Henry Ford Greenfield Village's Testa Rossa swap

Donating cars to museums has it's pit falls too, you have to read the contracts carefully, many donate cars assuming the museum will keep it for decades with the belief that their car will be there for many years to come, and they can visit it. However many museums only guarantee the car will be there for a few years and then it is their discretion to do with it as they please. This happened to a very good friend of mine, he donated a very rare one off Italian exotic and in four years it was gone. The Museum is very well know and considered one of the best in the country, but these things happen. Museums are very unpredictable.

 

It actually lived in the Museum of Transportation in Brookline, MA.

 

We bought that Miura out of the Brookline museum many years ago and have had it many times since.

I had a ton of fun with it on the street until the rear hatch came lose over a speed bump and opened up on me going down the road.

Last I heard it was in France.

Ciao,

Bill

 

I believe that the MOT has always been upfront about its policy as to donated cars.

 

Actually, it was initially purchased from the Museum of Transportation by Steve Davy/Chequered Flag of Los Angeles; almost immediately thereafter it ended up with David Sydorick.

 

I am afraid that is not exactly correct. We purchased the Miura then consigned it before even collecting it and some others we had bought on the East Coast to the Chequered Flag which was own and run at the time by Davies. He handled many of our sales prior to the purchase of our current location in 1994 when we stopped consigning our cars to other dealers.

That particular Miura has come back to us at least twice since then.

Ciao,

Bill

 

Not true.

 

If you're going to call out someone like Bill you should fill out your profile first.

 

My 2 cents worth

When a collector wants to buy a car, he/ she spends his own money and will always try to get the best deal for his money even if vastly complicated, I am sure we all know someone that has spent countless time and energy just to save a buck ...................

When a museum spends their money, esp. a museum such as the Ford museum it isnt the museum directors money and their focus will instead be on acquiring the right car, and cost will not be a determining factor.

Witness the NMM in the UK selling the Mercedes W196 GP car in the 1980's for frankly stuff all, but for what was probably the right reasons. And countless others.

 

Couldnt agree more, Bill has been involved in the sale of more ULTRA high end exotica then what he says is all but the word of god in these matters.

 

I don't know about that but you don't mess with a man's livelihood without identifying yourself.
BTW I have no dog in this fight.

 

Davies passed away many years ago but memories and records of our sales and trades remain fresh in our minds.

Ciao,

Bill

 

(1) Actually, his last name was DAVY, not Davies.

(2) Davy/Chequered Flag is the entity which was SOLELY responsible for extracting ZN75/doing the deal with the museum, and therefore deserve 100% of the credit for getting the job done.

(3) Your boss/Vintage Motor Car Co. became a beneficial partner with Davy/Chequered Flag in that specific ZN75 enterprise (i.e. by contributing their requisite portion of funds to effect the final purchase from the museum, etc.).

(4) Almost immediately thereafter, Davy/Chequered Flag sold ZN75 on to David Sydorick.

 

Out of curiosity, there are a few things I couldn't find in the various press reports, if anyone knows:

-What other cars did Helck throw into the trade with the museum besides the historic racing Locomobile? I thought there were two other cars plus there was a million in cash, I am not sure if he was paying the museum that or they were paying him!

Has it been reported what European car dealer/vintage racer Abraham “Abba”Kogan, a Brit living in Monte Carlo, paid Helck for it?

Was it reported In April 2004 what Eric Heerema, a Dutch native living in the UK, paid for 0704?

0704 appeared at various Goodwood events such as the Festival of Speed and Revival in the years 2005-2007, but has it been vintage raced since 2007?

An article run on the Hemmings.com blogsite in Jan. 2014 said Heerema sold the car to Tom Hartley Jr. for an undisclosed price. Has that price reached print yet?

Hartley then resold it. Kurt Ernst, the author of the article wrote; “Though Hartley will admit to selling the 250 Testa Rossa to a new owner, no details of the transaction were reported. Instead, the Daily Mail cited “well-placed sources”who stated that the selling price was “in excess of £24.1 million.” How much is that in good old dollars and cents?

And re the old posts on Fchat where a SoCal car dealer says he had a cash offer on the table that was rejected by the museum, methinks that it would have behooved him to scour the hinterlands for other old American cars like Stutz Bearcats to put together his own trade offer, but that would have required instantly educating himself on American racing tin of the early 20s --torture for someone who spends his time with more exciting postwar racing Ferraris.

 

There was also a 300 SLR parked right in front of the TR for many years - - -that one is gone too.

 

The 330 SLR went back to Mercedes. I believe it was on a long term loan to Ford.

 

I remember both cars well. I have 'stereo' photos of each car. Both had amazing patina, like they were taken directly off the track and dumped in Dearborn.

The TR/300 SLR were there from at least the early 1980s until I think mid to late 1990s.

 

The way I heard it was that back when Mercedes donated it, it was in trade for the secret of something called "floating glass" (maybe some former auto executive can verify this). Now on paper the HF Museum was and is supposed to be separate from the affairs of Ford Motor Co., but maybe in those days the people on the car-making side of Ford could exert a little pressure on the museum or vice versa (aren't or weren't Ford family members on the Board at the museum?). So I could see this trade taking place back then but would be unthinkable today. Also the Mercees 300SLR had desmodromic valves, I can't remember if Detroit fiddled around with those after the Museum got the 300SLR but if Ford did, I can't imagine that they didn't have the 300SLR there in the engine lab when the Museum is no less than a mile from the engine labs.

Maybe it will take a Ford engineer from the mid-50s era to answer this.

If the car was on loan I can see why Mercedes wanted it back--the biggest fear of any automaker's lawyer cadres is that someone will take one of their donated old racing cars from 30, 40 or 50 years ago and put it on the track and something will break at some big event like the Monterey Historic. Mercedes themselves fields their old race cars but not until they've checked everything out and refurbished them.

 

Abba is not British. He paid under $5M. Sold for a little more I think in 2004.... he was warned it was not replaceable.


This 250 TR was sold in USD weeks ago . Goes to the Americas.


Bank on it.
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Maybe the locomobile owner changed his mind, after owning the TR and realising it did not live up to expectations?

In many cases, especially barn finds, it is easier to swap something for the car than just to suggest money. This would work better even with me. If I stumbled across a 250LM (for example, my favourite Ferrari) and somebody wanted to buy it from me, they would get a lot more of my attention if they said they would swap an Alfa Romeo 8c2900B for it, but if they just said here is $4US million I would not be interested ... heck that would probably end up being spent on a mere house or something equally as uninteresting to me.
Pete

 

We (in Europe) have allready heard of some strange verdicts in the US but I think not even there would be a manufacturer responsible for mechanic failures of a car donated "30, 40 or 50 years ago" so I do not think that their lawyers had a sleepless night on that...

I think I remember that I read something about the SLR several weeks ago, I do not find it anymore but it was somthing like that:
A (or some) dealer(s) tried to get the SLR out of the museum the same way the 250 TR came out, by trading it against some important American cars. Just as the deal was about to happen the museum realized that there is an option right by Mercedes-Benz written in the contract of the donation in case the museum does want to sell the SLR (something that was apparently missing in the contract on the W196 with the National Motor Museum in UK). So my guess would be that the car was offered to Mercedes with the offer of the dealer in the backhand and Mercedes had to buy the car to avoid it to go to private hands. I think Mercedes had no problem with the SLR sitting in the museum but as every appearence of an SLR is linked to their classic department right now I doubt that they wanted a SLR in private hands.
As written, this is just a guess but it sounds like a good explanation why the car returned to the factory as they do not really need it and have enough of them to show them. So there are the ones in the German Museum in Munich and in Mulhouse at the Schlumpf Collection outside the Mercedes-Benz Museum, both in "secure" collections.

 

I saw the car in Paris 10 years (or so) ago.
Fantastic!
But what can you do with it?
If you move one single bold, you destroy history...!
Hope that the new owner keeps the car in that condition as it is, perhaps as a display in his office or living room (like the Maserati Tipo 26 that was once displayed in a villa in Southern France, high up the mediterranean coast!).

 

is this the car in question?

great pic!
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Addressing Mr. Singhoff's remarks, for historical research, I have been collecting examples of cases where automakers would rather destroy a car--particularly a race car--than have it go into private hands where it might be raced in vintage racing without the same level of mechanical support (i.e. checking frame for cracks, trained people refueling, etc.) For instance way back in the '60s Ford took a GT40 7-liter that had won Sebring, dug a big hole and threw it in. I asked why. The chief of the team said "It was all coming apart. We didn't want anyone to get killed in it." So I can sympathize with Mercedes making an effort to get back an old race car that somebody might do a cosmetic restoration on but not go all out on making sure it is capable of racing speeds again, such as magnafluxing the suspension parts, etc. and then an accident could happen at a vintage race resulting in negative publicity and possible lawsuits. And why would they still hold Mercedes responsible for a racing accident 50 years after they made the car? Hey, when the smoke clears the first thing they see is the badge on the car and think "who built that?"

Maybe such lawsuits bringing in the original manufacturer of a car haven't been common yet in vintage racing but I can assure you that with modern sports cars, no matter how much driver error is obvious, (such as the fatal crash of the star of Fast & Furious, Paul Walker) the automaker is soon brought into it.

 

You are referring on a car that was scrapped at the end of its actual racing career instead of passing it into amateur hands to be raced next season, that is completely different from buying back a car 50 years after a donation. Sorry but I still do not think that this is the reason why they bought the car. And your last example is referring to a modern car and not to a 60 year old so again a big difference. Just imagine someone would make the manufacturer responsible for a product 60 years old without maintenance over all these years, that would not just effect vintage racing...
Furthermore, if that would be the intention of Mercedes they would have bought the W196R in Goodwood as well that was sold last year.