Equipment
Lefthand drive. Painted Borrani wire wheels, full width windshield, side mounted exhausts, drivers head fairing. Customer pontoon fender Testa Rossa delivered to Jean Louis Soares in Brazil and raced locally by various drivers including Chico Landi. Later rebodied by Drogo as a GTO ish coupe. Restored for Sir Paul Vestey by DK Engineering with RS Panels replica body. Current owner since 1996 and crashed at least twice in historic racing incidents. Fresh repaint, otherwise in sound and presentable historic racer condition. Seven Shell Historic Challenge tech stickers. Spare engine included for racing to preserve the original engine.
Market commentary
Bid to just over $10 million with three bidders in the room when the Without Reserve caption flashed on the screens, then a couple more bids and Without Reserve suddenly disappeared. Some onlookers thought auctioneer Max Girardo announced it as selling, but thats an inaccurate impression. Its hard to figure what was going on, but the crowd was burned and booed enthusiastically when it left the block without being sold. This is twice recently where RM has screwed up in similar fashion with a high profile car (the other being the Corvette Grand Sport in Arizona two years ago) and such fumblings do their stature no good at all. $10.6 million should have seen this (rebodied, customer, repeatedly crunched and rebuilt in its most recent ownership) car well and truly sold and on its way to a new owner.