Brero Jr. 375 spyder--historian needs to know price sold for from Brero Jr.

You would be far better off asking Tom Shaughnessy or Marcel Massini

 

Actually, he was only directly involved on the buy side (i.e. acquisition from Brero, Jr).

 

Pete Lovely never had a shop in Redmond. The car was restored at the old Pete Lovely Racing shop in Puyallup, which is currently in operation as Dennison International.

 

I've seen a few references to the selling price as being a steal or that Brero Jr. was somehow taken advantage of. I'm obviously not the expert Marcel or others are but, in 1995, a badly rusted and seriously deteriorated 375 for the reported $1.5M strikes me as pretty steep! Various restored 375 spyders (admittedly without the same rich history) were reported to be selling for around this or less.

Perhaps there's more to this already interesting story?

 

Here is relevant info on both Brero Sr. and Brero Jr. included in the 2008 Bonhams sale of d-type XKD 509. Lot 523 sold on July 11, 2008 for £2,201,500 (US$ 3,556,157) including premium. I do not know the source of their info, nor can I verify its accuracy. Good luck!

link here:
Bonhams Auctioneers : The ‘first off the production line’, Ex-Al Browne/Lou Brero Sr and Moores Collection,1955 3.4-Litre Jaguar D-Type Sports-Racing Two-Seater XKD 509

Relevant info spread throughout here:
In fact ‘XKD 509’ now offered here was supplied new in 1955 to New York-based American distributor Chuck Hornburg. Through his company, this D-Type was sold directly to Albert R. Browne of Menlo Park, who owned the Federal Pacific Electric Company in Newark, New Jersey. He wanted to enter the brand-new D-Type in competition with a suitably qualified professional driver behind the wheel. He reputedly asked Phil Hill to drive it but the future Formula 1 World Champion Driver declined, being committed elsewhere. Al Browne then approached Carroll Shelby, only to find he was similarly committed, but the tall Texan then referred Browne to Lou Brero Sr, another experienced and well-known West Coast-based road racer.

French-born Lou Brero Sr was then 46 years old, a very competitive and combative road racing driver. He was already well-known for his exploits in a Kurtis-Cadillac, a Jaguar C-Type, and a pair of distinctive sports-racing Ferraris – one a 3-litre 4-cylinder 750 Monza while the other was the famous ex-Allen Guiberson 4½-litre V12-engined Ferrrari 375 in which Phil Hill/Richie Ginther had finished 2nd in the 1954 Carrera PanAmericana. At the other end of the scale, Lou Brero Sr had also campaigned a 500cc single-cylinder Cooper-Norton Formula 3 car!

He was by profession a lumberman from Arcata, up in Humboldt County, northern California. His son, Lou Jr, helped prepare and run his racing cars, and Al Browne was interested in securing the older man’s services. After attending the 1956 Arcata Road Races (which Brero organised on the local aerodrome and where Pete Snell was killed after overturning his Triumph TR – the now famous Snell Foundation being set-up in his memory to promote racing safety), Browne asked Brero to drive his new Jaguar D-Type in the forthcoming 1956 Sebring 12-Hour race, and the experienced Franco-Californian accepted.

The car then appeared in the FIA Sports Car World Championship-qualifying 12-Hour race wearing a stunningly distinctive colour scheme – quite unlike anything ever applied to any other Jaguar D-Type.

The story behind its unique livery, credited to Lou Brero Jr, begins with Browne’s new car resplendent in its original British Racing Green, as delivered. The car had barely 1500 miles ‘on the clock’ at that time, and was being prepared in the New York workshop run by the Cunningham team’s very well-respected engineering director Alfred Momo.

We understand that Al Browne's business partner (who was in the process of buying him out at that time) had become interested in this racing venture and decided that he wanted the car to be painted in American racing livery of white and blue, in the style pioneered by the Cunningham team from 1950.

However, Lou Brero Jr - irritated that Momo was being entrusted with preparing the car instead of him - was told by Browne that since the car was to be repainted, he would be allowed to design its new color scheme. The young man was horrified at the prospect of the car’s beautiful factory-standard green paint being sanded off, but if this was going to happen, then he wanted a new paint scheme that would perform some practical purpose.

Since the car was now to race into the night at Sebring, he chose matte dark blue paint contrasting sharply with white fender quarters and forming five individual vertical stripes – matte dark blue on white - up each side of the central monocoque ‘tub’ section to ensure high visibility in night racing. In fact Lou Brero Sr would be able to acquire the car from Al Browne, and it would retain Lou Jr’s startling livery for much – and perhaps all – of its American racing career.

This very capable veteran co-drove it with Sam Weiss in the Sebring 12-Hours, their race ending after 68 laps due to clutch failure. At Eagle Mountain, Fort Worth, Texas, Brero then drove this Jaguar D-Type into a strong 3rd place sandwiched between two Ferraris, beaten only by American Champion Walt Hansgen in the Cunningham-entered ‘Longnose’ D-Type and by future Aston Martin Le Mans-winning driver and Cobra constructor Carroll Shelby in a Ferrari 750 Monza.

In the main 100-mile race that same day Lou Brero Sr finished fifth, having been trading places with the D-Types of Hansgen and Sherwood Johnston. This car then failed to finish at Beverly, but in the major 150-mile Road America event at Elkhart Lake, Lou Brero Sr finished a fine 2nd overall in it – beaten only by Carroll Shelby driving a very much more powerful 4.4-litre 6-cylinder Ferrari 121LM.

At the end of that American season the Bahamas Speed Week events saw Lou Brero Sr again drive ‘XKD 509’. He took 4th place in the Governor’s Trophy heat, before finishing an excellent 3rd overall in the major Governor’s Trophy itself, this time beaten only by Carroll Shelby in John Edgar’s big V12-engined Ferrari 410 Sport, and by the legendary Spanish Marquis ‘Fon’ de Portago in his 3½-litre 4-cylinder Ferrari 860 Monza. He then finished a strong 2nd in the Jaguar Trophy race behind John Fitch in the Cunningham team’s ex-works ‘Longnose’ D-Type before ‘XKD 509’ was entrusted to Marion Lowe who promptly won Heat 2 of the Nassau Ladies’ Trophy race in it…

In 1957 Lou Brero Sr reappeared in what was by this time his Jaguar D-Type – still distinctively striped - winning at Stockton, California, before taking the car to a national meeting at Dillingham Field, Mokuleia, Hawaii, on the weekend of April 19-20, 1957. It appears that the D-Type suffered an engine failure in practice there, which led to Lou Brero Sr then accepting a substitute drive in an elderly Maserati A6GCM powered by a Chevrolet V8 engine and entered by Bob Gillespie of Tiburon, California.

He ran the Maserati-Chevrolet concurrently with a production car race on the Saturday afternoon, merely to complete sufficient laps for him to qualify the loaned car for the big sports-racing car feature event next day. He had been timed through the speed trap at 136mph before slowing for a sharp right turn. Tragically, either a broken half-shaft punctured the fuel tank or the car’s filler cap burst open, flooding the cockpit with fuel which was ignited almost instantly by an exhaust spit-back on a down-change. It is said the Lou Brero Sr heroically steered the blazing car away from adjacent spectators before leaping clear – but his clothing was already well alight and he was wrapped in flame. The poor fellow was taken to hospital with 70 per cent burns, which proved fatal at 10pm on April 21.

It appears that Lou Brero Jr then fell heir to ‘XKD 509’ after his well-regarded father’s deeply tragic death. He also took over stewardship of the magnificent ex-Phil Hill Hill/Richie Ginther Ferrari 375 which his father had raced previously. Lou Brero Jr would keep this car in a trailer for some 39 years before it passed into a leading American collector’s hands and was fully restored to its former glory.

Lou Brero Jr similarly retained ‘XKD 509’ long-term. He led what has been described to us as “a Hippy existence”, during which he is said to have appeared occasionally in the ageing D-Type, “…driving it along the beach in the sun”. This period in the car’s life concluded in or around 1974 when he was eventually persuaded to sell ‘XKD 509’ to visiting British dealer in classic and historic cars, Brian Classic.