New Book on restoration of a 275GTB long nose twin cam

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I ran into Ken Gross, at the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles where he was moderator of

an exclusive panel discussion on vintage automotive restoration Saturday, September 10th .

Joining him on stage were Bruce Canepa, an exotic car restorer and dealer from Santa Cruz, Jeff Lotman, a Ferrari collector from Brentwood, whose car's restoration was the subject of the speech and George Saitas who photographed the car being restored step by step.

The presentation was in the Mullin Family Grand Salon for what I gathered were members of the Museum. The reception will be followed by a book signing of the book, entitled Ferrari 275 GTB #08011, and the car in question, a Ferrari 275 GTB/6C was parked a few feet away from the book.


Gross explained his involvement with the book. He put on his writing hat when he heard that Saitas, an immigrant from Greece who happened on the Canepa shop by accident after marrying a Carmel Valley resident, and fell in love with the cars being restored there. From the first day he saw the car, he had begun documenting the step-by-step restoration of the car, taking hundreds of creative pictures. I have to say looking at the book that the pictures are a lot more artful than just pictures of nuts and bolts and engine internals, they are true art and you can get an appreciation of how this Ferrari was created by seeing the internals first.

Apparently the car , which is one of the rare aluminum bodied two cam long noses, arrived at the shop with more than 200 lbs. of body filler. At first Bruce Canepa was doubting it was even alloy bodied, the doors weighing so much. As they took the car apart, they found that, yes , it was true that it was aluminum-bodied but the Italians had filled every slight depression with body filler.

Canepa, accompanied by a visual presentation, explained that so many things had to be corrected that the car had to be taken down to the last nut and bolt. He said that though there is a law in California forbidding certain kinds of paint, in the county he is in, it is still permitted but he feels water based paint will eventually be mastered as paint with solvents is becoming harder to get.

The crusher was that when the car was entered in a all Ferrari concours, it failed to win by a quarter of a point, such is the judging standards (Canepa argues that the judge’s decision on carpeting was faulty and backs that up with the opinion of Marcel Massini, a Swiss Ferrari historian who is often The Last Word.

Over 4,000 hours were expended on restoration, accomplished in a one year period. Though Canepa had previously done a Daytona, this far required far more work since it was done at an earlier period when Ferraris were still being more hand made.

The hardbound book was available immediately after the speech. I didn’t get the price but perhaps someone here knows the price and where it can be bought. I still have to grapple with the concept of a whole book being on one single car, though truly this is about a car from the inside out, y’might say.

I asked Ken if he still owned an exotic car (he once owned a 275GTB two cam) and he said now he owns two hot rods, another of his passions.