Yahoo Autos 2011 Concorso Italiano
What started more than 30 years ago as an informal tire-kicking session among Italian car owners during the Pebble Beach weekend has evolved into full blown concours itself, with more than 800 vehicles of Italian (and semi-Italian) origin filling the fairways of the Laguna Seca Golf Ranch, just west of the famous track of almost the same name. This year’s event highlighted original-condition and barn-find cars and was sponsored by Fiat North America, so there were plenty of shiny, new Cinquecentos in attendance. But it certainly wasn’t those-or even the several dozen Lamborghini Gallardos and Ferrari 308s on hand-that made the show worth the $130 admission. Read on for several notable entrants, and click through to the gallery to see what else the 2011 Concorso had to offer.
Tom Shaughnessy, a sort of Indiana Jones of old Ferraris, found this dusty 1966 Ferrari 275 GTB in a repair shop in Orange County, California, where it had been sitting for 30 years, and made the owner an offer he couldn’t refuse. The rare alloy-bodied long-nose 275 was sold new in Germany, and made its way to the U.S. around 1970. In 1973, a couple in Youngstown, Ohio, purchased the car with its 300-hp, 3.3-liter V-12 to give to their son as an incentive to finish college. He did. The car is still in its original silver paint and still has the original Campagnolo spare wheel with the original Dunlop radial tire on it. The car will go up for auction on Sunday at the Gooding & Company auction at Pebble Beach, where it is expected to fetch between $900,000 and $1.3 million.
With originality very much in fashion, Dan Simpson of Glendora, California, is reconsidering the plan he’s had for 30 years to restore his 1955 Vignale-bodied Fiat 8V. Still in the red paint it wore on the Fiat stand at the 1955 Turin motor show (a picture of which Dan is holding) and when it ran in the 1955 Mille Miglia, the 8V with its 2.0-liter V-8 (or “otto vu” as the Italians say) “gets more interest like this than restored” says Simpson, who purchased the car in 1981 sans engine and spent 10 years locating the correct motor for it. Fiat built barely more than 100 8Vs in the early 1950s. As for his plan to fix it up: “I have mixed emotions about it.”
The grandfather of Italian design, Battista “Pinin” Farina, personally owned and drove this one-off styling exercise based on the 1960s Lancia Flamina 3C coupe. Tom Tjaarda, who later designed the original De Tomaso Pantera, was involved in styling this car early in his career. While the front is essentially stock Flamina, the rear has huge tail lights and elements of the Ferrari 250 California, another Pininfarina creation. The left and right door panels are different, as Pininfarina was experimenting with alternate designs. The car, with its 2.8-liter V-6, debuted at the 1963 Turin show, and has been in the U.S. since 1972, but has recently been purchased by Italian architect Corrado Lopresto and is heading back to Italy to live in Milan. Here today, gone tomorrow.
Speaking of De Tomaso, this 1966 Vallelunga coupe owned by Dave Buchanan of Palo Alto, California, caught our eye. Just 53 of the fiberglass-bodied coupes were built from 1964 through 1968, with a 1.6-liter Ford four-cylinder “Kent” engine mounted behind the seats.
This 1955 Ferrari 212 Barchetta with a body by Touring-featuring original black paint you can swim in and its original interior-was a gift from Enzo Ferrari to Henry Ford II, grandson of the company founder, before Ford tried unsuccessfully to buy Ferrari and their relations turned, uh, bad. The car, worth at least eight jillion dollars, is said to have been pored over by Ford designers and engineers and inspired a few elements of the first Ford Thunderbird. It is currently owned by the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.
Jack Riddell of San Diego bought this 1967 Lamborghini 400GT 2+2 in 1972 for $6250 while still in the Navy. The car was his daily driver for many years and now has an astonishing 263,000 miles on it. Riddell has rebuilt the 3.9-liter V-12 engine twice-as well as just about everything else on the car-and has driven it to Pebble Beach for 30 years running. What’s a 263,000-mile Lamborghini worth? Some examples of this model have sold for upwards of $200,000, but none with this many miles. “It might be kind of a collector’s item,” said Riddell, but “it doesn’t matter, I’ll never sell it.”
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