Which SWB is this?

Ed's Fact-Free Diet | VELOSTRADA - The Online Ferrari Journal


It Was the Best of Cars, the Worst of Cars
By Edwin K. Niles
August 2005

By 1965, I had already owned around 10 Ferraris, one at a time. I had purchased most of them through Roberto Goldoni, my friend in Rome. Roberto would invariably describe a prospective purchase as being in “overall good condition”. The result was that I never knew what I was getting, until I went to the docks in San Pedro to pick the car up and drive it home. I was buying Ferraris that were a few years old, so in 1965 I had yet to experience my first “SWB”. In fact, I had yet to own a Ferrari with disc brakes.

Early in 1965, Roberto, or as I called him, Bob, wrote to me that he had a short wheelbase Berlinetta (No. 2689GT) that I could buy from a friend of his who was going into the service. We quickly struck a deal for $2,850.00.

On June 1, 1965, I went to the dock at San Pedro to pick up my new purchase. Words like “shocked” and “appalled” come to mind, but words really are not adequate to describe my feelings when I first spotted it. Take a look at the pictures and you will get an idea of what I saw. The body was banged up from one end to the other, all of the plastic windows were crazed to the point where visibility was near zero, all the wheels were rusty, and came in three different sizes! The tires were worn, and what little chrome there was on the car was pure rust.

Worse, when I tried to start it up I found that the carburetor throttle butterflies were frozen shut. Apparently, the car was in such poor condition when it was loaded on the ship that they left it above decks. The corrosion in the carburetors was such that I had to pound on the butterflies with a large screwdriver and a hammer, eventually succeeding in getting two of the three carburetors to function. In disgust, I drove the car home on eight cylinders. I had to drive with one hand, as my left hand was needed to hold the door closed. It hadn’t crossed anyone’s mind, in those days, to rent a trailer.

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Eventually, my mechanic friend Sal DiNatale got the carburetors functioning properly, and repaired the door latch. We took it for a drive around my “private race course”, a back road around the north end of Lake Hollywood leading to my home in the Hollywood hills. As I dove into the first corner, the car twitched sideways, and when I corrected, it twitched even more violently in the other direction. It kept on twitching to the point where there was nothing to do but hit the wall or slam the brakes on. While all of this was going on, Sal was having the time of his life roaring out loud and slapping the side of the car as if he were swatting the flanks of a bucking bronco. A later inspection revealed that there was not a suspension bushing in the car still alive.

At that time, I didn’t realize that there were different variations of the SWB. In fact, the 61 Comp was quite a different animal from the earlier SWBs. The heads incorporated larger valves and on top of the engine sat size 46 carburetors (the usual size is 36 to 40). The cam profiles were different from what I had been accustomed to, the body skin was extremely thin and lightweight, and there were many other differences between the 61 Comp and the standard SWB.

The engine in that car was marvelous; clearly the most powerful that I had ever experienced in a Ferrari. You could actually kill the engine by opening the throttles suddenly at low rpm. On the other hand, once you hit about 4500 rpm the engine cleared its throat and literally jumped forward. It would still pull strongly at 7500 rpm.

While the drive train was basically sound on 2689GT, there wasn’t anything good on the rest of the car. I didn’t know where to start. The car mostly sat at Sal’s, getting a little work here and there. It was at Sal’s shop that one of his pals, Tony Tersigni, was admiring the car, and finally pried it loose from me at something over $4,000.00. Because Tony was somewhat impecunious, the car continued to sit at Sal’s, and in Tony’s garage, for several years before it went through the hands of several collectors.

Somewhere along the way, I became aware that the original title to the car was in the name of Pierre Noblet, and of course I knew that name. Research confirmed that this was the very car that had come in 3rd overall, and 1st in the GT Class, in the 1961 running of the 24 hours of Le Mans. Clearly, this was a car of significant historical importance, although in 1965 that knowledge was of little consequence. Happily, this Ferrari has had one of the most complete restorations imaginable, including the removal of the entire body skin for restoration of the frame and sub-frame.

Not too long ago, I had lunch with my old friend Bob Goldoni, who confirmed that Pierre Noblet, after he had used the car in a number of competition events, had sold it to his friend’s father for the use of his young friend and his pals. The car was driven all around Rome by Goldoni’s pal and many other young people, and the most rudimentary knowledge of traffic in Rome will certainly explain the condition of the car when I received it.

I was fortunate enough to have a ride in 2689 recently courtesy of the current custodian, Bruce Meyer, and it was every bit as fast and wild as I remembered. Unhappily, this great Ferrari is now out of my league; its value is roughly a thousand-fold from when I owned it.
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