I see the Auction listings have finally gone live for the Motorclassica Auction on the 28th. of this month. A few points..... Bonhams are not the Auctioneer of choice this year, that honour has been reserved for Manheim (Was previously Fowles). Fowles you say, hmm, an odd selection I would have thought, given their main business seems to be the disposal of surplus government junk, Commodore wagons from Telstra and finance company re-possessions. And from what I can see, they don't even list the mileage indicated on the Auction details for the vehicles. The "Twiggy Miura" is listed for sale, here is the link: http://www.manheim.com.au/passenger-vehicles/3556020/1969-lamborghini-miura-s-coup%C3%A9?referringPage=AuctionListing&franchiseID=MANHEIM Hard to get enthusiastic about a car designed by "Dollara" (Doesn't anyone proof read this stuff??). More importantly I believe, is the claimed Twiggy connection. I stand to be corrected, but I see the claim by a Lamborghini employee is that the car was delivered new to Twiggy. Surely then, Lamborghini Italy or U.K. has a sales invoice with her name on it, not just a letter from a third party? And since Twiggy is very much alive and well, for the expected price of 1.1 million I would expect a written confirmation from her at the very least that she bought it new, and repainted the car from white to green with the stripe. I am guessing the reserve is 1.1 million given that is the lower estimate from the catalogue. So this tenuous at best Twiggy connection is worth an extra $500,000 in today's market? I smell a rat. Any comments?
Bonhams is not any better either. In 2000, when I sold one of my Esprits, it was put in a Bonhams auction shortly after. The car was a UK import. Sold in the UK in March '89, it came to Australia in Aug '89 with its first owner John Forbes. I had, and still have all the papers and manuals. Bonhams fabricated an entire history that it was an Australian delivered car, sold new by John Cant Lotus in QLD. They even put John Cant Motors number plate borders and stickers on the windows. I pointed out all the above to Bonhams on the viewing day and showed them the proof that it was my car. They acted "genuinely surprised" about the history but they did nothing and some poor schmuck bought it like that.
agreed. i'm sure they could have slipped twiggy a few pound to authenticate the history. The auctioneer is james Nicholls, ex Sothebys. it was they that tried to sell the Goss 75 XB Falcon hardtop...hmmmmmm. also; but it's a replica...$1.1m????.....12 years???.... http://www.manheim.com.au/passenger-vehicles/3556114/1959-maserati-tipo-61--birdcage--recreation-roadster?referringPage=AuctionListing and to my knowledge CANNOT be driven in historic events as per the description.
That's a bit of a scary story, really. I wonder if it was the auction house or the vendor who did all that.
Seems to be all too common PP. Remember the Salterelli auction I went to Monaco with Scottski.? They had press photo's of a bike in the catalogue purporting to "be" the bike up for auction, plus the other bike I wanted had out dated photo's. (the bike had original parts missing that were in the photo's in the catalogue) Of course the auction houses have a disclaimer hidden in the fine print. As I learnt from my first purchase, if you do your homework you don't get burnt.
there is another Miura in the UK which claims the "Twiggy Miura" title. It is equally tenuous IMO - both cars were at best owned and driven by her managers. The auctioneers have saturated the media with the "story" of this car, a great example of creating a truth by endlessly repeated spin. I think it's BS too.
True, FIA papers will not get you a logbook in Australia. The FIA want to encourage full grids at historic meetings, so they have lots of replicas running around and a cottage industry (particularly in the UK) pumping out fake cars. It's a good show for the spectators but meaningless from a collector viewpoint. Possibly illegal (trade practices act) for the auctioneer to promote this car as if it has a real Maserati chassis no.
I also like how the description craps on about real birdcages for the first page and half and refers to this as a recreation in the most subtle of terms. If this is worth AUD$1.2m and the 10% rule applies, is a genuine birdcage really a AUD$12m car? Also, did Twiggy drive this one too?
I knew this car had been discussed numerous times in the Lambo section by Joe Sackey in his Miura thread. Unfortunately the thread is about 600 pages long so a tad hard to find the posts. This is what I found: http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=136787090&postcount=1071 http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=137132674&postcount=2272 http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=137157398&postcount=2384 http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=137157561&postcount=2387 http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=137549412&postcount=3591 http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=138017495&postcount=4797 http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=139194355&postcount=6944 http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=140796236&postcount=9364 http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=140796237&postcount=9365 http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=140796240&postcount=9366 http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=140796713&postcount=9368 http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=140798395&postcount=9373 http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=140798985&postcount=9379 http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=141512122&postcount=10256 http://ferrarichat.com/forum/showpost.php?p=141513574&postcount=10257 So there were 2 Miura's with some sort of Twiggy involvement. I'm with Carl, if she bought it there should be an invoice with her name on it somewhere. If it doesn't exist anymore why hasn't someone contacted her for official clarification? If I were the seller or a prospective buyer, that's what I would do. Oh that auction company is a very strange choice as Carl suggested. I remember when they ended up with a repo'd 360 GT race car with Le Mans history. All the people in the room on the day were there to buy ex-lease and Government holdens and fords, I doubt anybody knew what it even was. Weird !
