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Ferrari 275P Bob Peak custom now original body style


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#1 HistoryBuff

HistoryBuff
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Posted 08 May 2013 - 16:29

Ever since I saw the silver Bob Peak (fashion illustrator) designed MIchelotti-built Ferrari custom built on a 275P chassis I fell in love with it.
I saw it on Car & Driver cover, never in person. At one point decades ago I mistakingly thought it was in storage in New Hampshire or some NE state like that but was too cheap to buy newspaper ads to ferret it out. It probably was in Chinetti's storage facility the whole time.
Now I gather the custom body was taken off and it was rebodied in Italy to be a 275P again. Before I am attacked for saying it is a real car because the real one was crashed and burned, I will put up a a layer of defensive ack-ack by quoting no less an authority than Marcel Massini on this same car from another website:
THE QUOTE-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Both 0812 and 0814 were reconstructed by Marco Baldi of Protauto in Sorbara near Modena, Italy, for Luigi Chinetti Jr.. At the request of the Ferrari factory the two cars (plus a 365 GT 2+2) were confiscated and a lawsuit was started against Luigi Chinetti Junior (claiming the cars were replicas). The factory lost the lawsuit after 3 years and the incomplete cars were released in 2003. I have the paperwork of this legal case, including the judge's decision. Here is a photo showing both 0812 and 0814.
Marcel Massini

On 12 June 1966 chassis 0814 was raced in the Saint Baptiste race in St. Jovite, Canada, by Coco Chinetti and Charlie Kolb, race #3, DNF, Chinetti collided with Tom Ashwell’s Elva-BMW, the Ferrari caught fire and burnt to the ground at corner 8. In 1968 the remains of chassis 0814 were REBODIED in Italy into a strange Coupé with Gullwing doors for Chinetti’s NART, following a design by Giovanni Michelotti, prepared for road use for Robert M. Peak, Greenwich/CT/USA (Chinetti’s financial backer). It is pictured page 44 of “Cavallino” magazine, issue #52. In 1968 it (the strange Coupé) was displayed at the New York Auto Show."
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I get a kick out of the fact that Ferrari lost their attempt to dis-enfranchise the car of its pedigree because that builds the case further for its authenticity (if Ferrari can't prove it a fake than who can?) but shakes your faith in the veracity of Ferrari Classiche decisions.

So now that I know it is a real chassis, all I want to know is, did I give up on this car too soon? I saw a flyer (one page brochure) on the car advertised on an e-bay type auction and the mere existance of a flyer means 1.)it was for sale or maybe just they were attempting to drum up interest in the car for some reason. It couldn't be for reproducing more because they didn't have any more chassis. Maybe the car's reason for being was just to stir up interest in hiring Peak & Coco to design custom cars, sort of being the George Barris of the East Coast.
Anyhow maybe someone out there knows someone who was offered the car while it was the gullwing custom and I'd like to know what the asking price was? I would predict under $100,000 which would be like $500,000 today.

Also that leads me to the question: what's the ballpark on the car's value today? I don't see why it shouldn't be in the tens of millions of GTOs are over $35 million each and this car is much more rare than a GTO, more advanced technically, and has a LeMans history (which some GTOs don't...).

Also what is Chinetti Jr.'s goal? I saw an interview of him here (lots of pictures, worth going to)

http://www.motorspor...us-classes/9638

and it was all sort of vague (and I wonder how many of those NART cars he still owns)
Is he merely building up a treasure trove of NART cars to sell in one big lalapalooza of an auction?
(I can see the British members of this forum looking up that word...we Yanks have our own words that we make up.