1953 Alfa Romeo 6C 3000 CM Superflow IV by Pinin Farina
Offered by Gooding & Company | Pebble Beach, California | August 17, 2019
Photo – Gooding & Company
The Alfa Romeo 6C was first introduced in 1927. That it was still in production in 1954 is kind of crazy, but in Alfa’s defense, the model went through quite a few rounds of changes before it was discontinued. The last iteration of the model was the 6C 3000, which was introduced in 1948.
Three passenger car prototypes were built before Alfa focused the model exclusively on racing. The first racing car was a one-off, and then the company moved to the production of the CM, or Competizione Maggiorata. The engine is a 275 horsepower, 3.5-liter inline-six. Only six were built.
This car began life as a Colli-bodied Berlinetta. After its use as a Le Mans test car, it was shipped to Pinin Farina and re-debuted at the 1956 Turin Motor Show as the “Superflow.” The car was re-bodied in quick succession as the Superflow II and the Super Spider before it culminated, in 1960, as the Superflow IV design you see here.
Passing through a few private owners, it later wore a replica of the Super Spider body before it was restored with its original Superflow IV body in 2013. This is the first time it’s ever been to auction, and it’s one of those cars you never see trade hands publicly. It is expected to sell for between $6,000,000-$8,000,000. Click here for more info and here for more from this sale.
Offered by Gooding & Company | Pebble Beach, California | August 16, 2019
Photo – Gooding & Company
Well, there are few race cars more desirable than a Ferrari Formula One car. And one that won the driver’s and constructor’s championship is more or less holy grail territory. The 312T was the replacement for the 312B3 and debuted at the third race of the 1975 season.
The 3.0-liter flat-12 pumps out 500 horsepower, and five examples were built. Two of which were used by Niki Lauda during the season, while teammate Clay Regazzoni also took the helm of this chassis throughout the season. The competition history of this car consists of:
1975 Spanish Grand Prix – 25th, DNF (with Lauda)
1975 Belgian Grand Prix – 5th (with Regazzoni)
1975 Dutch Grand Prix – 2nd (with Lauda)
1975 French Grand Prix – 1st (with Lauda)
1975 German Grand Prix – 3rd (with Lauda)
1975 Austrian Grand Prix – 6th (with Lauda)
1976 South African Grand Prix – 18th, DNF (with Regazzoni)
It was purchased by its first private owner out of Ferrari storage in 1979. It was restored by its present owner and won its class at Pebble Beach in 2017. It now should bring between $6,000,000-$8,000,000. Click here for more info and here for more from this sale.
Offered by Gooding & Company | Pebble Beach, California | August 17, 2019
Photo – Gooding & Company
WWI ace Eddie Rickenbacker became the owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway in 1927. For 1930 he introduced a new set of rules that required a riding mechanic and also increased the allowable engine displacement. The result was an influx of off-the-shelf parts used on cars, many of which were just heavily modified versions of street cars.
This car was built by Studebaker’s head of testing, George Hunt, in collaboration with land speed racer Ab Jenkins. The chassis was purchased from fabricator Rigling and Henning, and a Studebaker President 336ci straight-eight was stuffed under the custom aluminum bodywork. It features four Winfield carburetors and produces 205 horsepower. It’s competition history includes:
1931 Indianapolis 500 – 18th, DNF (with Tony Gulotta)
1931 Pikes Peak Hill Climb – 1st (with Chuck Myers)
1932 Indianapolis 500 – 6th (with Zeke Meyer)
1933 Indianapolis 500 – 12th (with L.L. Corum)
After 1933, the car was run by Jenkins on the Bonneville Salt Flats and was later used by his son as a road car. The restoration was completed in the early 1980s, and it is now expected to bring between $500,000-$750,000. Click here for more info and here for more from Gooding & Company.
Offered by Gooding & Company | Pebble Beach, California | August 16-17, 2019
Photo – Gooding & Company
The Tipo 256 is a very rare pre-war Alfa based on the 6C 2500. It was a racing car that was introduced in 1939. A few things differentiate the 256 from other racing variants of the 6C, one of them being that the Tipo 256 was actually prepared by Scuderia Ferrari in Modena, and not by Alfa themselves.
Power is from a 125 horsepower, 2.5-liter inline-six. Other features include a shortened frame, larger fuel tank, lowered radiator, three Weber carburetors, and a stiffer suspension. This car was originally built as a Spider Siluro and it’s competition history includes:
1940 Mille Miglia – 36th, 7th in class (with Giovanni Maria Cornaggia Medici and B. Gavazzoni)
It competed in a number of other Italian road races in 1939 and 1940, when production of the 256 ceased. In all, it is believed that 20 examples were built. This one, like at least a few others, was re-bodied after its racing career ended. This Touring body you see above was fitted in 1941.
It remained in Italian hands until coming to Washington state in 2012. This marks the first time this chassis has ever been offered for public sale, and it is expected to fetch between $2,750,000-$3,500,000. Click here for more info and here for more from this sale.
Offered by Gooding & Company | Pebble Beach, California | August 16-17, 2019
Photo – Gooding & Company
We’ve featured quite a few of Jaguar’s XJR prototype sportscar racers over the years, and this one fills in the nice gap we had between the XJR-9 and XJR-11. It was used by Jaguar in the IMSA GTP series between 1989 and 1991.
The design is attributed to Tom Walkinshaw and Tony Southgate, and power is provided by a 650 horsepower, twin-turbocharged 3.0-liter V6. Only three examples were built, and the competition history for this chassis (389) includes:
1989 IMSA Portland – 1st (with Jan Lammers and Price Cobb)
1989 IMSA Del Mar – 1st (with Lammers)
1990 IMSA Lime Rock – 1st (with Cobb and John Nielsen)
1991 IMSA Miami – 1st (with Raul Boesel)
Jaguar won the 1989 IMSA GTP championship, and this car competed in quite a few other races with just the wins highlighted above. Tom Walkinshaw Racing (Jaguar’s partner in this endeavor) retained the car until 1999, and it has since been campaigned in historic Group C events. It has also been restored. The pre-sale estimate is $1,500,000-$2,000,000. Click here for more info and here for more from this sale.
Offered by Gooding & Company | Pebble Beach, California | August 16-17, 2019
Photo – Gooding & Company
To be a Duesenberg customer during the age of the Model J, you had to be wealthy. A bare chassis, engine, and firewall would run you about $9,500 at the dawn of the Great Depression. Then you had to go have a body built by one of the world’s leading coachbuilders. And they didn’t come cheap, either.
But to purchase seven such cars requires a certain kind of wealth that only someone like, oh say the son of the founder of Pacific Gas & Electric could possess. Enter George Whittell Jr. He had $50 million in the stock market and liquidated all of it just weeks before it crashed. So yeah, he could afford the seven Dueseys.
Powered by a 265 horsepower, 6.9-liter straight-eight, this car wears “Sport Berline” coachwork by Murphy. I would agree with their marketing lingo that the car is indeed sportier than the average sedan from 1930. It was previously owned by J.B. Nethercutt and Bill Harrah. It’ll be one of many special cars to cross the block in Monterey later this year. Check out more here and see more from Gooding’s sale here.
We stay in Britain for Brightwells’ Leominster sale where our lone feature car, the Jaguar XJS Monaco, failed to sell. The top seller was this 1989 Ferrari 328 GTS for $75,101. Click here for additional results.
Photo – Brightwells
Onward now to Amelia Island and Bonhams, where we featured a lot of interesting cars. Remarkably, only one of them didn’t sell according to Bonhams’ results: the 1910 Pope-Hartford that was supposed to be offered without reserve. Not sure what’s going on there.
Relative deals consisted of the $62,720 Columbus and the $60,480 Crow-Elkhart. A previously-featured 1904 Knox sold here for $252,000. Final results can be found here.
We also featured quite a few cars from the RM Sotheby’s sale in Amelia Island, including some we featured from past sales like this 1924 Isotta Fraschini, this V-12 Cadillac, this AAR Eagle – all three of which failed to sell. The big-dollar Bugatti failed to find a new home as well. The overall top sale was the 1930 Duesenberg we featured. It sold for $1,650,000. We will award Most Interesting to this wicker-bodied 1911 Napier 15HP Victoria that brought $156,800.
Of our feature cars, the OSCA 1600 GT sold for $489,000 and the Kurtis $263,200. A previously-featured Abarth 207/A went for $362,500. Click here for complete results.
Offered by Gooding & Company | Amelia Island, Florida | March 8, 2019
Photo – Gooding & Company
Look familiar? No this is not a Muntz Jet. It’s the pre-Muntz Jet: the Kurtis Sports. Race cars built by Frank Kurtis dominated the Indy 500 in the 1950s, and he built some road cars as well.
The first Sports was built in 1948 and was based on a wrecked 1941 Buick. Power is from a 5.4-liter Cadillac V8 making 160 horsepower. It’s a good-looking car – good enough that when Earl Madman Muntz acquired the production rights to the car and moved production to Illinois, he didn’t really have to change that much.
Only 16 examples of the Kurtis Sports were produced before it became the Muntz Jet. This example was restored by Arlen Kurtis, Frank’s son, and has pretty extensive ownership history. Extremely rare today, the car should bring between $275,000-$350,000. Click here for more info and here for more from this sale.
Offered by Gooding & Company | Amelia Island, Florida | March 8, 2019
Photo – Gooding & Company
Very few racing teams or race cars builders have managed to survive for extended periods of time without producing road cars to fund their racing fun. Ferrari had to do it. So why not the Maserati brothers on their second go-round, this time with OSCA?
The 1600 GT was designed from the outset as a road car, unlike earlier models such as the MT4. It is powered by a 1.6-liter DOHC inline-four that makes 125 horsepower. The body carries Zagato’s “double bubble” design language and is made of aluminum so that 125 horsepower doesn’t have to cart around all that much weight.
Only 60 examples of the 1600 GT were sold, and only 31 are thought to still exist. The current owner has spent over $300k since 2012 getting it into the shape it’s in. Looking at it from an ROI perspective, it’s not that great of an investment, considering the wide estimate is from $350,000-$500,000. But ROI is certainly not what it’s all about with these cars. Click here for more info and here for more from this sale.
January means one thing: Scottsdale. And we’ll start there with Bonhams where the 1951 Maserati we featured was the top sale at $2,755,000. Most of the other really big money cars all missed the target, which might say something about the top of the market (but we’ll see as the other sales all wrap up). The other Frua-bodied car, the Fiat 1100C, sold for $577,000. We’ll award Most Interesting to this 1956 Lincoln Premiere Convertible – mostly because I really want one. I just don’t have the $50,400 it would’ve required to take this one home.
Photo – Bonhams
A previously-featured Abarth race car sold here for $16,800 – a long way from the $45k+ it brought at multiple previous auctions (weird, it has a different chassis number listed in this sale compared to previous sales, but has the exact same backstory). This car has changed hands multiple times in the last few years. Someone here either got a great deal, or the consignor finally unloaded an albatross at a loss (also, dibs on “Albatross at a Loss” as my next rap album name). Meanwhile, the Stevens-Duryea sold for $72,800. Click here for complete results.
Next up from Arizona is RM Sotheby’s, and there were a couple of cars that failed to meet their reserve, including a previously-featured Hispano-Suiza and the Ferrari 250 GT Coupe Speciale. But another Ferrari was top dog at this sale, specifically this 1985 Ferrari 288 GTO that sold for $3,360,000.
Barrett-Jackson’s catalog is so large that I don’t feel like scrolling through the entire thing trying to find highlights and the top sale. Their user interface leaves a little to be desired, so I’m just going to look through Saturday’s results and assume that the top sale was in their prime time lineup. What I found: the overall top sale was, as it usually is here, a charity lot. The first 2019 Ford GT Heritage Edition went for $2,500,000.
Finally, we have Worldwide Auctioneers’ Scottsdale sale where this 1959 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Roadster was the overall top sale at $990,000.
Photo – Worldwide Auctioneers
Our three Indiana-built feature cars all sold, with the two Duesenbergs falling in “good deal” range. The Duesenberg Tourster sold for $605,000, and the other Duesey brought $506,000. The Auburn Boattail rounds it all out at $291,500. Click here if you want more results from this sale.
