EP49: What’s so special about… The Bianco Speciale?

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.

Crew Chief Brad: [00:00:00] John Summers is the motoring historian. He was a company car thrashing technology sales rep that turned into a fairly inept sports bike rider hailing from California. He collects cars and bikes built with plenty of cheap and fast and not much reliable. On his show, he gets together with various co-hosts to talk about new and old cars driving motorbikes, motor racing, and motoring travel.

Jon Summers: Good day. Good morning, good afternoon. It is John Summers, the Motoring historian. A bit of a special episode. This one got, uh, producer Eric and, uh, William Ferrari. Guy Ross with us Mika are auctioning the only white Ferrari, GTO. William’s been doing some work around it, and we got talking about it. We realized that really there’s some interesting material [00:01:00] about the car’s past in history, especially its early racing history, which maybe the Meum guys aren’t leading with because nobody sells more muscle than Meum.

Nobody. But maybe other people do sell more prancing horses or bulls or Stuttgart. Scroll dot.

Crew Chief Eric: Well, John, always good to be back with you in studio and to your point, I think there’s three major topics that we wanna cover about this. 1962 Ferrari, two 50 GTO. William, what’s the serial number on that one?

Three seven. Two nine. Gt. Yes, the Bianco Spial, as they like to call it these days. You being the motoring historian, you’ve got a lot of facts rolling around in your head, and one of the names that keeps popping up in this conversation about the Bianco Spial is John Coombs and being a fellow Brit. I figured you’d just be able to whip this out off the top of your head.

So let’s dive into the legacy of John Coombs a little bit as it leads into the Ferrari.

Jon Summers: The way to think about John Coombs is you [00:02:00] hesitate to say Carol Shelby because a sort of Texan cowboy. He certainly wasn’t. The Coombs firm were a firm of car traders and coach builders and Coombs himself. He, he was a Jaguar dealer in the post-war period and very involved with racing Jaguars and tuning jaguars.

If you visit the Goodwood Revival, they always 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 most recognizable Jaguar mark twos is a gray one with the plate, BUY, the number one.

Buy one that was a John Coombs built and prepared Jaguar. It’s most regularly associated with Roy Salvadori, but Coombs built and prepared the car. I guess I first encountered that the name of Coombs when I was looking really closely. [00:03:00] Mike Hawthorn and I wrote a piece. It’s the only academic piece that I’ve ever had included in an actual academic history book.

The book is The Ledge Companion to Automotive History, and I wrote a piece about Mike Hawthorn and specifically about Mike Hawthorn’s death. This is a whole separate can of worms and it’s not a conversation for today. But the point is that Mike Hawthorne wrapped his Jaguar around a tree just down the hill about 200 yards from Coombs workshop, just outside Guilford, his Jaguar dealership.

So after the wreck. Hawthorne’s Jaguar was taken to Coombs and there’s photographs of it being at Coombs and Coombs were involved with getting it transported back up to Brown’s Lane and Coventry. So because of of that, I looked into who John Coombs was a little bit more than, uh, he was this [00:04:00] bloke that did hot Rod Jaguars.

William Ross: 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

Jon Summers: around. Yes. Horse playing around is a good way to describe it. The language that the other individual used 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 team owner and was the heir to the Johnny Walker Whiskey Fortune. And something that has only come out in fairly recent years is that it is thought that Rob Walker. Pulled up outside Mike Hawthorne’s house in the Mercedes and revved the crap out of his Mercedes 300 SL in order to get Mike Hawthorne out of bed.

So he gave Hawthorne enough time to get dressed and out the front door, and then he ripped up the gravel and got out on the hog’s back, and Hawthorne [00:05:00] was killed on a bit of the A three just close to the junction with the A 30 and the A 30 at that point runs along that top of a ridge of hills. Based upon personal experience nowadays it’s tragic, absolutely tragic.

There’s a very low speed limit along there, but as recently as when I was a sales rep and worked in Goleman, you could do the vehicle’s maximum speed along the hogs back, but you really needed to worry about the wind. Hawthorne in his Jaguar had managed to catch Rob Walker in the Mercedes 300 SL by the time they merged off the Hawk’s back a 30 onto the A three Hawthorne passes Walker and then spins right in front of him off into a tree 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 a whole lot of stuff about was it the tire? Was it the fact [00:06:00] that Hawthorne was an absolute bloody hooligan? There’s really a lot of of interesting mythology around it. And look, we have Rob Walker’s account of what happened from court.

You have to say, when he was speaking to the judge, you know, the judge pressed him on the speed and, you know, he’s very vague about the kind of speed that they were doing. And that was what prompted me to really go and look at what happened and try and stand there. And, you know, the roads changed a lot.

And you know, f for me, the reason it stuck in my mind was I was a sales rep at the time doing about 60,000 miles a year in somebody else’s car in my early twenties. It’s somebody else’s car, somebody else’s gas card, somebody else’s tires. So. Company cars got used up and I used to be up and down that bit of the A 30 all the time in the a.

Well, after a bit you begin to think, 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 [00:07:00] bit of that kind of feel to it.

Crew Chief Eric: Let’s pull on that Mike Hawthorne thread just a little bit longer. So that Jag that he was killed in.

Was a Coombs prepared Jag, or was that just an off the shelf one?

Jon Summers: Oh, it was not a Coombs prepared Jag. I just described how close Hawthorne lived to Coombs, you know, the length of the hog’s back maybe five miles, 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. Was Coombs in competition with Hawthorne? I think so. I think they were competitors on the track in terms of Roy Salvadori and in Buy One and Mike Hawthorne in VDU 8 81. But I also think what they were competing for was whether or not you as a Jaguar buyer or somebody who wanted your Jaguar hot rotted, either for racing or just ’cause you wanted a faster car.

They were competing against each [00:08:00] other as to whether you took the car to the TT garage to have Hawthorne’s guys do the work, or whether you took it to the main Jaguar dealer, John Coombs.

Crew Chief Eric: What makes a die hard Jaguar tuner and dealer turn and buy a Ferrari.

Jon Summers: This is a awesome story, Eric. Why couldn’t buy a Ferrari?

Because as a Jaguar dealer, he was keen that. He could win with Jaguar products and 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 Motorsport Magazine and on the cover at the time, it described it as the authoritative voice of the sport.

I think for this particular period. And in, you know, for this particular niche, I love motor sport as a source. In 2009, Simon Taylor went and had lunch with John Coombs, where he [00:09:00] lived in Monaco and over that meal. Coombs told him that he’d had a meal with Bill Haynes Jaguars chief engineer, where he’d described the engine of the Jaguar as a bloody pendulum and how he was forced to go buy Ferrari.

So that he could win some races.

William Ross: Yeah. Well, down to obviously being competitive, he wants to win and that’s where the story comes in. Him loaning 3 7 2 9 GT O2 Jaguar to reverse engineer it or just go over it and scrutinize it a bit to see what they can do. That created the Jag e type of lightweight. The thing that struck

Jon Summers: me as well is if you go to Goodwood and you see the E type lightweights that are active.

Car that you see often is the car 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 had been originally raced [00:10:00] and prepared by Coombs that went back to Brown’s Lane, the Jaguar factory, to be turned into. The first lightweight E,

William Ross: you know 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 it over and take some measurement. How in depth do they get into that GTO in regards to really scrutinizing it?

Jon Summers: I mean, that meeting, the impression is that. Bill Haynes wanted the car to come to Coventry, and I think if the car came to Coventry, there is one article knocking around written by a guy called Nathan Chadwick, and his article had 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,

William Ross: yeah, Norman himself wasn’t quite the character and I, I’m sure he had some 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 [00:11:00] lighter by a decent amount than the GTO to get that thing competitive.

In reality. I mean, it didn’t blow its doors off, it made it more competitive.

Crew Chief Eric: It’s called balance of performance these days.

William Ross: There you go.

Jon Summers: Yeah. But it, but it did shift the balancer. ’cause the other interesting thing I read about was the Ferrari three 30 LMB at another point in its life, I read one account where it compared the performance of the three 30 LMB.

With the two 50 GTO and the top speeds were similar, but the way they got there were different. The Axel ratios were different. I think one’s a four speed, one’s a five speed.

William Ross: Yeah.

Jon Summers: Going back to Norman Jus, I remember the quarter mile times, I think the Ferrari did a 13 and a half and the E type did a 13 seven.

I mean,

Crew Chief Eric: that’s respectful.

Jon Summers: There’s nothing to

Crew Chief Eric: sneeze at. I wanna dive into before we get into the color, which is one of the most important parts of the car, is its racing history. What did he [00:12:00] buy it for? What kind of racing was on his mind? Because he basically bought a LeMans prepared car to race in England, or am I wrong about that?

John?

Jon Summers: The biggest race for cars of that type at that time was Lamont in terms of, you know, prestige. But he bought it to sell cars. Domestically. So that meant that it was going to 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 went to Lamar and made an effort to go there, but they didn’t really make an effort to go to the nerve burging and do the thousand kilometers there. They certainly didn’t make an effort with the tar Florio. The effort with the millet Milia was not really very serious. If you look back, Mercedes made a point of traveling a long way.

The Italians made a point of going to Argentina, but I [00:13:00] really get the feeling that the racing scene at that 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 and around the south of England and maybe a few in Northern France and Belgium and something like that.

You wouldn’t go too far away because nobody’s gonna travel that far to come and buy, uh, Jaguar off you.

Crew Chief Eric: So would you then classify that more as what we would say, you know, here stateside, it’s more club racing for John Coombs than being on the international scene with that car?

Jon Summers: Yes.

Crew Chief Eric: But then he would bring in Graham Hill and Salvadore and all these other drivers to drive that car.

For him

Jon Summers: because at that time, although Graham Hill was a Formula One world champion, he was still very much involved in club racing at that time. One of the features of club meetings in Britain in that era was there would be 500 cc cars. [00:14:00] Small engine saloon cars, you know, minis or Anglia. There would be Jaguars, bigger cars.

There would be a race for cars that were similar to contemporary Formula One cars. You wouldn’t get a full turnout of a full Formula one field, but there would be a mixed field and a feature of a lot of those meetings. Staunching to look backwards. If Sterling Moss was there, he would enter every event and typically win every event.

I mentioned that partly to illustrate moss’s dominance, but also to show the even the very best. Max Vapin, you know, all this business of him racing GT three cars now as Franz Herman, that was the norm back then. And, and if you think of Graham Hill, he famously did the Triple Crown, didn’t he? In the he one, like the Monaco Grand Prix.

Lamar and Indianapolis

William Ross: find that car. Obviously his competitors wanting to win, but to get Graham Hill and Roy Salvador to drive, they were like, well. [00:15:00] Until you have a faster car. Was that something he got to, to entice them to come drive for him?

Jon Summers: Ooh, I’m not sure about that. I think that if you were going to race, I think he would want to win.

So, yeah. But we talked about how Salvadori, he was the guy that Shelby won Lamont with. Yeah, he was handy in sports cars. Spent some time in Formula One. Not a compelling success in in Formula One, and I suppose. What’s interesting to me about it is that 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.

Crew Chief Eric: So the reason I wanna go a little bit deeper down this path is. One of the other big bullet points for this car that makes it interesting or special to a buyer 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 hand drive, if we add that to its pedigree amongst everything else.

There was a little bit of [00:16:00] debate. Why did Coombs order it right hand drive? Is it just because he’s a Brit and he wanted a right hand drive? Because right hand drives are more rare in the Ferrari builds sheets than the left hand drive cars. And then we started to kind of kick around the idea that.

Because racing at the time in the early sixties, you wanted the driver on that side of the car, especially if you were gonna run the car in a longer race where you had driver changes, you want them to be on the side of the pit box where it’s safer. And you’ll also note that the fuel filler is on that side of the car.

But you had an interesting take on that perspective as well, John.

Jon Summers: Well, I’m. Pretty certain that those things might be valid, Eric, but I’m certain that the reason he had it as a right hand drive car was because most circuits in Europe, and certainly most circuits in Britain, are clockwise circuits. So that means that there are more right hand turns than left hand turns.

So what that means is it is better for you to be sitting on the right hand side of the car. [00:17:00] Instead of the left hand side of the car because it’s easier for you to place the car ’cause that’s the wheel that you’re right in front of. You can see the apex.

Crew Chief Eric: And there’s also an argument to be made about weight distribution.

If you’re all your weight is in the inside of the apex and not on the outside of it, it’s gonna corner better as well. If you shifted the driver the other way on a clockwise track, now the centrifugal force is stronger ’cause there’s more weight on the outside of the car. So moving him, inboard. Right hand drive makes a lot more sense too.

I mean, this is very crude tuning and car setup and aerodynamics and everything else.

Jon Summers: There’s part of me that thinks that the reason he had it as right hand drive was because it had to be driven on the road. I mean, these, these cars had registration plates. I mean, the thing that struck me about Hawthorne’s, Jaguar, that Jaguar VDU 8 81, he proposed in the car, he raced the car.

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 [00:18:00] life took place 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 from Ferrari or if it came from an import.

Because the name that you are 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 that Ronnie Hor had imported and sold to Coons. I don’t know if Coons went direct to Marella. In that Nathan Chadwick article that I was referring to earlier, he refers to there having to be some special jiggery pokery.

The UK agent to be able to order the car in the afo. Is that an

Crew Chief Eric: official term? John Jiggery Pokery.

Jon Summers: I

Crew Chief Eric: like that. William, you mentioned when we were talking to Sam and to Chris about the very limited number of two 50 [00:19:00] GTOs there are. And then inside of that, the even smaller number of right hand drive. Two 50 GTOs and, and I, and I’m harping on this only because John Coombs couldn’t have been the only British person to buy a two 50 GTO back then when the majority of them were left hand drive.

So what is that real number of right hand drive? Two 50 GTOs. Out of the

William Ross: 36 GTOs, there’s only eight right hand driver. This one is number 12 of the three six built. But if you look at the production on 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. So yeah, and a good portion of the people that bought ’em were in countries IE, the UK or what have you, where it was gonna be right-hand drive and racing wise. But then as. Popular in regards to other series and around the globe in that you know, you had more people I drive on the left side, the backend majority of almost all the cars are all left-hand drive.

You know, [00:20:00] my mind, it has a lot to do with location where it’s at. And from my understanding, Coombs went 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 in England, so I want right hand drive.

I wanna say there’s one more after that or two more after that, that are right hand drive. But that was like within the next couple cars that were built. So like within the first 15 cars, all the right hand drives were done. So then the balances were all left hand drive.

Crew Chief Eric: And then according to the information we got, that was the.

Third car destined for the uk. So it’s like one of very few.

William Ross: Yeah. So I mean, but you look back then there was still a large portion, especially in Europe where you know they were driving the wrong way. On the right hand side. Obviously had like Australia’s, because there is a lot of European countries that actually started out driving right hand drive, but then they switched like in the fifties and sixties just ’cause of production stuff.

Jon Summers: The Italians had a weird system where in towns and cities. Particularly Milan, you drove [00:21:00] on the left, but out on the main road you would drive as the Italians do now. So there was a transition point in some towns and cities where as you came into the town city, you would stop being on the left and move to being on the right.

And the logic around that was that. You didn’t want to be walking in the road 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. You know, there was um, a lancia that won Pebble some years ago and I think that was right hand drive car.

I remember learning it. It was a sort of luxury feature almost for Italians to have like the right hand drive. So that meant that there’s more right hand drive Maseratis than actual cars that came to Britain because quite a lot of Italians bought them in, you know, in that configuration on the right hand drive GTOs.

William, what does it do for values is a right hand drive car worth more than the left hand. I

William Ross: mean, in my opinion, I would say [00:22:00] yeah. ’cause I mean, look at it, you only have eight outta 36 of already extremely rare car. So then now you’re just need to make it more rare because you have only one of the eight that were built.

That’s how I view it. But as with any car though, you’re gonna have both sides of the coin in regards to how someone’s gonna view that. They’re not gonna drive this thing hardly on the street, ever. I mean, it’s gonna be on track, historic racing stuff like, so it’s gonna be race, so it’s not like you gotta really worry about it all that much, but.

My opinion, it adds value. How much? I don’t know. But I mean, just look at the numbers you got, you know, one of the 36, well these cars average 40 to $80 million. Then you got one of the eight out of those things. So it’s gotta add some intrinsic value to it. You know, make it a little bit more special. And then obviously we get into the color here shortly.

That just kind of icing on the cake, so to speak.

Jon Summers: The motor, I was bibbling around on Ferrari chat just before we came online. The quote that stuck in my mind. The only GTO that doesn’t have its original engine. No, that’s the

William Ross: only

Jon Summers: one. No. And my [00:23:00] understanding is what happened to the engine and that’s. From that awesome lunch with 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 metal dealer, but a sort of secondhand racing car dealer called J Pierce in slo.

William Ross: Yeah, it

Jon Summers: ended up there, but the engine was somehow separated from it and was. Put into a Cooper Racing car or something like that.

And so the engine has become separated 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?

William Ross: Yeah.

Jon Summers: Cheapest, sacrificial. V 12 that you could buy.

William Ross: They dropped that in just. To put a motor in the car, obviously for 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 to it, very rare engine. So right there value that. But when John Shirley bought the car and had it for a while when he sent it back to [00:24:00] Ferrari for, to get class C certification and get painted back to white Ferrari, cast a new block for it. So it’s got the proper correct stampings on it.

Everything like that. I mean, you can’t get much more authentic than that. That motor is the one that’s in it now. And then the comp motor that they were using for the longest time, like Jack Sears had, and everything of that is now sitting on a stand. ’cause that’s got a lot of 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 only one 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 out of ’em, blew things up. It’s

Crew Chief Eric: crash. And this goes back to that conversation. We had the three of us, about the mil Melia, which then leads into that presentation by Trevor Lister and Don Kapps about the family lineage of all these Maserati and Ferrari 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 [00:25:00] matching didn’t really match because they would change the serial number of the car. To match the motor. Yeah, it’s all sorts of craziness that makes absolutely no sense to anybody except the Italians.

William Ross: Yeah, exactly. Then they’d change the block and engine number didn’t match the car number, but then the car would go back to get repaired or some shit. Then they changed the VIN again. It was insane how they did it afterthought

Jon Summers: so you don’t feel like this non-original engine hurts. This car’s value.

William Ross: I don’t.

You have Ferrari. The manufacturer built that card. They had all the original castings. They had everything from that when that, 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 much more authentic you can get. It’d be one thing if you sent it down to, what’s his name?

He’s got a casting factory down the street and hey, just kinda eyeball it. We’ll make something close, you know, do some dimensional checks. You can’t get more authentic that, like I said, they stand you with the correct numbers. You can’t go wrong with that, in my opinion. Basically, get a brand new motor. In essence.

All

Crew Chief Eric: right, so [00:26:00] now the So what moment?

William Ross: Getting to what, you know, one of our big topics of discussion we were having with the guys at Mecu and also Chris Bely from Prancing Horse of Nashville, ’cause it was never really stated why that is the only white Bianco Especi. That Ferrari painted from the factory.

Crew Chief Eric: That’s why I’ve been saving this color conversation. This is the so what moment of this car, because a lot of our listeners are probably, it’s, it’s white. 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 huge debate around the why here.

And the why becomes a what? Very quickly in this conversation,

William Ross: you know, you hear kind of stories like, hey, it could be about nationality ’cause being British, but Kons had an affinity for having light white. Or he had, it wasn’t like white, 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 what the case for why this was he had enough pull that he could go to Ferrari, order this car and [00:27:00] get it without much hassle.

Crew Chief Eric: And this is where I’m confused and I wanna lean on your expertise, John. Because I hearken back to conversations I hear at the Argen Singer Symposium from people like Paul Baxa talking about 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 the French cars are always blue. It didn’t matter if it was EO or DHE or, or whoever it was, you know, the Brits were green and the the Germans were silver. White is such an, in my mind, an odd choice.

For a British racer or, I wanna put, I’m gonna say it that way. So why white? Do we have any idea as to why John Kunz’s cars were white and black?

Jon Summers: I think they were his racing colors. They were the colors that he’d used on the Jaguar, so it was natural that he put those colors onto the Ferrari when he bought.

If those colors said Coombs, that’s the important thing. And if you look at all those pictures of saloon car racing, as the [00:28:00] jaguars are against each other, the gray car with the buy one plate, if that one’s winning, you’re gonna go to Coombs to buy a Jaguar, not to Mike Hawthorn.

Crew Chief Eric: And I’m glad you said that because if we go back to that ideology of the color signifies the country at that time, even though we’re 30 years past the 1920s and the milam and all that kind of stuff, in its heyday of nationalism, American cars were generally white and famously the Cunningham cars and the camaraderie cars.

Were white and black or white and blue. So that’s what made me also think Motorsport at that time was a small, small world compared to the global trillion dollar market that it is today. So I wondered, was there some influence, there was some cross pollination, you know, was he trying to be like Cunningham or one of those.

Jon Summers: No, no, I, I don’t think so. I think Briggs Cunningham adopted the white and the blue, didn’t he? That was originally when Briggs Cunningham went racing. The chassis was gonna be blue and the body was gonna be white. [00:29:00] And then when Shelby went racing, he flipped it around and the body covered the chassis by the time Shelby was racing.

So he put the stripe over the top, and that’s why. Every Chavelle you ever see has got the double stripe over the top of the roof. I think that with Shelby and, and hence Cunningham, to thank for that I shared with you guys a photograph of the British Empire Trophy race. One year and you know our car’s like leaping off the line in the middle of the grid and right next to it is the red Colonel Ronnie Haw, official works entry.

And behind it on the grid there’s a green GTO and then there’s another red one at the back. And alongside it on the grid there are two of the Aston Martin project cars 2 1 4 and 2 1 5. They’re both dark green. The white car in, in the modern parlance, the white car pops Eric. I’m not really sure if that would’ve been on John COO’s mind, but anybody who went out of the way to have buy one as a number plate, which [00:30:00] is that is very aggressive advertising for England at the time.

There is no sponsorship on the side of these cars, and Coombs drove Walt Hanskin and at the end of the race, Jack Sears apparently said to Walt Hanskin. What we usually do is, uh, we usually keep the car straight on the straight so the faster chaps can come by if they want to.

William Ross: Side note, since we’re talking about special colored Ferraris, Rob Walker British, but he had like that SWB that he drove out, that was pretty famously owned.

It was blue with white. Yeah, did that really sharp

Jon Summers: blue. And you look at the Scottish rugby colors, it’s exactly the same color as Scottish Rugby’s. I feel like the kind of man who prepared cars for people like Walt Anson to race in England, buy one. That’s what it was all about. It was that white, you wanted it to be in Coombs White

Crew Chief Eric: and you made a really interesting [00:31:00] remark during one 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. Who knows? Because record keeping was what it was back then. I mean, there are databases of this type of information and the paperwork that we have says the car left the Ferrari factory in white.

But in every joke there’s a hint of truth. And so that picture that you showed of all those GTOs together for me was sort of mind blowing. There’s only 36 of these cars to begin with, and in that picture alone, you have four of them that were all built relatively close to one another because they would’ve had to have been, especially considering the white one is number 12.

To have been produced, period. So I thought that picture was just a snapshot in time. That was impressive. But you did make me think when you said, what if that was just Jaguar White, because he had it laying around. ’cause all his other cars were painted the same color.

Jon Summers: My thought was [00:32:00] not so much that he had it laying around, but you know, I read this morning about them pushing extra louvers in the bon.

After the first outing, well, that bonnet probably would’ve needed repainting right after you’d cut the extra. So are you gonna order to Italy to get the whatever color? No, you’re not. You’re gonna hit it with the Jaguar white that you’ve got in your own body shop. So

Crew Chief Eric: is there a chance that car came naked from the factory?

William Ross: No, they would’ve painted it something. ’cause especially back then, by the time that thing showed up to England, it would’ve been rust. Who knows? Unless you go back in time and sit in the off thing. When that order sheet came through and Enzo signed off on and says, yeah, hey, you know, do it. It’s good Ferrari lore because there’s no definitive, no, this was why, this is why it was done.

Everything like that. It’s it. It is interesting,

Jon Summers: the car’s almost in a sense because of was involvement with the lightweights, the car’s almost as much a part of Jaguar history, more a part of Jaguar history than Ferrari history.

Crew Chief Eric: You guys have mentioned it a couple times, even on the [00:33:00] previous episode, and I have a clarifying question that I, I’m sure our listeners might be confused about as well, unless they’re in the classic Ferrari collector.

No. You talk about the vents and when I look at. Reference pictures in period of this car and look at it now. And I look at other two fifties, ’cause there’s not a lot of two fifties to look at. There’s three vents in the hood which have these little plates you can put in, which actually can close the nose.

So it looks like it has no vents whatsoever. Then there’s three vents below the grill. Then there’s either two vents or three vents on the side, basically in the fender. And then on this particular car, 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. 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 sure the listeners are trying to understand what exactly are you talking about

William Ross: And the GT os, obviously they modified the hood itself, but those three vents on the [00:34:00] fishbowls, where you wanna call ’em, those are on all of ’em.

But those were so depending on where you’re racing and open close. And this is on the two 70 fives as well. It’s the side vents they’re talking about, you know, earlier production ones, they’ll only have the couple on there. Then later production ones they’ll have three. I mean, some will go up to six 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 the car was built, production wise, where it sits in the range, or if you can tell, like especially with the two 70 fives, there’s like a two cam, four cam, that kind of stuff. But all it does is boil down to is just venting, get air out from the motor.

’cause those things are hot.

Crew Chief Eric: So this thing’s an oddity then, right? Because it’s number 12 and it’s got three vents, whereas all the other early cars had two.

William Ross: Yeah. Was this the first one with

Crew Chief Eric: three?

William Ross: I believe it was the first one that put the three on there. I think I’d have to go back and look, but I think it, it’s one of the first ones that they did it on.

Crew Chief Eric: Why wouldn’t all the subsequent two fifties just have three events after that point?

William Ross: All the previous ones, the first 11 that were built prior started racing and they realized that. It’s running hot. [00:35:00] Okay, let’s put another vent in. So subsequent ones, they got to another vent. So it’s a race car and it wasn’t like they were cranking out 20 a day, they were doing one a month.

If that. If it’s going through, you could reach back out and you know, send the telex, telegram, hey, put more vents in the side ’cause it needs to cool better. Okay. Our next ones we building, we’ll put more vents in.

Crew Chief Eric: So was that an option then that would’ve been 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 was confused

William Ross: about my understanding. He did it himself. Danny, is it left with two? But then, I dunno if Coombs did it or it went back and the factory did it. It looks, it’s not, someone just knocked it out, you know, in their garage. I don’t know a hundred percent on that.

Crew Chief Eric: Do we know how soon after the car was delivered that it got the third vent?

William Ross: We’d have to look and. John got all the books here with the car and I know Chris has a ton of the documentation on or copies of it, but that’s a good question.

Crew Chief Eric: This also leans back into what we were talking about with the paint.

If you cut it, now you’ve got all this [00:36:00] exposed metal, you’re gonna have to finish it to keep it from rusting. Those fenders would’ve needed to be repainted and you’re doing this hood, which is the amount of loures in this hood, is insane compared to any of the other ones I’ve seen. Yeah, looking at the pictures, it’s like the whole front end was resprayed.

William Ross: We know it left a factory in white. It’s documented in the bill sheet, but what could have been the only white one is when they shipped it, they could have just sent all that white paint with it because knowing full and well that they’re gonna have to do repainting on the car anyways. So they could have just sent that paint with the car and they’ll go, here you go.

’cause it wasn’t like they have paint matching technology like they do today. So they could have just sent that along. ’cause knowing good and well that they’re gonna have to repaint this car at some point. It’d be interesting to know if they did 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’re gonna have to repaint it. Coons never like this is why or anything like that. And so it’s one of those things that goes down. ’cause I mean, it was before Sears bought it. Someone repainted it red because back then it like Ferrari should be red so it got repainted.

They did it in red instead of doing it in the white. So [00:37:00] it wasn’t repainted white until 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, any color when you want black. Um, you could go back some cars and look, you look in the door jamb.

If you look somewhere, you’re gonna find original color somewhere. If you dig deep enough,

Crew Chief Eric: not on a restoration like this, it would’ve been stripped all the way down, right?

William Ross: Yeah, exactly. There were really no way to kind of do any investigative work on the car itself and try and find something that’s showing.

What it was originally.

Crew Chief Eric: So Coombs gets this car with a five gallon bucket of paint, a thing of ravioli and a spare interior. None of this stuff adds up at the end of the day. The interior is the puzzling part.

William Ross: Yeah.

Crew Chief Eric: What we know is it left with the blue interior, which means Ferrari built it. The same way they build all the other ones, which is why I sort of feel like the white is kind of suspect in the sense that maybe it left a factory red like every other two 50 was at that time.

And then to John’s point, they did all these modifications and then they said, well, we’re gonna respray the car to match all the rest of our cars.

William Ross: Nah. [00:38:00] ’cause merely had the. Build sheet on the car from Ferrari. He went down the list. That’s how you could see it left the factory blue. So we, we

Jon Summers: know it left in white.

When we think about this, when we are talking about it leaving the factory, we’re like imagining the Corvette factory with like a production. It wasn’t like that was it? Was it Scte? That built the GTO. William. Yeah, the bodies. Yeah. So let’s be clear that the rolling chassis is being built in Marine and Scte is where Nearby?

Is he nearby? I don’t know. Yeah, he

William Ross: wasn’t that far. I’m trying to

Jon Summers: remember

William Ross: off the top of my head.

Jon Summers: But then the Kai is having these handmade body panels put on it. So I guess Eric, what I’m envisaging is. I feel like if Luigi and Mario were short on blue leather that day, that’s why that car got a black interior.

Crew Chief Eric: No, the black got put in it after it was delivered.

Jon Summers: Yeah,

Crew Chief Eric: so it came with a spare interior. Like would you just go pick up a two 50 interior? Like that’s that

William Ross: all it was is the seats. I mean, everything else is just. Bear. It’s not like there’s [00:39:00] carpeting and everything in that car. So it was just the seat itself.

But it’s not like it would’ve, they got torn. It wasn’t like it was, oh, it raced about 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 they changed 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 race the car, it had black interior. Was it Hill requesting, Hey, he wanted black interior instead. I mean, who knows? Maybe he was sliding around because it went from that, I wanna say al and tear almost type material, whatever that was, and it went into the sidewalk.

It was, uh, leather. So maybe better grip on the seat so you weren’t sliding around as much. ’cause I mean, you’re not talking 5.6 point harness and all that stuff back then. You have some shoulder straps and stuff like that, but maybe that helped stick his ass in the seat so he wasn’t sliding around much.

I mean, pretty deep in those seats

Crew Chief Eric: to John’s point, right, it’s sort of like we cut the hood to add the, the air passages or whatever, so we had to respray it. So we resprayed the car or whatever to, so everything matched the [00:40:00] interior. If it was a livery thing where it’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 and a jump from the UK in the 1960s. I mean, there were airplanes and stuff, and trains, whatever. But to get a new interior, even though it’s two seats, let’s say two seats from the factory in less than two weeks, they either came with the car.

Jon Summers: No. That they would’ve been upholstered in-house.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh yeah. They would’ve done it. Yeah, they

Jon Summers: would’ve done

Crew Chief Eric: it. Where did the original blue seats go? ’cause nobody knows where they are. This gets to the, so what is. The white that important. I mean, we’re making a big deal about the fact that it is the only one in white.

I mean, to me it

William Ross: is. I don’t like red Ferraris. I’m not a fan. I mean, they look great in red. You know, I want something else besides red. I think it looks really good and white. I mean, that car looks really good and white. I don’t think it’s

Jon Summers: important at all. Ooh,

Crew Chief Eric: okay.

Jon Summers: I mean, as I’m sopping and thinking about GTOs, what color do I think works best on A GTO?

I mean, [00:41:00] my favorite GTO is the Enni island one in that pale green. It’s the only one in that pale green that’s a color that’s like diluted Mopar Limelight. It’s, but that’s the British racing partnership color that was in this islands team at the time. So, you know, I like that car. I just don’t think it’s important at all.

I just think Coombs painted his team color and that was it. Eric, you talked about that photo and how we talked about how the car kind of stands out from the other cars. I think it does, but the motor sport lunch with article talks about, typically his cars were immaculately turned out in white or gray with.

That immaculately turned out, it made me 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 all the other things very precisely, and I don’t know much about what Coombs did in the war, but you get the sense the, the way that he approached mojo racing.

Was with a sort of military kind of precision. And so, you know, it’s like saying, you know, [00:42:00] 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 nationalism particularly, he talks a lot about Italy.

Yeah. The Italian cars were red and certainly. I think for the Italian marks in the post-war period, there’s very much a sense of building back, building the country that was destroyed in the war, and therefore there is a big sense of national pride that you are going to be in Italian Red. Remember the Ferrari badge as the Italian flag on it?

Ferrari was racing, you know, with Italy against the world. Coombs wasn’t like that. Coons was me selling Jaguars more than you, Michael Hawthorne. So I’m gonna paint the car in, in my color, do a bit of club racing with it. And that point about, you know, so many of them being here, I wonder if there [00:43:00] wasn’t, you know, so many on the grid, like four 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 were wealthy enough to go motor racing. There was a window, 62, 63, 64 when if you wanted to go sports car racing, that was the best car to buy. So although there were only 39 of them made those 39, that was enough, right? If Ferrari could have sold 390, he would’ve done those 39.

That was the size of the sport at the time. So I just feel like the guys racing them had grown up in the pre-war era when every car was completely individual. So the fact that this is the only white GTOI just,

William Ross: I mean, I think it makes it special, but it’s how much adds value wise, it’s up debate, and again, it goes back to.

Who’s gonna buy the car?

Jon Summers: You said 40 to 80 million. It’s interesting that, because one of the things I wanted to ask you about, you know, in, in my mind there’s sort of good [00:44:00] GTOs and bad GTOs.

William Ross: Yeah.

Jon Summers: And my perception of a bad GTO was that. Pierre Baron, I think that was the family 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.

William Ross: Yeah.

Jon Summers: It had no actual race history and it just sat for ages. And then Bonum sold it some years ago, and that Carm made 35. So that seemed to me, yeah, the sort 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 number that I’d heard on that.

William Ross: Yeah, imagine 18. 2018. But that’s the creme. That’s the best of the best. That’s the best.

Jon Summers: 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 [00:45:00] fall? Is it a good one or is it a bad one? Where does it fall?

Crew Chief Eric: I was hoping we were gonna go here. We avoided this on the other episode. William was like, I’m not talking about,

William Ross: 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 between 45 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. Sears was the same boat. He owned it close to 30 years.

You have a car that’s had long-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 of only eight of the right hand drive cars, brand new block. It comes with a spare motor as well. You’re adding all these things and then, you know, having some of those little special touches to it, you know, and that’s where we got into too, about the interior color of that car.

Almost all of ’em came with that bluish color, interior that like light blue. This one’s got black [00:46:00] interior, which as Eric mentioned, was done like two weeks after he got the car. It was delivered that, but then for some reason, still don’t know why, before Graham Hill raced it or he drove it once. Then all of a sudden it showed up.

It had all new interior. It was black, so it’s always had black interior. From then on. It’s got a lot of these special features to it that separate itself from all the other cars that were built. I mean, you’re gonna have a very unique car when you go to the, you know, the owner’s meetings that they have every few 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, they’re gonna pay for that thing to come. You might have to spend a nickel of your own money. I put it in there. It just, just because of where the market’s at. Still a very, very valuable car. But it didn’t win Lama, you know, anything like that.

Yes, it’s got some great race history. And who’s driven it? Yeah, it’s got a couple wins, but like a Goodwood to tee, that kind of stuff. It’s not something where it’s gonna, all of a sudden because of race history jacket up to the 80 million mark. That’s not gonna happen. And I, I don’t know if you ever see that kind of number again, unless McNeal sells [00:47:00] 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 numbers matching the whole nine yards. Not so much necessarily restored, but like just they say sympathetic restoration type of deal. It’s the best one out there regards to originality, it’s got everything you want for the boxes to tick.

If someone’s got that kind of money and they want that specific one, they’re gonna pay up for it. Hard to say if someone else would, something’s only worth what someone’s gonna pay for it. But if you want it and you got the deep pockets for it, just here’s a blank check. Just fill the amount I want the car.

Yeah, that was 2018. I mean, you do inflation now, stuff like that. You’re over a hundred million dollars valuation now. Mm-hmm. So if you go comparing it, certain things kinda 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 that whole deal was structured. That person really doesn’t even own the car technically. I mean, they paid all that money, but Mercedes still [00:48:00] basically kind of controls it. I don’t know, I, I, I don’t see it. You know, everyone’s touching on like, oh, the McLaren F one’s. The next GTO is that, well, McLaren F1 pricing has been stuck at between 18 million to low twenties, mid twenties million range forever.

How many McLaren Act ones either think it’s 64 road going cars, and then they built like a hundred, something like that. But then the balance are all the race cars. Okay. I think they built more race cars than the street cars. Remember? Serve me.

Jon Summers: You say that the values on McLaren F ones are stagnant. You know, I believe you that they have been, but I feel like, you know, we’re in a time where certainly people under the age of 40 are having to tighten their belts a little bit.

I feel like if the economy booms again, then you’ll see McLaren F1. True. The old GTO. ’cause I just, I feel like, you know, the values of cars like Packards and Deusenberg are sustained by the people in their seventies and eighties passing them around. Yeah. And it’s like little chairs amongst themselves, more cars than there are old Coutts left to buy them and sooner or later there are too few [00:49:00] old Coutts still in circulation trying to buy them.

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.

William Ross: It’s not like they’re gonna come down 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 and you got some people that still appreciate it and that kind of stuff. But you know that. Pool of buyers and people that wanna own the car and have it, it is shrunk down in about 20 years. It’s gonna be really interesting to see where things go and how things transition.

’cause it’s like all of a sudden you’re getting into Fox Body Mustangs and stuff from the eighties and you know, the I Rocks and stuff like that are starting to do very, very well out in the, you know, marketplace.

Jon Summers: Just on a personal level, I weighed a long, long time for Fox Body Mustangs to come and then when they came.

I rushed out of the market too quickly and left money on the table. It’s not quite as bad as rushing out of Nvidia too early, which I did as well. But, uh, I thought a [00:50:00] five x game was enough. Yeah, I left quite a lot of money on the table there,

William Ross: but it’s gonna be a lot of fun. ’cause other great thing about this for what they’re doing at Mecu, they have close to almost 80 Ferrari that are gonna be crossing the block.

During Kissie, you know, we tag the line moniker to it on Super Saturday. Not only you have that GTO, but that Bachman 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 of is on there, not just showing up just to see what the GTO does.

There’s a lot of other Ferraris they’re gonna be crossing that block that people wanna get their hands on. So there’s gonna be a lot of energy in that room. Why Meko? I would’ve thought

Jon Summers: it was one of what my wife calls the past, the butter auction companies. Yeah, English auctioneer. Right. What’s happened behind the scenes for Meum to have not just this Batman collection and this white

William Ross: company, Mecca’s really stepped up their game in regards to, I don’t wanna say quality, because their bread and butter muscle cars, that they’ve always gotten the [00:51:00] best of the best in those, but they’ve slowly started emerging in that market in regards to the higher end of Ferrari’s, Lamborghinis, everything like that.

The interesting story behind this, Chris Neely, who’s the Ging horse of Nashville, which is the Ferrari dealer in Nashville, put all these together not only for the GTO but for the Bachman collection. Long story short, right place, right time driving. Someone that knew John Shirley, well, this, that, and the question got asked, Hey, do you know anyone that might 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 an unbelievable personal collection himself, and he’s a Ferrari collector. Wasn’t that interest where he’d wanted to open up his own checkbook. Then they had several conversations, Hey, let’s do this. ’cause we’re working on some other things 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 or something like that where they got some tractors and stuff going. Mecca’s really kicked up the game. They’re getting a little more picky to what they’re taking and trying to [00:52:00] curate and cultivate a great selection of cars.

And kissing me has pretty much got to the point 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 I think it’s well deserving

Jon Summers: it. So Mecca are trying to steal some of Elia Island that like Gooding at Emelia 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 Mecca won their event in to be the event that sets the tone for the classic car?

Crew Chief Eric: There’s a couple things happening here, John, to add clarity to the story that I even heard on the previous episode, which is. Williams point, right place at the right time. Chris is friends with Dana.

Went to Dana on a personal level, said you 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 to handle this type of car, which they can. It probably would’ve gone to a Bonhams, or to a [00:53:00] Gooding, or to a Sotheby’s, or to whoever he would, Chris would’ve shopped it around right to, 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, we know about Seinfeld’s, Porsches, you know, stuff like that. And so they’ve been trying for a while now to bring in, you know, some more of these higher level cars. And I think this just happened to be a moment where it’s like, well, shoot, let’s go for gold and see what happens.

I think the other thing that Williams’ mentioning here that I don’t wanna conflate is that they’re not kicking off auction season. What they’re doing is they’re kicking off the auction season for Ferrari for 2026 because all the numbers of the 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.

So because Kissimmee is in January. Before Amelia, before Gooding, before car week, it’s a huge responsibility for them and it’s going to dictate the rest of the year.

William Ross: Yeah, it’s gonna be a bellwether ’cause the baling collection has such a, a [00:54:00] broad spectrum in regards to new and old, you know, the GTOs its own thing.

So setting tones, setting dollar value, that’s when, but for what the rest of the cars are. I kinda look this way. Yeah, like Eric mentioned. Yeah. I mean, you’re gonna go wherever service-wise, give you the white glove just as any other gooding, wood, everything like that. I like Mecca more because it’s not so just say nose up in the air.

People that are there, like, oh, look at me, mecca’s more, Hey, you know, it’s more, I wanna say, I don’t, I wanna say wholesome, but you know, it’s more. Friendly, I guess you could say. People will talk to people and stuff like that. I, I think it’s a great arena for it. It’s gonna do well and especially the audience that’s gonna be able to be there, not only in person but worldwide.

They have their own Roku channel now as well. They did a special on this that might have already dropped the first time. They’re gonna show repeatedly, but it’s gonna be interesting to see. I, I think Mecca’s really stepping up in where they go in subsequent auctions throughout the year. I think it kind of dictate that’s the route they’re gonna want to go and I think they will.

So I think they’ll do a great job.

Jon Summers: I’m gonna investigate this Backman collection and have a little look at it. [00:55:00] ’cause that’s an interesting thought that you had about, as Meum become more serious players in European collectibles rather than just domestic stuff that traditionally they were involved in. I can see a time where they would be setting the trend for pricing and therefore it’d be interesting to see what happens with Ferrari’s going forward, gents.

Thank you very much for your time. It’s been a pleasure.

Crew Chief Eric: Oh, it’s been fine. I very much appreciate you going the extra mile for us to help us with this project because it has been really an interesting project to work on. And obviously there’s more to come, but getting to the bottom of what I consider kind of a motorsport mystery has been fascinating.

And you’re a wealth of information, so I I very much appreciate it.

Jon Summers: Yeah, well, I’ve appreciated, been involved. I love the story. Love Ferrari’s. Thank you. Drive through.

Crew Chief Eric: This episode has been brought to you by Grand Touring [00:56:00] Motorsports as part of our Motoring Podcast network. For more episodes like this, tune in each week for more exciting and educational content from organizations like The Exotic Car Marketplace, the Motoring Historian, break Fixx, and many others. If you’d like to support Grand Touring Motor Sports and the Motoring Podcast Network, sign up for one of our many sponsorship tiers at www.patreon.com/gt Motorsports.

Please note that the content, opinions and materials presented and expressed in this episode are those of its creator, and this episode has been published with their consent. If you have any inquiries about this program, please contact the creators of this episode via email or social media as mentioned in the episode.

• • 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