Any Singapore Ferrari owners?

From the pen of the incredibly entertaining and ridiculously wealthy and eccentric Ferrari collector, Chris Evans (I do hate classic white ferrari's by the way)... but read to the end for the kicker as to the best buy for a GTO, and possibly any car or any investment EVER!!!!!




They only made 39 of them, most of them have been crashed – and none of them is for sale, at least not officially. Fifteen years ago I could afford one; now I will probably never be able to afford one again. The Ferrari 250 GTO is, without doubt, the most sought-after car in the world.

Sure, it’s basically a lump of metal, but so is a bar of gold. If, however, in 1961, you had spent £6,000 – the price of a brand new GTO – on a bar of gold, your investment would now be worth around 28 times your initial outlay at just over £150,000. Whoopee; not bad, eh? Let’s hear it for gold.


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LifeCoach: alternative activities for LabradorsIf, on the other hand, you had bought a GTO in 1961 and still owned it today – that’s the difficult bit – you would have seen your investment increase by around 2,500 times to approximately £15 million. Go ahead, swear, (in a nice way of course), swear all you like, swear away, my friends, swear so all the neighbours can hear you. I will come round, have a cup of tea and join in with your swearing.

This is not fiction, this is not hype, this is not Damien Hirst (whom I actually quite like, by the way). This is fact, this is the real deal, this is the amount of money it would take to tempt a GTO owner to even consider parting with their car.

So who was the most recent buyer of this most lusted after of luxury automobiles? Well, be prepared to swear again, but this time for maybe different reasons, because – wait for it... you’re not going to like it... no, really, you’re not... he was... an estate agent! Argh!

It gets worse – the guy sold up his business not so long ago for nine figures; it seems he knew what was coming. Why didn’t he tell the rest of us? The swine, the rotter, the clever monkey.

So who else owns a GTO? Oh, you know, really rich people basically, the odd rock star, all genuine car fans, it has to be said, and all blokes. Although recently, just a fortnight ago, another huge cheque was turned down for one particular specimen that “might” be up for sale. Turned down not by the owner, but by the owner’s wife! The reason? There are several extremely exclusive social events to which the ownership of a GTO is the only ticket.

Indeed, for the zillionaire car nut, there is simply nothing that surpasses having a GTO parked up in the garage. Unless, of course, you are one of the lucky bods who own two! Oh yeah, what the heck, a ’62/3 type and a ’64 type are the perfect brace to bag. Why not, for heaven’s sake? Wrap ’em, come on let’s go. What do you mean, you only have one?

BUT why oh why oh why are these cars regarded with such supercar superstardom?

Well, as with a lot of the best things in life, it boils down to quality and pedigree, and in car terms there’s no finer bloodstock on planet Earth than Ferrari.

Enzo Ferrari, the creator of the Ferrari motor car brand, was the GTO’s father and, like most successful men, there was more than a hint of female influence in his life… The wonder is that he got any time at all to spend with his beloved cars, as in his case the female presence was threefold. There was a very strong mother, for whom it is said he would drop everything at an instant. There was a resilient and fiercely proud wife, and just for measure there was the added complication of a life-long, devoutly loyal mistress. What can I say? He was Italian.

Having been a fairly decent racing car driver but not one who was ever going to set the world on fire, Enzo had the good sense to realise that one’s strengths can only truly fulfil their potential if they are first unshackled from the constraint of one’s limitations. If he wasn’t able to excel behind the wheel, he would build a car and employ other drivers who could. This was a most astute decision as Enzo quickly discovered that whatever he lacked as a pilot, he more than made up for as a team boss. He was the best ever. “I wish I’d known him better,” lamented Carol Shelby, one of Ferrari’s many adversaries. “He would stop at nothing in the pursuit of victory. I remember once, when he thought we might beat him, he managed to get the race cancelled!”

For Enzo, in the beginning at least, his cars’ supremacy was always about the engine. He believed that if the engine was powerful enough, it didn’t matter what it was bolted to. As long as it had wheels and the driver could keep it on, or somewhere near, the racetrack, he was confident his team had a chance of coming home in the points.

The GTO, however, would mark a change in his philosophy. The GTO’s predecessor was the type 250 SWB (250 short wheelbase), the first road-going/race car Ferrari ever built. (The rules for GT racing stated that at least 100 examples of any model wishing to compete had to be produced in order for it to be eligible.) The 250 SWB, of which 165 were made, was itself no slouch, enjoying phenomenal success with the likes of Stirling Moss, Willy Mairesse, Carlo Abate and Jo Schlesser behind the wheel. However, in motor racing, today is always about tomorrow and things always had to move on.

Everyone agreed that the engine in the 250 SWB was as good as technology could produce; the problem was that at around 155mph the car seemed to hit “a wall of air”. There was undoubtedly more speed achievable but the shape of the car would have to change.

Somewhat reluctantly, Enzo and his team had finally to admit that if they were ever going to solve the problem of the SWB’s limitations, it was time to take a trip to the wind tunnel. The problem was there was no wind tunnel at the Ferrari factory; they’d never thought they’d need one. “Where is the nearest wind tunnel?” came the cry. “At the university of Pisa, you fools,” someone shouted back. So off to Pisa it was.

The consequential improvements in aerodynamics literally dictated the shape of things to come. The unmistakable lines of the Ferrari Grand Tourisimo Omologato – for many, the ultimate allure of the GTO – were about to be unleashed on an unsuspecting world.

“I thought it was the most beautiful car I’d ever seen,” says Pink Floyd drummer and certified car nut, Nick Mason. “Still do.” He’s owned his GTO since 1975 and he ain’t never selling it.

“It looked like the aliens had landed – we’d never seen anything like them,” adds Paul Vesty, an owner since 1981. He remembers seeing “five” GTOs line up for the first time at the Goodwood TT in 1962. “Immediately all the other cars looked ancient – instantly we all wanted one.” A salivating 18-year-old at the time, 19 years on there would be one in his drive.

The long dropped nose, developed to create a piercing arrow through the air, dominated the styling of what was to become Ferrari’s masterpiece. A dry sump meant the car could sit so much lower, giving it a stealth-like presence. The “anteater” it was nicknamed for a while. An upturned fin tail at the rear was hastily added by some owners after it was recorded that “the rear end of the car kept wanting to take off!” The factory soon caught on to this and added it as standard.

The 250 GTO was built to win races, simple as that, which is exactly what it did. It won the GT series of 1962, ’63 and ’64, as well as hundreds of individual races. For these three years at least, if you owned a GTO and the guy you were racing against was driving something else, you were in with a pretty good chance of beating him, if, that is, you could drive. If you couldn’t, you were in with a pretty good chance of killing yourself.

One poor chap did just that in his GTO during a race at Montlhery in 1962. He hit something on the track which caused him to career straight off into an outhouse. Barely recognisable as a car, the next day potential new owners began fighting over the still-smouldering wreck eager to part with their cash and rebuild it. Such was the clamour to become part of the new racing glitterati. The demand for a GTO was surpassing anything the car world had seen before.

Of course this couldn’t go on for ever and as other marques eventually managed to take over the winner’s podium, starting with Carol Shelby’s brilliant Cobras in 1966, the GTO’s crown started to slip. The once almighty conquerors of the track were increasingly put out to pasture, most of them battered and torn from the scars of battle after merciless thrashings around the race circuits of the world.

It wasn’t long before owning one was neither difficult nor particularly desirable. For a time you could pick up a GTO for around £1,500. Two brothers did just that. A smart move: between them, a decade or so later, they were to make a profit of close to $20 million.

So what was the turning point? When did the mighty giant begin to creep up again in value? This is the crucial point. I have asked around and the truth is that no one can really remember – let’s not forget, it was the Sixties!

I think the most reliable information comes from a man called David Piper, who owned not one, two, three, four or even five GTOs, but an incredible six. Not all at the same time, I hasten to add, although two of them were from new. His wife, Liz, told me: “David asked for his first brand new GTO to be delivered in BP green. Mr Ferrari had always liked him so he said yes; from then on all our cars were green. I loved it because it was much easier for me to spot them as they passed by the start/finish line and I had to hit the stopwatch.”

Mr Piper, himself a living legend and one of racing’s most prominent ever privateers, remembers many successful campaigns with his string of GTOs. Before getting on to the subject of price, I asked him to recall his fondest experience. His voice, still crisp and full of energy, cut through the air on the other end of the telephone line: “I think it may have been when we shipped one of them over to the States on the QE2 to race at Sebring and Daytona and we brought her home second behind Rodriguez and Phil Hill.” Wow.

“Pipes”, a stoic 78 years not out, was probably the first man who smelt a legend not just of the past but also of the future. Somewhere around the end of the Sixties, Nick Lancaster of HR Owen remembers: “When we heard David had spent several thousand pounds restoring a GTO, we all thought he was mad. You could buy a whole Renault dealership for about the same price at the time – in fact, I think I did.”

Mr Piper doesn’t recall any such restoration but does claim to have sold on his last GTO for £95,000 as early as 1968. If this was the case, it made Nick Mason’s car, some seven years later, a comparative bargain.

Nick openly admits he ended up paying almost double what he thought he would have to, to get his car (this is a running theme). “How long did you wait before deciding to buy one?” I asked him. “As soon as I thought we’d made enough money,” he laughed. His original budget was £25,000; he eventually had to cough up £37,000. “It was more than I’d ever dreamt of spending on a car at the time.”

Paul Vesty, a good friend of Nick’s, says: “When Nick paid that much for his GTO, I thought he’d been on the wacky baccy too long.” Not any more he doesn’t.

The GTO, for the second time in its life, was once again a champion, albeit a financial one. The sale of the first £200,000-plus GTO wasn’t far away… Steve Pilkington, a well-known car man from up North, stuck his hand in his pocket for that one and, as the crazy Eighties boomed and several Japanese decided to get their wallets out, the first GTO to crash through the $10 million barrier was sold.

It hasn’t all been plain sailing for the GTOs and their owners, though. The crashes of 1987 and 1990 caused a few fiscal blips in the car world and, as brief as they might have been, if you were on the wrong end of a deal, you were going to get burnt.

John Collins of Talacrest International, a notoriously canny Ferrari dealer, tells of a GTO selling for $13.8 million in 1989 that he then bought back in 1994 for a cut-price $2.7 million. He then went on to re-sell it for $4 million just one month later. Be careful out there!

Could these circumstances prevail again? John doesn’t think so. “It was different then – a lot of the cars were highly leveraged with gigantic interest rates. Nowadays most of the big boys have made their money and have the cash to buy clean and sit out any slump.”

The fact is, you should only buy a GTO if you can afford to lose one; they are that expensive. My wife and I lay in bed this morning and figured out that you could swap 60 houses like my mum’s for one GTO. This can’t be a good thing. Then again, if the previous financial model is anything to go by, in 10 years from now you could probably swap several hundred of the same houses for one GTO.

As I mentioned at the beginning of this article, I did have a chance to buy a GTO when I worked on The Big Breakfast. Obviously I chose not to; I bought a 328 GTS instead. I thought it was better value for money and it was the car Magnum drove in the TV show. As it turned out, I wasn’t even right about that – he drove a 308. Either way, both are worth around 20 grand today. Ah well. It’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

My mistake was to think about the value, because therein lies the irony. The guys who own a GTO may be aware of its worth, but this was never a driving factor in them acquiring one. They bought their car because they’d always wanted one – it was their boyhood dream and surely that is the best reason of all.

Will there ever be a day when there is a GTO in the Evans garage? Well, never say never, eh? Somewhere out there is the next great car deal.

Allow me to finish with the story that keeps me going: A very famous collector, who has one of the finest noses for sniffing out a deal, hears a whisper that the first James Bond Aston Martin DB5 may be for sale. This is back in the day, the then and the there.

The word is that for the right money, the original James Bond car can be bought directly from the movie studio. So he makes a few calls, he tracks down the production guy, the one who knows, the one who can price and sell, and the guy says: “It’s gonna have to be 15 for the pair.”

“You mean there are two?”

“Hey man, this is showbusiness, there’s always two… at least.”

“But 15 for the pair,” says our man. “I wasn’t counting on spending that much and I don’t really want two – I just want one.”

“Well, that’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

Fifteen thousand pounds – a lot of money now, a load of money then. Our hero hesitates for a moment, but his nose knows better. It tells him to deal, deal now. He buys the cars.

The cash is to be paid on delivery of both vehicles. The day arrives, the trailer pulls up, the cars roll off. The invoice reads: "Fifteen HUNDRED Pounds". Yes friends, both original Bond cars for £1,500, but it doesn’t end there. Be prepared to run to the hills screaming. Our man then swaps one of the Bond cars for a GTO. That’s a GTO for £750. That’s the cheapest GTO ever and... he still has it today.

What a deal and what a nose – not unlike the GTO.

 

Good question and haven't got a clue. What are the sort of things that could go wrong and how much do they cost to fix? How much is an original exhaust ?

 

Noooooooooooooooooooooo!!!

 

Handsome trio haha (excluding the car, of course)...

Bro, pm me your email so that I can get your pics to you.

 

Still in ICU in Ben Hospital. Probably another 2 weeks before discharge?

 

i remebmer the 360 needs a timing belt change either after a couple of years or hitting a certain mileage. I cannot remember but i think at HSM, it cost about 10K as it involves lifting the engine. Most owners of 360 should know about this. Check if the owner has done it ? Had my 360 for 2 yrs and it did not give me any problems. good luck You can get HSM to service your car as well. they are probably more familiar than the Ital boys.

 

Hello. What K said. Was told that the belt can be done behind the seat's firewall but it's so tight that they might as well remove the engine. It's basically quite trouble free but you got to watch out on the F1 actuators & clutch job. Usual black sticky plastics in the cabin. Brakes are it's weak link but if you don't track it then fine.

I don't know how reliable is the roof though but it won't be cheap to fix for sure. The electronic suspension could give problems later & again depends on your luck. Others to watch out for old cars are the suspension bushes, wheel bearings, steering rack etc. Low mileage doesn't mean anything as maintenance & correct usage is paramount.

Stock exhaust should be rather cheap to find on ebay, classifieds in Fchat & of course I'm sure HSM has a few lying around but you'd really want the Tubi for it's sound. Ferrari Spa came down hard on aftermarket mods only a few years ago, hence the problem.

Ben Low @ Changi, Automobile Manufacture will be another guy to see as he was the ex-workshop manager during this era.

I suspect your car belongs to my friend

 

I think the 360 belt change does not require an engine drop. The 355 did. But the pricing of 10k still sounds familiar.

 

The aftermarket issue happened during a track day in 2006 when the factory folks were at Sepang. One of the 430s were smoking and pulled into the pits.. the factory guys saw the after market exhaust and told HSM that the cars warranty has been void.
The smoking issue had nothing to with the exhaust but the factory basically gave a blanket void on warranty.
HSM however, honoured the warranty as they were the ones that sold the aftermarket exhuast.

 

Hi Bryn,
What year is the car?
If you can get an extended warranty on the car you should do so. Not to scare you but these Italian cars especially if they are past 5 years WILL break down and will cost a lot of money to repair.
I am quite sure HSM can do the PPI on a 360. I am also quite sure HSM may have a few used 360 stock exhaust lying around their workshop. They were the Tubi distributors for Ferrari... many owners upgraded their exhausts.

 

Whats wrong this time?

 

It depends... may i suggest a safety mantenance fund of 8-10k a year.

 

Ok Michael has No! Since he has an interest in the car, I will respect his opinion

 

Yep, I was there then. Also heard that aftermarket kitted cars were void as well citing aerodynamic reasons....

 

Guys, what do you think of this?

http://www.classicandperformancecar.com/buying/octanebuyingguide/223119/porsche_912_19656976.html

It's also in the same shade of red. Car was owned by three people whom I knew & in fact I brokered the sale once!

It's on regular no. plate. 1.6L so very cheap to maintain. Only two in Singapore, this restored red Longwheel base with the other, a silver shortwheel base being restored now.

Was also offered an '04 C4S cab & the only '05 TurboS cab, both 996s & very similar to my 997

 

I know the owner too... he was quite upset

 

Nice... how much would something like this be on the road in Singapore?

 

U are Thai????

 

That's a completely BS reason to void warranty! Will IA void our warranties if we attach aftermarket bodykits to our cars?

 

It's a 2005 .. one of the last 360's brought in. To look at it is mint and amazingly the rubber interior bits look brand new (maybe they are). Obviously the biggest concern if the mechanics which is why I've recommended Bryn get the warranty extension. Ital says they can do the PPI (for a reasonable price) but the tubi prevents them from offering the warranty extension .. so maybe buying an OEM exhaust is the right way to go.

What do the current 360 boys have to say?

 

Interesting comment... let me ask.

 

I was told that I "might" have a problem with warranty if I put an OEM 16M bodykit on mine

 

Good advice.

 

when have you known me to give anything else?

 

Now this technically isn't "aftermarket" per se is it? How could a body kit, especially an official Ferrari bodykit, possibly be detrimental to a car in any way?!