EP54: Mecum Kissimmee 2026: White GTO / Yellow Enzo

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.

• The $38m white GTO, and some context
• Fast and Safe – Rare 1965 Film
• Phil Bachman, and low mile yellow turn of the century Ferraris
• Karting, and a younger wife to enjoy being a Ferrari VIP with Yellow with Lime Green pinstripping 
• Ferrari at Mecum – is that a fit? 
• Mecum: University for blue chip muscle
• J enjoys being Murray Walker and commentating on the block
• Miss America VIII
•  The Shelby 410
•  The Steve McQueen / Jerry Seinfeld Porsche 917
• Are muscle values stratifying, with the best retaining high values while good average and mediocre cars decline in value?
• Bachman Ferraris and their custom luggage
• Two tone Ferrari 612
•  $15m Enzo – the why of 3x the previous record
• FXX “only made $6m”
•  Bachman Vignale 166 – not J’s favourite Vignale effort – low on the $
• Record $5.5m Weissach paint-to-sample 918

[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.

Good day. Good morning, good afternoon. It is John Summers the motoring historian. I am fresh back, fresh off the plane, well last night from, uh, Floridita and, uh, my visit to Meum kiss me 2026 and, uh, the witnessing of the hammering. Of the, uh, Bianco spec as, [00:01:00] uh, people like to call it, or as you and I might think of it, that white Ferrari GTO that John Coombs owned.

I, I think it should be called the Coons car personally. But yeah, so look, you know, the big news, 38 million, the AI told me, apparently that was a quote, slightly disappointing result. I wondered for who? The backdrop here is the 35 was perceived as the floor based on previous values of cars, and 75 was perceived as you know.

Well, that’s kind of the top price. It’s thought that the weather tech guy paid for that lovely silver one that apparently I learned this weekend won the Toyota De France. So this being an unrestored car, this being a car driven by Salvadori and Hill. This coming in the wake of the ein, how Coop doing 140 or a hundred and whatever, a hundred thirty two, a hundred forty.

Way double. [00:02:00] What Dave McNeal paid for the silver GTO. The feeling was that, you know, maybe we could see a hundred. And in fact, in conversation with a Mecu employee, it seemed to us that perhaps they were thinking it might get there. So hence this 38 being a little disappointing. It was clear that was nothing was happening when you were in the auction hall.

It was like fucking crickets. And, uh, jumping ahead a little bit, but sort of cut into the chase. It might almost seem like the guard’s changing. I, I’m gonna include a link to a film called Safety Fast, and it was made in 1965. Um, it was filmed at a circuit that the Coombs GTO race stat probably won. Erase that and it really shows us how long ago, 1963 or 1965 really were.

The past is a different country. Ladies and Jens and they really do things differently there. And you are listening to this at some point after January, 2026 [00:03:00] that GTO is not getting any younger, it is as old hat as Bill and John and their nice shirts and ties and no speed limit on Britain’s motorways, if you can believe it, there’s a shot in the movie of, uh, asked Martin DB four doing.

20, and this is about road safety. The world was a different place then. The world of people who feel like post-war sports, racing cars are the peak that may be passing. And I say that because. Watching other Ferraris cross the block earlier, record prices were set for turn of the century cars, and later, you know, cars are 20 years old, not cars that are nearly 60 years old.

So what Mecu had was not just the white GTO, but also a complete like [00:04:00] estate sale of what was called the Backman Family Collection. I guess this year at Mecu they did a ton of different collections, you know, basically old Coots who passed and you know, you’ve got the whole of their thing to be sold and, and in a sense it forms a wonderful tribute.

And on the face of it, you might feel like, well, wouldn’t the family want to keep these things that had been so valuable to the people who collected them? But the reality is 40 super low mile Ferraris, this is a massive task to maintain and, and psychologically, I think it will be quite hard seeing those cars degenerate.

It would be like watching your parents decompose in front of you for the poor guy that auctioned them. So I completely understand why. You would wanna do an auction like this and, and almost pay tribute to, you know, whenever you, I think of, of Meko now I’ll think of Phil Backman and, and his passion for Ferraris.[00:05:00]

Just a word on Backman himself, right? It’s all about low mile cars for him. When people used to say to him, oh, why don’t you drive the cars, Phil? He used to be like, you enjoy your Ferrari your way, and I’ll enjoy mine my way. And I’ve gotta say, I was thinking me, I’m a driver, aren’t I? And I’d been saying to people before, I’m pleased that there’s people like Phil out there.

’cause if everyone was like me, we just, everything would’ve the shit driven out of him be covered in stone chips and curb wheels and all of that kind of thing. And, and where would we be then for preserving for posterity? So I was pleased that there were low mile folk like fill around. But all the time I’m thinking, how can you have these Ferrari’s and not drive them?

I’ll tell you how he was winning karting championships before he ever started buying Ferraris. The Ferrari just came along later. He had a wife who was a lot younger than him and she enjoyed Ferrari and that scene as well. So I totally [00:06:00] get what he was doing and, and where he was going. So for me, Phil has a great idea of credibility because he did the racey thing when he was younger and this whole Ferrari thing was something that he did later in life and, and he brought a real focus to that.

What was really special about what he did was he built a great relationship with basically the special order team at Ferrari. And traditionally it’s a total asshole to get a special order at Ferrari. I mean, one of the things about the white car was that people were like, how did it get to be white?

Must have been because old man Ferrari respected John Coombs and, and took his order. It traditionally, it was hard to get special order stuff. Talking with people who know way more about the Ferrari market now. William Ross, David Ions, uh uh, these guys feel like. It really is remarkable that the Bachman’s established the kind of relationship that they did with Ferrari.

They must have spent a whole shit ton of money to get it done that way. But, but more than that, they became part of [00:07:00] the way that Ferrari was doing business and, and thanks to the way that Meum marketed and sold these cars, I think it’s very clear that when you see a yellow Ferrari, you’re probably gonna think of Phil Bachman.

’cause that’s what he did. He did everything in in yellow. Pictures of him wearing like yellow shirts and, and that kind of stuff. Now what that did lead to was some really, really weird color combinations. I mean, there is one car particularly that’s, uh, yellow with gr lime green. Kind of pinstriping and a lime green accents on the interior yellow Ferrari prancing horses.

I mean, it, it kind of hurts the eye just to talk about it. Right? And later in the auction I watched a, a black and silver version of the same Ferrari roll across the block and it hammered for half the price. And I don’t care about the miles and provenance if the. That yellow, it was just too much. Now, on some other cars, it worked really well, but for, for that particular [00:08:00] model, it was, you know, it was kind of too much there.

Just the word on that yellow, I am partial to yellow. I think a butternut yellow on a muscle car works really well. I, I think some Ferraris in, in yellow work really well. Not my favorite. In the form of the road cars, the 5 1 2 i, those in yellow, I don’t particularly rate those, but for me it’s more about the car and how it’s the individual car and how it sits on the road.

And, you know, I I, I don’t find the kind of garage queen that Phil Buckman loved. I don’t find that as, as charismatic as something that’s been used and driven and, and enjoyed. So that’s why we were there. I’d never been to Mecca in Florida before. My understanding is four and a half thousand cars were sold.

So that is 45 Gooding Auctions in over a two week period. Amusingly the guys who, who I went with the [00:09:00] other MPN guys, so David Nyan, Mo Copia, William Ross, Ferrari Marketplace, and of course producer Eric. And, and thanks to all three of you by the way, and, and thanks especially to Eric for being the glue and, and the energy to, uh, to, to drive all this forward, right?

What I was struck by was, was their perspective, because I’ve watched Mecom Auctions on tv, but I watched them go through the kind of shock and horror that I went through at Barrett Jackson in 2006 where the whole, and the noise and the whole thing, it’s, it’s just too much like a Midwestern cattle auction.

Because of course, that’s kind of what it is. And this leads us to this other quite interesting conundrum of are prancing black horses best sold at a Midwestern cattle auction? I mean, the answer’s in the pricing, isn’t it? Because if they are better sold at Meum, where do the, what my wife calls the [00:10:00] past, the butter auctions, you know the ones where there’s like an English auctioneer who banters with the audience and there’s nothing as vulgar as a MA creep.

Keep, uh, some kind of atmosphere in the hall and some kind of intensity and theater a about the process. The theater’s much more subtle if you go to a, a gooding or, or a bons, but the theaters there nonetheless. Part of it is about talented auctioneers. I don’t wanna imply that the Midwestern cattle auctioneers are not talented, but.

Nobody sells more muscle than Meum. Nobody. That was the tagline. And my word, the reason why I’ve always watched Meum Auctions is because it is university for blue chip muscle. You’re gonna hear the same things over and over again, but that’s okay because then you really realize what’s important. You understand what’s a cliche and what isn’t.

It actually in enhances your perspective a lot and given the [00:11:00] intensity of the environment, I’ve even more respect for, for me, comes in house broadcasting team who, who were able to do that day after day for 6, 7, 8 hours because the Buckman collection took three hours to cross the block and, and we commentated.

During it. And my word, it was an exhausting experience by the end of it. ’cause you are listening to what’s going on, you’re thinking about what you are gonna say, and you’re listening to what the others on the commentary team are, are are saying. So I’ll include a link to that, uh, Ferrari chat pod. Yeah, I mean, I enjoyed the commentating experience.

I, I feel like yeah, I enjoyed being Murray Walker. I love Murray Walker and I enjoyed being the, uh, the commentator. So yeah, so Mecom supersize me, my. God, the sheer scope of it, it’s awesome. It’s really awesome. I like the PT Barnum. I enjoy Gooding, but I like the PT Barnum,

the quality and caliber of muscle [00:12:00] that they’ve got this time. I mean, we watched four or five Yanko Camaros in different colors go through. We watched four or five. Mac one and Boss 3 0 2 Mustangs go through. We watched different colors. You could have had your pick on 3 46 pack ta, challengers and codas after a bit.

It’s a bit numbing because the final Saturday of, of the, the meek moring, you’re not just watching car’s hammer for a hundred grand all day long. They’re doing, we, we watched, uh. Custom Buick Riviera hammer for 363 grand, and I didn’t look closely at it, but if you could use it like a modern car, so much more stylish than some ridiculous hypercar.

You know, what would I take to the country club when I win the lottery? You know that Riviera. That might well have been, uh, have been my thing.[00:13:00]

So before I talk about the back one cars a little more, gonna just highlight my three favorite vehicles of, of, of the event, one. Miss America eight. This is the Garwood hot rod boat that showed England what for? When England was winning on the land, Garwood single-handedly was winning on the water.

Indianapolis. One year he met Harry Miller and he had Harry Miller build these custom V 16 motors for Miss America, right? So there’s two of them in it with these big Zoomy headers on this awesome wooden hull. Guys, if you don’t know about those kind of boats, the whole deal with those kind of boats in that period was they didn’t really understand about the boat coming up on the plane properly.

They were. Goddamn dangerous and really fast. And when you look at them [00:14:00] now, it’s like Packard Dusenberg craftsmanship mixed with a dragster. You know, that’s really the, the only way to think about them. Bloody awesome. Love it. Was also, um, that Ferrari four 10 that was, uh, driven by Carol Shelby in period.

It was a pebble a few years ago. RM had it. Um, and now, you know, meam, uh, uh, are flipping it on again, I, I don’t understand how you can own a great car like that and of part with it, you know? So yeah, that’s what I would’ve left with. Um, and I guess the other car, well worth mentioning that was lurking.

There was the. Steve McQueen, you know, used in the movie Lamar Porsche 9 1 7, which apparently, you know, I think it’s the, the, you may remember the car because it was owned by Jerry Seinfeld and he famously received an offer of 20 million or 25 million and turned it down. And we were talking, you know, over the weekend, the four of us who were attending and, [00:15:00] and we all agreed that that’s really a weird kind of a situation, that there’s clearly.

Some elements of the puzzle there that are missing for this story to come out. There’s a slip, Twix cup and lip right, for it to be public that an offer was made at that level and rejected. It makes you wonder what the auction house or what’s, uh, Jerry Seinfeld thought he might be able to get for that car.

I mean, it’s, it’s, uh, the whole thing of an offer of that size and it just being rejected outright and then not being any kind of a deal. Uh, the market was able to see externally.

So we watched a lot of master cars cross the block, Corvette Chaves, the Yanko cabs that I was talking about. And what I found myself thinking on the plane on the way home was. I wonder if what we’re seeing here is sort of stratification of, of muscle car prices. Um, the same happening with [00:16:00] muscle car prices has happened with, you know, portion Ferrari prices over the last couple of decades in, in terms of, of the very best stuff increasing in value, the mediocre stuff, because there’s so much volume there, not.

You know that showing the kind of depreciation that you might expect with, you know, just ’cause of the generational shift right there. All the people who collected the cars from the twenties and thirties are already gone. All the people from the fifties and sixties, they’re in the process of aging out, aren’t they?

So when, uh, I, I recently, my wife has a colleague who’s been looking at 67 and 68 Camaro convertibles. And I happened to look at the Haggerty pricing for these cars and, and you know it, that it’s down double digit percentages over the last year. So you know, clearly just because at Meum [00:17:00] Chevelle, LS six convertibles were making great money, that doesn’t necessarily mean that.

Uh, three 50. Three 50 nicely owned. You know, one family kept, you know, one repaint in 1983, kind of a Chevelle. Doesn’t mean that that is holding up in value. I have a feeling that that’s what’s, what’s really, uh, fallen in value. So, yeah, so that was, that was interesting that Meum didn’t reflect what I’d seen outside of the market and what the Haggerty stats might suggest.

So I said a lot of the stuff that I was wanting to say about Phil Backman and, and the nature of his and his wife Martha’s collection and collecting. I said a lot about what I wanted to say at the top of the show there, but, but I guess one of the other, one thing I should add is that he had a special relationship with, I can’t remember the name of the company, but they’re [00:18:00] people who make custom luggage for Ferraris.

Now, you know, I guess. Crow is meant to be grand tourists, right? It’s meant to be the kind of car where you can like pack a bag, leap in the car, you know, leave England, be in the south of France, buy dinnertime kind of thing. You know, you and a significant other. But the reality of that quite often is, is your suitcase won’t fit properly in, in the car now, and therefore it’s been a thing in the the world of.

Of Ferrari at least, that there’d be custom luggage. And it’s something that’s happened really from the very early days because of Bachman’s personal relationship with this company who makes custom luggage for Ferrari. All of these cars came with custom luggage sets. Now is this the kind of thing that I give a shit about?

No. Is this the kind of thing that if you are participating in the Ferrari community in the way that they were judging, going to shows, being [00:19:00] invited to Marine to do parades in the factory, when a, you know, with other cars, when if you are gonna be that kind of super exclusive clientele, it’s a great way to differentiate your Ferrari is the customer luggage right?

Um, luggage, which is made particularly for, for that car. And maybe that’s part of what’s going on with, with some of the color combinations, which pretty challenging, pretty challenging. I did, uh, I did find myself saying, uh, her, to, to people at one point that, you know, Florida was definitely the right place to get rid of these cars.

You know, I don’t think, uh, there’s, I mean, there’s one car particularly, uh, 6 1 2 Galletti, which, you know, these are not the most, it’s not the handsomest. Ferrari and uh, that that car had a pretty, I mean, I’ll include a picture, right? Pretty challenging two-one of that car, I mean, people would say, well, you could just wrap it if you didn’t like it.

But because it’s a special order color, it commands a premium. So one of the [00:20:00] things that, you know, when does a special order color make the car worth more? And when is a special order color? So Marmite love it or hate it, that it actually hurts the car’s value. Well. Watching these cars cross the block here didn’t seem to hurt their value at all.

It seemed like the exclusivity was all that people were, were were looking for $15 million for a Ferrari enza rare color there. Backman, yellow, low miles, good provenance, customized, uh, Enzo, customized by the factory. Lot of things that would make this car at the very tip of the top, and if you were gonna show with it now, likely to win against any other Enzo, but $15 million.

I mean, I don’t know what the previous record was for an Enzo. I would be stunned if that wasn’t a record. I’d be very surprised if that wasn’t double [00:21:00] digits over. A price that anybody had paid for an Enzo before. There was clearly a bit of territorial pissing going on in, in there was, there seemed to be a phone bidder and somebody in the room and there was a lot of atmosphere in, in the room as well.

So, so, you know, and if you’re billionaire, not a millionaire. Spending 10 million more than you really had in mind to spend. Maybe that’s something that you, you know, you could be goaded into quite easily if you’d had a beer. Too many I, I don’t know. But it was very noticeable that afterwards, uh, FXX came up, which my understanding is this is like a track EVO of the Enzo and that only made 6 million.

I’m gonna say that again. Only made 6 million.

Oh, so he’s buying these things. David Ian’s motor Copia guy. He, he thinks money’s being laundered. He thinks it’s money from other [00:22:00] countries around the world, perhaps.

Bachman’s earliest car is a 1 6 6 that has a vile body on it, and I’m a vile lover. It’s not Ali’s best effort. Certainly the, I think it’s touring that did most of the one six sixes and, and certainly most one six sixes have arguably more elegant body on them than, uh, this one. It’s also a racing car that didn’t really have any patina on it.

So, um, for me, not the most attractive fifties sports racing Ferrari, but I did expect it to make more than more, make more than it did. And I did find myself wandering if. This was really the right environment for that car. That car seemed perhaps to be more at home at Pebble Beach than at Mecom, where, you know, just the whole way, if, if you just do that car in terms of its statistics, you know, its [00:23:00] horsepower and all of that, that does that car grave disservice.

The way to talk about that car is that Mm, designation and, and think about what the mil Emilio was like in the early fifties and what Italy was like in the early fifties. At that point, you begin to gain some appreciation for, for what that car is. But yes, perhaps that was a hint of what was to come with the Bianca spec that we talked in the run up to the auction about how the.

Bachman cars would either create a flywheel or a dampener for the Bianca Spa. And, and certainly when that Enzo did 15, uh, I felt like there was a lot of money that was ready to be spent and we’d seen a special Vice act, which apparently is like lightning, um, version of a Porsche 9 1 8. Go for five and a half million the previous day, which seemed to be about at least a million, probably two and a half million dollars over [00:24:00] what they, those cars had had gone for might normally be worth.

Now apparently it’s a paint to sample color, but you know, if, again, if it’s hideous, like is paint to sample really a a, a bonus? It didn’t, I mean, I didn’t like a 9 1 8 in, in orange, but Hell’s Bells, somebody did ’cause they paid out of the ass for it. Again, this is my thought that I shared at the head of the, the, the show here that perhaps there’s a generational shift here.

That the stuff that, um, was made after the turn of the century is, has really shown well, the hypercar and, and the pre-war, the, the racing cars of the last century. Certainly of the first sort of, you know, 25, 30 years after. The Second World War, those cars used to be the most valuable staff, and now perhaps not, perhaps we’ve seen, uh, you know, I’ve seen the torch pass from the Olympian cars, the Deusenberg, the as fini, the his Spano [00:25:00] Swes.

I’ve seen the, the torch pass from those kind of cars to the Ferraris and, and sports racing cars of the post-war period. And perhaps this. Kissy weekend is, is a sign that we’re now moving towards a market which is driven by hypercar. And my, my thoughts strolling back to this awesome wagoner that Eric rented, um, which I love far more than I I wanted to.

But my thought walking back to the old Wagoner there was, wow. I can see the day when a McLaren F1 is gonna sell for more than a Ferrari GTO. I can see that day coming. Thank you. Drive through.

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Skip ahead if you must… Here’s the highlights from this episode you might be most interested in and their corresponding time stamps.

• 00:00 Jon’s Recent Trip and Auction Insights
• 03:51 The Bachman Family Collection
• 05:03 Phil Bachman’s Ferrari Passion
• 08:41 Auction Highlights and Reflections
• 15:52 Generational Shifts in Car Collecting
• 25:36 Conclusion and Sponsor Message