedabout 50 times and the seats were shot.
So he got reupholstered.
It was two weeks after they got the car.
They all of a sudden theychanged the interior.
No one ever fessed up.
Why showed up?
He got hill to race, uh,scheduled to race the car.
It had blue interior.
Then when Hill came to go racethe car, it had black interior.
Was it Hill requesting, Hey, hewanted black interior instead.

(39:26):
I mean, who knows?
Maybe he was sliding around because itwent from that, I wanna say al and tear
almost type material, whatever thatwas, and it went into the sidewalk.
It was, uh, leather.
So maybe better grip on the seat soyou weren't sliding around as much.
'cause I mean, you're nottalking 5.6 point harness
and all that stuff back then.
You have some shoulder straps andstuff like that, but maybe that
helped stick his ass in the seatso he wasn't sliding around much.

(39:48):
I mean, pretty deep in those seats toJohn's point, right, it's sort of like we
cut the hood to add the, the air passagesor whatever, so we had to respray it.
So we resprayed the car or whateverto, so everything matched the interior.
If it was a livery thing whereit's gotta be white and black,
nobody's really gonna see those.
Seats.
They were bucket seats.
They were low.
Yeah.
You couldn't made the argument.
But Italy's not a hop, skip anda jump from the UK in the 1960s.

(40:13):
I mean, there were airplanesand stuff, and trains, whatever.
But to get a new interior, even thoughit's two seats, let's say two seats
from the factory in less than twoweeks, they either came with the car.
No.
That they would've beenupholstered in-house.
Oh yeah.
They would've done it.
Yeah, they would've done it.
Where did the original blue seats go?
'cause nobody knows where they are.
This gets to the, so what is.

(40:33):
The white that important.
I mean, we're making a big deal about thefact that it is the only one in white.
I mean, to me it is.
I don't like red Ferraris.
I'm not a fan.
I mean, they look great in red.
You know, I want somethingelse besides red.
I think it looks really good and white.
I mean, that car looksreally good and white.
I don't think it's important at all.
Ooh, okay.

(40:53):
I mean, as I'm sopping andthinking about GTOs, what color
do I think works best on A GTO?
I mean, my favorite GTO is theEnni island one in that pale green.
It's the only one in that palegreen that's a color that's
like diluted Mopar Limelight.
It's, but that's the Britishracing partnership color that was
in this islands team at the time.

(41:13):
So, you know, I like that car.
I just don't think it's important at all.
I just think Coombs paintedhis team color and that was it.
Eric, you talked about that photo andhow we talked about how the car kind
of stands out from the other cars.
I think it does, but the motor sportlunch with article talks about,
typically his cars were immaculatelyturned out in white or gray with.

(41:36):
That immaculately turned out, it mademe think a little bit about, you know,
the way that Ron Dennis is at McLaren,this sort of business of you were
successful at racing because you do allthe other things very precisely, and I
don't know much about what Coombs didin the war, but you get the sense the,
the way that he approached mojo racing.
Was with a sort ofmilitary kind of precision.

(41:58):
And so, you know, it's like saying, youknow, all of the foreign tanks are red.
How come your tanks green?
Well, tanks are green,dude, we paint tanks green.
You know, you red ones over there.
But our tanks are green tank.
You know, I feel like it wasn't, and Eric,I think what Paul Baxter is talking about
when he's talking about the nationalismparticularly, he talks a lot about Italy.

(42:19):
Yeah.
The Italian cars were red and certainly.
I think for the Italian marks in thepost-war period, there's very much
a sense of building back, buildingthe country that was destroyed in
the war, and therefore there is abig sense of national pride that
you are going to be in Italian Red.
Remember the Ferrari badgeas the Italian flag on it?

(42:39):
Ferrari was racing, you know,with Italy against the world.
Coombs wasn't like that.
Coons was me selling Jaguarsmore than you, Michael Hawthorne.
So I'm gonna paint the car in, in mycolor, do a bit of club racing with it.
And that point about, you know, so many ofthem being here, I wonder if there wasn't,

(43:00):
you know, so many on the grid, likefour of the first dozen, two dozen GTOs,
four of them on grid for that one race.
I just feel like there was.
Small community of people who werewealthy enough to go motor racing.
There was a window, 62, 63, 64when if you wanted to go sports car
racing, that was the best car to buy.

(43:21):
So although there were only 39 of themmade those 39, that was enough, right?
If Ferrari could have sold390, he would've done those 39.
That was the size ofthe sport at the time.
So I just feel like the guys racing themhad grown up in the pre-war era when
every car was completely individual.
So the fact that this is the onlywhite GTOI just, I mean, I think

(43:44):
it makes it special, but it'show much adds value wise, it's up
debate, and again, it goes back to.
Who's gonna buy the car?
You said 40 to 80 million.
It's interesting that, because one ofthe things I wanted to ask you about,
you know, in, in my mind there'ssort of good GTOs and bad GTOs.
Yeah.
And my perception of a bad GTO was that.

(44:05):
Pierre Baron, I think that was thefamily name, but it was a car that
had been bought new in France.
Yeah.
And I guess the owner had wrecked it,been killed, and then the family had
hung onto it for ages and ages and ages.
Yeah.
It had no actual race historyand it just sat for ages.
And then Bonum sold it someyears ago, and that Carm made 35.

(44:26):
So that seemed to me, yeah, thesort of bottom of the market.
And then, oh, Dave paid a rumored.
75 million didn't he?
For the only silver GTO if I'm right.
McNeal from WeatherTech, yeah.
Yeah.
MCDA McNeil 75 was the numberthat I'd heard on that.
Yeah, imagine 18.
2018. But that's the creme.

(44:47):
That's the best of the best.
That's the best.
Although it was a long time ago.
I feel like the market, if anything,is gone up since 2018, but it's
come down since 2018 as well.
Yeah.
As the resident expert.
Where does this car fall?
Is it a good one or is it a bad one?
Where does it fall?
I was hoping we were gonna go here.
We avoided this on the other episode.

(45:07):
William was like, I'm not talkingabout, yeah, I didn't wanna get into it.
I mean, I hate throwing out there.
'cause you don't know.
I mean that's what auction's for.
I put it out between45 to 55 in my opinion.
It's a well-known car.
It's had long-term.
Ownership history.
It was Jack Sears, then John Shirley.
Yeah.
Prior to Sears owned it.
There's a couple here and there,but he's owned it for 30 years.

(45:28):
Sears was the same boat.
He owned it close to 30 years.
You have a car that's hadlong-term ownership history
in, in the life of the car.
It's very well known.
One of only one of the.
Factory white cars, one ofonly eight of the right hand
drive cars, brand new block.
It comes with a spare motor as well.
You're adding all these things andthen, you know, having some of those

(45:48):
little special touches to it, youknow, and that's where we got into too,
about the interior color of that car.
Almost all of 'em came with that bluishcolor, interior that like light blue.
This one's got black interior, whichas Eric mentioned, was done like
two weeks after he got the car.
It was delivered that, but then for somereason, still don't know why, before
Graham Hill raced it or he drove it once.

(46:10):
Then all of a sudden it showed up.
It had all new interior.
It was black, so it'salways had black interior.
From then on.
It's got a lot of these specialfeatures to it that separate itself
from all the other cars that were built.
I mean, you're gonna have a very uniquecar when you go to the, you know, the
owner's meetings that they have everyfew years that they do in private.
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.
You might have to spend anickel of your own money.
I put it in there.
It just, just because ofwhere the market's at.
Still a very, very valuable car.
But it didn't win Lama, youknow, anything like that.
Yes, it's got some great race history.
And who's driven it?
Yeah, it's got a couple wins, but likea Goodwood to tee, that kind of stuff.
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.
That's not gonna happen.
And I, I don't know if you eversee that kind of number again,
unless McNeal sells his car.
Then that one.
Yeah, because that's like the perfect one.
What's so great about Dave McNeil's car?
The only silver one.
It's got a ton of race history.
That one original numbersmatching the whole nine yards.
Not so much necessarily restored,but like just they say sympathetic

(47:15):
restoration type of deal.
It's the best one out there regardsto originality, it's got everything
you want for the boxes to tick.
If someone's got that kind ofmoney and they want that specific
one, they're gonna pay up for it.
Hard to say if someone elsewould, something's only worth
what someone's gonna pay for it.
But if you want it and you got the deeppockets for it, just here's a blank check.
Just fill the amount I want the car.

(47:35):
Yeah, that was 2018.
I mean, you do inflationnow, stuff like that.
You're over a hundred milliondollars valuation now.
Mm-hmm.
So if you go comparing it, certain thingskinda a sudden created that perfect
storm to all create a very special car.
You know, you could say it is the most,I mean your Mercedes, what you would
call it, that's a one off at 140 million.
And you looked how thatwhole deal was structured.
That person really doesn'teven own the car technically.

(47:57):
I mean, they paid all thatmoney, but Mercedes still
basically kind of controls it.
I don't know, I, I, I don't see it.
You know, everyone's touching onlike, oh, the McLaren F one's.
The next GTO is that, well, McLarenF1 pricing has been stuck at between
18 million to low twenties, midtwenties million range forever.
How many McLaren Act ones either thinkit's 64 road going cars, and then they

(48:18):
built like a hundred, something like that.
But then the balanceare all the race cars.
Okay.
I think they built more racecars than the street cars.
Remember?
Serve me.
You say that the values onMcLaren F ones are stagnant.
You know, I believe you that theyhave been, but I feel like, you know,
we're in a time where certainly peopleunder the age of 40 are having to
tighten their belts a little bit.
I feel like if the economy boomsagain, then you'll see McLaren F1.

(48:41):
True.
The old GTO.
'cause I just, I feel like, youknow, the values of cars like
Packards and Deusenberg are sustainedby the people in their seventies
and eighties passing them around.
Yeah.
And it's like little chairs amongstthemselves, more cars than there are
old Coutts left to buy them and sooneror later there are too few old Coutts
still in circulation trying to buy them.

(49:03):
And eventually the price goes down.
Well I feel like GTOs.
Or a while away from that.
But they're gonna get there, aren't they?
They're gonna get there.
Oh yeah.
It's not like they're gonna comedown to like 5 million bucks,
but circle of life, so to speak.
It reaches that value point where, okay,that's pretty much where it's gonna be at.
It might go a little bit higher,a little bit lower, but you know,
you've weed out the old kouts andyou got some people that still

(49:24):
appreciate it and that kind of stuff.
But you know that.
Pool of buyers and people thatwanna own the car and have it, it
is shrunk down in about 20 years.
It's gonna be really interesting to seewhere things go and how things transition.
'cause it's like all of a suddenyou're getting into Fox Body Mustangs
and stuff from the eighties and youknow, the I Rocks and stuff like that
are starting to do very, very wellout in the, you know, marketplace.
Just on a personal level, I weighed along, long time for Fox Body Mustangs

(49:49):
to come and then when they came.
I rushed out of the market tooquickly and left money on the table.
It's not quite as bad as rushing out ofNvidia too early, which I did as well.
But, uh, I thought afive x game was enough.
Yeah, I left quite a lot ofmoney on the table there, but
it's gonna be a lot of fun.
'cause other great thing about thisfor what they're doing at Mecu, they

(50:10):
have close to almost 80 Ferrari thatare gonna be crossing the block.
During Kissie, you know, we tag theline moniker to it on Super Saturday.
Not only you have that GTO, but thatBachman collection man, it's got some
very big heavy hitting cars in it as well.
So they have a lot to build up to.
So you're gonna have a lot ofis on there, not just showing up
just to see what the GTO does.

(50:31):
There's a lot of other Ferraristhey're gonna be crossing that block
that people wanna get their hands on.
So there's gonna be a lotof energy in that room.
Why Meko?
I would've thought it was oneof what my wife calls the past,
the butter auction companies.
Yeah, English auctioneer.
Right.
What's happened behind the scenesfor Meum to have not just this Batman
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
cars, that they've always gotten thebest of the best in those, but they've
slowly started emerging in that market inregards to the higher end of Ferrari's,
Lamborghinis, everything like that.
The interesting story behind this, ChrisNeely, who's the Ging horse of Nashville,
which is the Ferrari dealer in Nashville,put all these together not only for

(51:16):
the GTO but for the Bachman collection.
Long story short, rightplace, right time driving.
Someone that knew John Shirley, well,this, that, and the question got
asked, Hey, do you know anyone thatmight be interested in John's car?
Da da, da.
Chris was like, yeah, I probably do.
And he thought of Dana.
'cause Dana Mecca's got anunbelievable personal collection
himself, and he's a Ferrari collector.
Wasn't that interest where he'dwanted to open up his own checkbook.

(51:37):
Then they had severalconversations, Hey, let's do this.
'cause we're working on some otherthings in regards to exposure, you
know, with these other Ferrari and that.
And it came across the board.
I mean, MECU does an awesome job.
You're not talking some backwoods,something like that where
they're run it through a barn orsomething like that where they
got some tractors and stuff going.
Mecca's really kicked up the game.
They're getting a little more picky towhat they're taking and trying to curate

(52:00):
and cultivate a great selection of cars.
And kissing me has pretty much got to thepoint where that is kicking off the year.
But kicking off auction season,I mean, that's the first one.
That's the biggest one.
It's a special event and Ithink it's well deserving it.
So Mecca are trying to steal some ofElia Island that like Gooding at Emelia

(52:20):
Island that was traditionally the auction,the one that people hung their hats on
for what the year was gonna look like.
You saying now that increasingly Meccawon their event in to be the event
that sets the tone for the classic car?
There's a couple things happeninghere, John, to add clarity to
the story that I even heard onthe previous episode, which is.

(52:41):
Williams point, rightplace at the right time.
Chris is friends with Dana.
Went to Dana on a personal level, saidyou might be interested in this car.
He turns it down, he says,but I run an auction company.
Right?
So it was sort of logical conclusion.
I think if Mecu hadn't been able tohandle this type of car, which they can.
It probably would've gone to a Bonhams,or to a Gooding, or to a Sotheby's,
or to whoever he would, Chriswould've shopped it around right to,

(53:03):
because they wanna get it out there.
But on the other side of this,this isn't the first time that
Mecca's gone down this path.
We know about the nine 17, weknow about Seinfeld's, Porsches,
you know, stuff like that.
And so they've been trying for awhile now to bring in, you know,
some more of these higher level cars.
And I think this just happened to bea moment where it's like, well, shoot,
let's go for gold and see what happens.

(53:24):
I think the other thing thatWilliams' mentioning here that I
don't wanna conflate is that they'renot kicking off auction season.
What they're doing is they're kickingoff the auction season for Ferrari
for 2026 because all the numbers ofthe 71 cars, if we include the Bianco
Speciale with the Bachman collection,are going to dictate the prices of
Ferrari for the rest of the year.

(53:46):
So because Kissimmee is in January.
Before Amelia, before Gooding,before car week, it's a huge
responsibility for them and it'sgoing to dictate the rest of the year.
Yeah, it's gonna be a bellwether 'causethe baling collection has such a, a
broad spectrum in regards to new andold, you know, the GTOs its own thing.
So setting tones, setting dollarvalue, that's when, but for

(54:06):
what the rest of the cars are.
I kinda look this way.
Yeah, like Eric mentioned.
Yeah.
I mean, you're gonna go whereverservice-wise, give you the white
glove just as any other gooding,wood, everything like that.
I like Mecca more because it's notso just say nose up in the air.
People that are there, like, oh, lookat me, mecca's more, Hey, you know,
it's more, I wanna say, I don't, I wannasay wholesome, but you know, it's more.

(54:26):
Friendly, I guess you could say.
People will talk to peopleand stuff like that.
I, I think it's a great arena for it.
It's gonna do well and especially theaudience that's gonna be able to be
there, not only in person but worldwide.
They have their own Rokuchannel now as well.
They did a special on this that mighthave already dropped the first time.
They're gonna show repeatedly, butit's gonna be interesting to see.
I, I think Mecca's really steppingup in where they go in subsequent

(54:49):
auctions throughout the year.
I think it kind of dictate that'sthe route they're gonna want
to go and I think they will.
So I think they'll do a great job.
I'm gonna investigate this Backmancollection and have a little look at it.
'cause that's an interesting thoughtthat you had about, as Meum become more
serious players in European collectiblesrather than just domestic stuff that

(55:10):
traditionally they were involved in.
I can see a time where theywould be setting the trend for
pricing and therefore it'd beinteresting to see what happens
with Ferrari's going forward, gents.
Thank you very much for your time.
It's been a pleasure.
Oh, it's been fine.
I very much appreciate you going theextra mile for us to help us with this
project because it has been reallyan interesting project to work on.

(55:31):
And obviously there's more to come,but getting to the bottom of what
I consider kind of a motorsportmystery has been fascinating.
And you're a wealth of information,so I I very much appreciate it.
Yeah, well, I'veappreciated, been involved.
I love the story.
Love Ferrari's.
Thank you.
Drive through.

(55:57):
This episode has been brought to youby Grand Touring Motorsports as part
of our Motoring Podcast network.
For more episodes like this, tune in eachweek for more exciting and educational
content from organizations like TheExotic Car Marketplace, the Motoring
Historian, break Fixx, and many others.
If you'd like to support GrandTouring Motor Sports and the Motoring
Podcast Network, sign up for oneof our many sponsorship tiers at

(56:18):
www.patreon.com/gt Motorsports.
Please note that the content,opinions and materials presented and
expressed in this episode are thoseof its creator, and this episode has
been published with their consent.
If you have any inquiries about thisprogram, please contact the creators
of this episode via email or socialmedia as mentioned in the episode.