We had the story of the ten 275 GTB/4 S NART Spiders some days ago, based on the fact that RM has #10709 on offer. Today Gooding & Company came up with the first serial numbers attached to their lots. Amongst those is one of the five NART Spiders commissioned by Luigi Chinetti and built by Giovanni Michelotti. Michelotti was born in Torino in 1921 and joined Stabilimenti Farina in 1936 as an assistant and became the leading designer of the company shortly. He left in 1946 to set up his own business and because of his close friendship to Alfredo Vignale, Michelotti became responsible for many of the early 1950’s Ferrari designs.
Once again, Steve McQueen cues in to the chain of owners. It is the car Gooding will offer in August, #14299. The car was completed as a “regular” Daytona in December 1971 with ass. # 497 and delivered in Grigio Ferro/Rosso VM 893. It was sold new to a Mr. Silva. After its conversion, the car showed up in Blue met/Cuoio with a removable rollbar. None of the five NART Spiders was the same. Let’s see if the celebrity-connection of the cars brings up a premium like cars we have seen for auction already this year. Btw, our good friend, Mike Sheehan, offered the car for sale in 1990.
Michelotti used some wrecked Daytonas for his conversion. One of those, #14897, was delivered new to –guess who, you are right- Steve McQueen! in 1971. The car was badly damaged and was sent to Michelotti for conversion. The car became the New York Auto Show car before being owned by Alan Frank from Pittsburg. Again, a good friend, Bill Noon from Symbolic Motors of La Jolla, offered the car in 2000. It is livered in a Grigio Alloy kind of colour with Beige interior.
Very little is known about the third in the chronological range of serial numbers. Said to be ass. #687 is shall be livered in Azzurro/Tan as well.
#15965 is indeed the most colorful car. Its NART-livery was quite different with a dominating White, the typical Blue and the colour Red was replaced by some kind of Orange. It was the Geneva Salon show car in 1975 and NART entered the car in the 24h du Mans but the car was withdrawn later, as well as it was entered for the 24h of Daytona in 1978, again withdrawn. In 1975 the engine was replaced with eng. # 15685. Later in 1978 the car was repainted Rosso Corsa with a Beige interior, a mistake that was corrected after 2006 when the car was repainted in its raggery of 1975. The car was a dns at last year’s Bonhams' Quail Lodge auction.
The final NART-Spider is the only car that was converted from an original Daytona Spider, the car that was crashed during the filming of “A Star is born” with Barbara Streisand and Kris Kristofferson and rebuilt by Michelotti afterwards, that means later than 1977. It was shown at the Torino Motor Show in 1980. We saw the car at the 60th anniversary celebrations in 2007 and it was shortly shown at 2008’s Techno Classica in Essen and became a dns at Bonhams’ Monaco auction.
We are curious about the result for #14299. It will have the celebrity-bonus but it is “non-Factory”-conversion and with only five of it in existence, the value level might vary.