A while back, I received an email from Alvin A about some Mercedes 300SLs that he and his father had found in his native Venezuela, you can read that story here. Along the way he just happened mention something about a Ferrari too, so being the car fanatic that I am, I had to ask him about it. He told me he would get me some photos of it and he has followed through with his promise. As you can see from this somewhat blurry photo, Alvin’s father is clearly standing next to a Ferrari 275 GTB/4!
Alvin’s father found this 275 about 6 years ago. When they discovered it, it was in a sad state with the body partially disassembled and in primer. It had been stashed away after a failed restoration. To only make things more interesting and incredible, they were able to able to dig up a little information about it and as it turned out it had been raced extensively in its early years. Sadly the powerful Colombo V12 was out of the car, but thankfully was still with it. They quickly determined that every inch of the car was in need of restoration, so it was loaded up and shipped to a Ferrari specialist here in the States.
I can only imagine what goes into restoring a car like this! The GTB/4 was a very limited production car and is quite desirable now, with current values ranging as high as $7 million. I imagine finding parts is nearly impossible and extremely expensive. So what makes this particular model so special and valuable? Well besides being one of only 300 Ferrari 275s built, the GTB/4 came with several aerodynamic tweaks and performance upgrades. The V12 had a reworked valve train with two extra cams, which bumped power up to 300 hp and necessitated a bulge in the hood for the larger air filter. The added lines to the hood gave the car a much cleaner and sportier look over the standard GTB. Underneath, the transaxle was all new with a torque tube transferring power from the engine back. The transmission also gained synchromesh, which greatly improved shiftability and made the car much easier to drive.
I imagine it must have been an incredible rush for Alvin and his father when they found this Ferrari! You don’t have to be a Ferrari fan to appreciate the magnitude of a find like this, it literally is the kind of find many of us dream of. While I would love to have found this car, it sounds like it is in good hands and is being given the kind of attention a car like this deserves! I want to thank Alvin for sharing this with us and I wish them the best of luck with it!
Hey that was the car my uncle Hugo promised to me
No he didn’t! He promised to me!
:)
Incredable! This has to be one of the best barn finds ever. (And it is even better that the car is going to be restored by the people who discovered it!)
It does look like a 275 GTB/4, the one with 4 cams instead of the earlier 2 cam. I wonder what the VIN is. I can imagine the Ferrari historians jumping all over this as a ‘long lost’ 4-cam.
This is one of those once-in-a-decade finds in the Ferrari world, except that they are happening more often than that now, like the Alain Delon California that was found in that neglected collection in France recently and went for mega-millions, unrestored.
These are now a minimum of 1.5 $million-up, depending on history, and if authenticated I doubt that this would sell for less than a $million even if incomplete and not untouched from its present condition.
Nothing that a can of bondo & a case of PB Blaster can’t fix !