$2m for a burnt-out 1954 Ferrari Mondial

$3 million all up, on the road, probably

 

...and with Ferrari $4m!!!

 

Good morning, I searched here and apologies if it had been posted:

https://rmsothebys.com/en/auctions/mo23/monterey/lots/r0058-1954-ferrari-500-mondial-spider-series-i-by-pinin-farina/1358217

0406 MD
$1,875,000 USD for a wreck. The body is so bad, I can't even tell if it's a PF body.

I get that one will restore it and sell it for: (cost + restauration) x n
with n > 2, as in double the cost of recreating it.

 

Say someone spends $2 million "restoring" this serial number. What would it be worth? Would Ferrari certify it?

 

If Ferrari would commissioned to do the rebuild, yes, I am pretty sure they would certify it......and their final invoice would get you on your knees!

 

Resto costs $2-3 million.

Auction for $8-20 million.

Shrewd purchase.

 

Let’s try to be constructive and not to judge based on things we don’t know and solely on return on invested money.

I don’t know who bought it and certainly 2 people at least thought it was worth bringing this car back to life ( or were ready to invest large amounts just to keep a memory of the past like the Bugatti taken out of Lago Maggiore in the Mullin collection if my memory is correct).

Why bringing this car back to life?

1. Is it a significant car? Well relatively rare but 14 th at MM 1954 is not such an achievement. And yes Cortese was the first driver to win a race with a Ferrari ( Caracalla if my memory is again correct) but most of people don’t even remember him. Which is very sad because he had a great carrier and I have a soft spot for him as he had a fantastic 1938 season in a car I know very well ( disclaimer not a Ferrari although Enzo Ferrari was tangentially involved). So this MD is not the most signifiant car and therefore I admire the people who are ready to take such a responsibility whoever they are.

2. what do we have? I did not inspect the car so I don’t know. But looking at the pictures then obvious question is what is the condition of the chassis, is it complete, bent, corroded, how is stamping. Without a reasonable complete chassis we don’t have a car anymore, just a rolling statue.

3. what we know however is that this car lost its original engine, the one related to the races it did in period. So we are one step further from originality and significance. And if we add the lack of original gearbox, transaxle etc we don’t have too much that relates those remains, whether they are recreated or not as a car, to the original car.

4. Final point is the body. Everyone talks about the Pinin Farina body. But by the time this car stopped its racing career this body was long gone. It had a rather crude ( in my eyes) Scaglietti barchetta body. While PF bodies on MD are elegant ( specially the closed headlights ones) the Scaglietti are purpose made racing items ( less elegant but more functional. Disclaimer I have owned one of each albeit a berlinetta for the PF body..).

I was personally interested by this car and some of my friends were even hinted that I would have been the perfect custodian to resurrect this car.

At a price! Not the one achieved. Does it make financial sense? No.
Is it a fantastic project? Certainly. Would the result allow the buyer to recoup its costs.
Unlikely. Will the buyer have a lot of fun supervising this project? I am sure! I have done restoration that did not recoup their investments and I am proud of those .

Let’s hope at least the new owner will pursue the project and not give up as with the rapidly escalating costs of restoration we see multiple big projects coming back to market untouched after few years!

 

Even the best 500 Mondial and 750 Monza are around the $5 million mark and the high end should buy you a highly original driver or fully restored car with full and total provenance and matching #s, the low end is for cars which are missing something and/ or have major needs. So we have five sales of Mondials (4 S1s and 1 S2) in the past 5 years and can read a lot from the results. #0430MD wasn't a bad car, was all there and eligible for everything and only fetched $2.1mm since it wasn't matching numbers! RMs car is $1 - 2 mm away from any future use and will then be worth $2.5 - 3mm at the very most!

#0430MD - Good, original car, replacement engine fitted, 40 years of single ownership. Sold @ Gooding '22 $2.1mm
#0434MD - Good, original car, matching numbers, 20 years with Bill Jacobs. Sold @ Gooding '18 $4.4mm
#0438MD - Excellent, Classiche restored with a brand new classiche engine, originally raced by Rubirosa. Offered @ Bonhams '19 not sold $5mm
#0556/0446MD - (S2) Excellent, highly original, restored while keeping originality, Scuderia Ferrari history. Best 500 Mondial in existence. Sold @ Gooding '18 $5.5mm
#0448MD - Good. Classiche part restored from a very original car, Paravano history, later with Bob Dusek for decades. Sold @ RM '19 $4.1mm

 

Agree with your assessment, but it is a race car so originality is slightly different for those and no matter what the economics I’m glad it’ll be restored in some way. And hopefully it’ll be used in historics and shared around in the coming years.

 

I know several Maserati Tipo 61 Birdcages were crashed in the 1970s and "rebuilt" on new chassis and sold with the remains of the original. Even #2451, the 1960 Nurburgring winner, was sold in the 2010s for $2.4 mm, roughly half what original Birdcages were fetching. It remains that this will limit value for decades to come. But as BIRA said above, does it matter when the fun of restoring a car like this is worth more than money alone. There simply isn't that many project Ferraris out there

 

The only thing that was original on the Birdcage #2461 (NOT #2451as you wrote. #2451 is a VERY original car!!!) was its engine and the front hubs. The entire rest of the car was new!

 

Per the auction description: "it is accompanied by components including rear-axle corners and its matching-numbers gearbox."

 

You speak of missing original engine as though that is permanent. The modified frame of 202A Tom Saughnessy bought on ebay had no engine yet Tom found the original Lampredi motor in pretty short order and bought it not too long after. Original components are rejoined from time to time.

 

Ferrari certification happily is not considered the holy grail. Most that put a high value on it are not seriously knowledgeable collectors. Most of the seriously knowledgeable know that process for what it really is.

 

Personally, I think the Porsche approach is much better, i.e., this is what the car had when it left the factory. Whatever changes happened after that is outside our realm of knowledge. Moreover, based on my discussions with the late Gerald Roush, it is unlikely Ferrari kept much of the documentation of the cars it built in the '50s and '60s. These cars were toys for the wealthy. Nobody expected them to be still on the road 50 to 70 years later. Maybe Ferrari has improved its database of knowledge since my conversions with Gerald (which did include healthy doses of great scotch) and is better able to certify originality. I have no idea if this is the case.

 

Without doubt they have learned some. The rest they make up. I wrote just the other day we used to get build sheets. For ordinary cars and they could be largely blank reflecting what was on record. For important cars or cars for important clients it could be very highly detailed. Now that the information is highly monitized and the illusion they are the worlds sole source of accurate information has an enormous value they claim to know everything about every car ever produced. We figure they found a lost warehouse of documents. They do that knowing many private historians are far better versed than they are. It shows in their restorations.

 

Is there such a thing as great Scotch? It tastes to me like something I drained from a car.
Bourbon on the other hand is a different thing entirely.

 

Heathen.

 

And proud of it.

 

And yet, he’s not wrong.

 

Dale @Texas Forever we’re not going to convert Brian and Joe and that’s okay.
I’m sure when you were studying Accounting, you were introduced to at least basic Economics and the old Supply and Demand curve(s).
Well Sir, their loss is our gain- as ably explained below by Professor Chas:

 

Will it be restored or was it bought as an art piece?