Collector cars, Baby Boomers and Estate sales
We begin with a quick history lesson. The Baby-Boomers are those born from 1946 to 1964, during the baby boom that followed the end of World War II. Today the youngest are 61 years old and the oldest are 79. They are the majority of our client base, many have been clients for multiple decades. […]
Caveat Emptor
We start with insane import duties and onerous regulations. Ferrari never made a RHD 288 GTO, F40, F50 or Enzo, (excluding a few dozen built by Pininfarina for the Brunei Royal Family) and so none of these Supercars, either new or used, were registered in most Asian countries, (excluding Japan), as almost all Asian countries […]
The Billion Dollar Week
As always the Monterey car week is the focus of the collector car universe and the various auctions are the collector car market-makers, defining values and price directions. Looking through the different auction houses online offering, there is a deluge of “big dollar” cars hitting the market over just one week. As database obsessives are […]
Importing an F50: A Tragi-Comedy in Two Acts, Act Two, the Department of NO at the EPA
Earlier this week we reviewed the byzantine process, way back in 2000 and 2001, of getting the DOT approval to import Ferrari F50 s/n 103496, an F50 which had been converted to racing specs and then run in forty different races in the 1998, 1999 and 2000 Maranello Ferrari Challenge and the 1998 and 1999 […]
Importing an F50: A Tragi-Comedy in Two Acts, Act one, the DOT
Act one, the not-so-friendly folks at the DOT: After fifty plus years selling thousands of Ferraris, many of the Ferraris we’ve sold find their way back to us, with F50 s/n 103496, (the only F50 that actively raced in period), now back with us for the third time, now fully restored back to street trim […]
The West Coast Trans Am Series
My Daughter Colleen and I were at Thunderhill raceway on 8-9-10 April with our 2010 Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 car s/n 09-7-1066 for the first race in the West Coast Trans Am Series. The Trans Am Series has been around since 1966 and today races at famed East Coast tracks such as Sebring, Road Atlanta, Lime […]
Cavallino: Thanks for Your Years of Dedication, Now Piss Off
Early on the morning of 12 Jan., Chris Current, the Chief judge at the Cavallino Classic sent a mass e-mail to the 50-odd Ferrari IAC/PFA certified judges, most due to be at Cavallino the next weekend. Chris wrote, in part, ” I have been working with Canossa for some months with the draft list of […]
Finding a Ferrari for $100K or Less
This month our esteemed editor wanted to move away from the high-end Ferraris to the bottom-end world of affordability for mere mortals—perhaps he is still suffering from million-dollar-Monterey shock. My mission statement was: “Find the best buy in $100k or less for a modern Ferrari” along with the corollary “Would any of these cars sell […]
Ferrari F1, #10, 2011-2012, The Hybrid Era
Where We Left Off In the ninth installment of this series we reviewed how Fernando Alonso and Renault had the right combination to win both the 2005 and 2006 titles. Kimi Räikkönen bounced back taking the title for Ferrari in 2007, but was beaten by Lewis Hamilton and McLaren in 2008. In 2009 the F1 […]
Ferrari F1, #9, 2005-2010, a Changing of the Guard
Where we left off In the eighth installment of this series we reviewed how Michael Schumacher, Scuderia Ferrari and the dream team of Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne had absolutely dominated the 2000 to 2004 seasons, in part because of Ferraris close collaboration with Bridgestone, matching their tires to Ferraris chassis characteristics. After five straight […]