Rare Garage Find: 1966 Ferrari 275 GTB Long Nose Alloy

You may have read about a garage find 1967 Shelby 427 Cobra here on Barn Finds.  There was another vehicle found with that Cobra and it happens to be an even more valuable car.  It is a 1966 Ferrari 275 GTB Long Nose Alloy and is up for auction at Gooding & Company at Amelia Island, Florida on March 9th.  With an estimated selling price of $2,500,000 – $3,250,000, this car is sure to be one of the highest bid cars of the auction.

The Ferrari long nose alloy has an interesting history.  Here is a brief paragraph taken from the auction description:  “…approximately halfway through the 275 GTB’s production run. The updated design was characterized by a revised front-end treatment, larger rear window, and external trunk hinges.  Of these revised long-nose bodies, the majority were constructed in steel, with only 80 cars delivered with lightweight aluminum coachwork. Not only are these limited-production alloy-bodied 275 GTBs rarer, more sporting, and more sought-after than their steel-bodied counterparts, they represented the latest evolution of Ferrari’s classic dual-purpose berlinetta.”

This specific car is chassis number 08125 and was completed in early 1966.  The color is (a dusty) Argento Metallizzato or Metallic Silver with a blue leather interior.  It also features a numbers-matching engine and is in remarkably original condition.  Most of the car appears to be original.  There is “evidence of some paintwork as well as at least a partial interior reupholstering to a high standard in vinyl, taking the place of the original leather.”  Even with that information, it appears this car will be well into seven-figures and will make a great addition to someone’s collection.

Comments

  1. Avatar Classic Steel

    One lucky flipper or inheritance windfall!

    Very cool retirement fun for someone no matter what their age 💰👀👍

    Now to the vehicle where I find it a super cool and well designed model!

    Like 0
    • Avatar Tyler

      The cars are being sold by the long time owner.

      Like 0
  2. Avatar Karguy James

    I think they are getting a little overboard on the keeping the dust thing. The transport company was not permitted to even TOUCH the car for fear of disturbing the dust. smh

    Like 0
  3. Avatar OA5599

    A thing of beauty.

    Rolling sculpture.

    Like 1
  4. Avatar Mister319

    I think they were more worried about
    Someone trying to push against the aluminum body.

    Like 0
    • Avatar Karguy James

      A hose would not have dented anything.

      Like 0
  5. Avatar Hoos Member

    These cars are art. The dust needs to go. I can see one or two pictures to show evidence of long term storage, then clean it up and take good pictures. I will bid on this car, if I hit the lottery.

    Like 0
  6. Avatar Superdessucke

    The $2.5 million is the value if they wash it. The $3.25 million is the value if they leave the dust and dirt intact.

    Like 0
    • Avatar jdjonesdr

      I’m going to bid on it too, so prepare yourself. I can tell you right now, you better have more than $126.89 or don’t even bother to bid.

      Like 0
      • Avatar NotchNut

        You’re out! I’m good for $134.11.

        Like 0
      • Avatar Mike

        Guys, your bids will only pay for the dirt on the car.

        Like 0
      • Avatar RichieRich

        Seems like the dust and dirt are worth $750k…

        Like 0
      • Avatar WaltB31

        I have to wait until payday to bid. Darn.

        Like 1
    • Avatar Hammer

      Excellent comments from all. LOL!! Someone is going to make a nice sum of money either way on this rare beauty.

      Like 0
  7. Avatar Dan in Texas

    Come park your car in my garage for a week or two. I will give you a dusty patina you can be proud of!

    Like 0
  8. Avatar BarnfindyCollins

    I’m not going to get to be the caretaker of this sort of car. Not many of us are. That’s ok. It’s a beauty. There’s other cars out there that will delight, bankrupt and make you a better person for having them. Whatever it is, if you want to dump your Hoover bag over it to complete the fantasy go ahead. Just go out there and enjoy them anyway you see fit.

    Like 0
    • Avatar Dick Johnson

      A Hoover bag?!? Whazzat? Try to find one these days.

      Neat F-R-I. Too bad hedge fund scalpers have become hedge car fund managers. I bet that Leno would choke on this one.

      At least I have a 1:18th scale of this one. Can’t figure out why it leaks oilio all over my desk.

      Like 0
  9. Avatar Rex Kahrs Member

    I just had an idea. Instead of a company that details cars to make them look better, how about a 30-minute process whereby the car can look like it’s been stored and never washed for 20 years? Kind of like a reverse automatic car wash that puts dirt on instead of taking it off! Brilliant!

    Like 0
    • Avatar Pete

      For a small fee of $1,000 I can make a car look all dusty like this one. It is authentic dirt. I have 4 flavors to choose from or you can get combinations of flavors for a unique dusty appearance. I have a grey gravel road flavor, a red/orange NC clay dirt road flavor, a sand hills area flavor and the NC pollen flavor ( Although it is a seasonal flavor ). I achieve this by following a pick up truck with big knobbies at speed down dirt roads. Don’t want additional miles put on your classic no problem. I will just park it on my car trailer and follow the other truck. For an additional fee I can blow leaves all over the car as well to give it a little bit of spice. :-)

      Like 0
  10. Avatar DRV

    In these pictures for some reason it looks far from sculpture. In person they are more impressive. I guess the size of the freeboard looks very bulbous. The long lense is distorting proportions. Check the windshield out in the first pic…

    Like 0
  11. Avatar Bruce

    I have helped repaint one of these in Black. That body is so fragile and so beautiful. The one I worked on had an exterior racing gas cap. I am not certain if the car was every raced but it was certainly a complex body to work on and get perfect.

    I go to drive it and the loss of the weight of the steel body made a huge difference in the performance. One of the highlights of working at that shop. I am not certain I would wish to own one as I do not personally like the looks that much. I much prefer the Jag XKE in either form, or the later Ferrari Daytona designs. This one in real life especially in the coupe from shown seems fat. Not that it weighs that much but even my 928 seems slimmer and lighter than this design.

    Like 0
  12. Avatar Dolphin Member

    Some of these 275s were raced back in the day and had external gas fillers. You can see them in period photos of Le Mans races in the late 1960s. The prettiest ones had slanted red/blue stripes on the back.

    I had a friend who bought a 275 GTB/4 4-cammer at about the same time I bought a 330GTC around 1978. We each paid $15K for our respective cars.

    I think I’ve mentioned this before, but the guy who sold my friend his 275 GTB got all wound up because after the sale he found out that the alloy bodied 275s were worth more than the steel ones, and he thought the car he sold my friend might have been an alloy car. It wasn’t, but my friend got a heck of a bargain anyway, even for a $15K price for a used car.

    275 GTBs came in 2 series, short nose and long nose. This alloy car being auctioned by Gooding at Amelia is a longnose car. The shortnose cars look similar but have a slightly shorter nose that caused the front to raise up a bit and become unstable at over 150 MPH. Hence the longer, lower nose on the later cars.

    I was offered a longnose 275 GTB with the 6-carb option around 1973 for $15K by Charlie Hayes’s shop in So Cal. Didn’t buy it—on of my biggest mistakes ever. My excuse was that $15K was a lot on money back then, money that I didn’t have. I should have borrowed it anyway.

    Like 0
  13. Avatar TR

    If I remember correctly from the show this car is unusual also because the alloy cars usually came with a 4 cam and this one was ordered with a 2 cam. Along with the 428 in the Cobra this guy tended to gravitate to cars the didn’t have the best power plant. Maybe that’s why he left them for the mice. On the BFH’s show the Cobra had a huge Mouse condo in the trunk. I wonder if they leave that, should be worth another $75k

    Like 0
  14. Avatar Bill McCoskey Member

    In 1979 I was managing a sports car restoration shop in Maryland, when a guy named John brought in an almost identical car; Long nose 275, Alloy body by Scaglietti. The owner said he used to work for G.M. as a car designer and he was the chief designer of the original 1966 Olds Toronado. Also said he had the very first Toronado sold to the public. [I have vague memories of seeing this car, if memory is right, it had almost no mileage showing, and was near mint, with beautiful gold metallic paint.] Anyway – back to the Ferrari;

    John brought the 275 to us because while the external body was indeed aluminum, some of the inner structural body panels were sheet steel. The steel panels included the inner door panels, the outer skin was the only alloy panel on the door. The problem was how the alloy panels were joined to the door assembly: The edge of the alloy panel was bent 180 degrees around the inner door panel’s flange. Knowing that steel & aluminum don’t like each other, Scaglietti used what could best be described as burlap cloth to keep the metals separated.

    The burlap cloth didn’t work worth a damn. John’s car had exterior alloy door panels that were corroding all the way around the edge of both doors, and of course the steel flange was fast disappearing too. At that time in the late 1970s, we were the only shop in the central east coast of America, with the ability to create the door skins using our English wheel, MIG and TIG welding systems, and highly skilled & experienced metal workers.

    After removing both door skins, we realized the corrosion had been far worse than just around the outer 3/4″. The panels were far too thin to TIG weld new alloy patch panels onto, even 6 to 8 inches towards the center. The old skins would just vaporize wherever we tried to weld. So we ended up creating 2 new door skins. We MIG welded in new steel sections to create new flanges on the door assemblies, then [if memory is right] we used a type of “oilcloth” in long strips, glued onto the flanges in a U shape. When the new outside skins were folded around the flange, there would be no adverse metal contact.

    After we finished the metal work & primed the car, since we didn’t do paintwork in-house, John came and got the car, and I never saw it again. if the car being auctioned off has evidence of similar door skin & flange repairs, I’ll bet it’s the same car. After all – How many Ferrari 275 Long Nose Alloy cars in silver, located on the east coast of America, can there be?

    For many years I kept the 2 old door skins hanging on the wall of my shop, they were just too nice a shape to scrap them. Sadly, when my shop burned from a lightning strike, they vanished in the flames!

    And I’ve always wondered what happened to the Toronado . . .

    Like 0
    • Avatar Dolphin Member

      Very interesting story, Bill. The construction methods and the problem you found in the doors of that alloy bodied 275 are exactly what I would expect. These cars were basically built by hand. The small numbers made didn’t justify the expense of anything more advanced than panel beating using traditional hand methods, or maybe the English wheel that you mentioned, with thin strips separating dissimilar metals.

      I remember a description of the Zagato factory, where the noise of panel beating went on all day long. I wonder how many of those workers lost hearing capacity because of that.

      I remember once when I had to take off an interior side window trim piece on the 330 GTC I owned way back when…. As a matter of fact, it was way back when they were more or less affordable…. Anyway, it was a piece of aluminum that had been beaten into shape by hand using a hammer, probably on a sandbag or something similar, then covered with black leather.

      Like 0
    • Avatar Maurice

      Bill and Dolphin, let’s not forget that *small* carrozzerias like Scaglietti (even Vignale, Drogo, Boano, Allemano etc.) also always had the pressure of needing to get cars ready to sell. After all, they were there to sell finished cars. The black “burlap” was used to shield the aluminum from the steel frames, but for above and many other reasons it was often just omitted. I did several cars with corroded aluminum skins with nothing separating it from the steel frame so no wonder they corroded even after a few years. Fact is, these cars were never built to end up in high end collections some 50 years later.

      When we now restore cars like this I use modern caulk-like compounds which are invisible and give perfect galvanic protection. I bet that if these old time coachbuilders had access to materials like 3M 08115 (no affiliation with them) panel bonding adhesive they would have used it. ;-) I have the greatest respect for the craftsmen from back then; analyzing their welds and hammer marks really tells you a lot about how skillful and experienced they were in their craft. Even with the most high tech and expensive welders it’s sometimes hard to duplicate their work (mostly gas welds).

      The (chromed) brass moldings on these were mostly fit to the bodies by hammering (stretching and shrinking) into shape. Every car was different and didn’t fit other cars in the series – the reason why they have the serial numbers stamped into them. The charm of this is telling of these craftsmen real life struggles to make parts fit and how they managed to do this in short enough time AND that the cars overall came out very nice. With all the modern production methods this is a dying breed, only few people left who can do this. I now leave these (or even duplicate) original hammer marks in important cars because I think it gives us a sense of how these shops worked back then and gives these men the honor they deserve.

      Like 0
  15. Avatar Gus

    Bill, Sounds like a guy Americans Pickers picked. You never know.

    Like 0
  16. Avatar gaspumpchas

    Brings new meaning to the term Drop dead Gorgeous.Beauty from any angle. Too bad its so far out of reach to us working slobs!!!!

    Like 0
  17. Avatar conrad alexander

    lets face it…..if your on this site and are reading this, you cant afford it

    Like 0
  18. Avatar Popa John

    Such a shame that cars of this nature be treated like an art piece. As well it is, BUT! Its a FERRARI, a mans car, car to be driven to show its manhood not an art piece that sits on a shelve to be admired. DRIVE IT!

    Like 0
  19. Avatar Mark

    Test drove one in the 70s with my step dad couldn’t convince my mom to drop 10k on an estate sale dude had a barn full of cars but just remember the 275 red V12 car oil eater.

    Like 0
  20. Avatar sluggo

    You could restyle a Datsun Z car to get this look for a fraction of this price and be able to drive it to the Grocery store without having a heart attack or a security team.

    Like 0
  21. Avatar lbpa18

    The musings of the scribes is half the reason I love reading these. You guys kill me. A happy smile with my coffee before I head off to work to earn enough to buy the shadow this left on a sunny day.

    Like 0

Leave a Reply to OA5599 Cancel reply

RULES: No profanity, politics, or personal attacks.

Become a member to add images to your comments.

*

Get new comment updates via email. Or subscribe without commenting.