And let's not forget the Shah

for some time I have wondered what the Shah of Iran left behind
in his basement garage.

A French magazine, Automobiles Classique, had a photo story on the dusty collection but I couldn't see any Ferraris. I saw a Phantom V and a few Mercedes. Appartently the Mullahs in charge have an unrealistic view of the value of what's left of his rumored 1000 cars and
thus haven't moved them.

When you see former Shah-owned cars like his special Miuras , it's usually because they were out of the country being serviced at the time of his fall. Once he fell, there was nobody to pay the service bill so shops could start charging a day rate for storage. Once it got behind the new government's will to pay they could confiscate the car. Also some were sold, the Petersen Museum has a fabulous Bugatti from the Shah, I think it was even his wedding car.

A nurse I met once said her ex-husband, an Iranian, would go look in the garage for me but I didn't want to risk it. She said "no problem--he already smuggles in machine guns..." I didn't take her up on it,though

 

i was told that the ones in iran are in some type of musium..

 

I have no idea what this means

 

Are you the ex-hubby of the nurse?

 

Translation; bitzman didn't want to involve the nurse's ex-husband, a machine gun smuggler, in any Peeping Tahmaseb business.

 

I've been to the the museum in Iran. There's a white Miura, Countach, Espada, 500 Superfast, 512BB, 330 GTC and several other Ferraris as well as a Mercedes 500K. Lots of Pullman 600s and Phantoms as well.

 

Too bad those beautiful machines will be destroyed one day when the shait hits the fan!

Cheers

 

didn't happen to take any pics, did you?

 

http://iransupercars.blogspot.com/2007/08/shahs-secret-car-collection.html

 

thanks for the link Serge, led me to discover this article which I saw some years ago online:

http://iransupercars.blogspot.com/2009/01/spanish-article-shahs-car-garage.html

Shame about the Bizzarrini :-(

S

 

In that fuzzy article someone graciously reprinted it looks like the blue car is that Ferrari cut down into a beach
buggy by a Swiss firm, Felber (spelling?) I think it was a 330GTC or 365GT 2-plus-2 . It's hard to believe that anyone would cut down a Ferrari into a beach buggy (maybe they did it to bug Massini?) but those beach buggies were carried on the decks of yachts and weight might have been a consideration. Besides the Lambo Rambo is really just an exotic engined sand buggy proving there's a market for madness in the sand.

I heard some Iranians had a classic car show , the Tehran Classic Car Show 09 at Niavaran palace in northern Tehran July 21, 2009 (see picture of a gullwing on website
http://en.ce.cn/World/pic-news/200907/22/t20090722_19599493.shtml

This site has a lot of pictures, including 308GTB, early BB, prewar Mercedes. Way too
many Mercedes for my taste (whose side were they on in WWII anyway?)
http://tehranclassiccarshow.com/photogallery.html


So in sum, it may be finally shaking out who owns what of what the Shah once owned--now if the US was only friendly with them, we collectors could go over there and see if they are more realistic in their prices than they were rumored to be in the past.