DUEMILA RUOTE

VAST CLASSIC COLLECTION SPARKS FEEDING FRENZY AMONG BIDDERS

HOW DO you organise the sale of one guy’s collection of 423 classic cars? It takes some doing. It’s a solid thirty hours of auctioneering, which also included 155 lots of motor bikes, 1400 bicycles and 55 boats. Let’s just say that someone had a bit of a hoarding problem. Fully 21 days were spent cataloguing the items, by nine people from four countries. The lots filled 11 warehouses and were auctioned in premises covering 200,000 square-feet of exhibition space. Bidders from 57 countries took part and RM Sothebys had over 25,000 catalogues printed. Nearly 100 trucks shipped the cars from Venice to Milan where over 5000 people attended live, the final sum raised totalling

51.26 million (A$72.66m). Top sales? This little list, with quite a few ‘youngtimers’ realising some serious money.

Lot 602: 1966 Ferrari 275 GTB/6C Alloy 3.416.000 Lot: 601 2004 Maserati MC12

3.024.000

Lot 877: 1992 Ferrari F40

1.030.400

Lot 875: 1988 Porsche 959 ‘Komfort’ 1.008.000

Lot 876: 1969 Ferrari

365 GTB/4 Daytona Berlinetta ‘Plexi’ 873.600 Lot 599: 1991 Lancia-Ferrari LC2 Group C 851.200

Lot 600: 2005 Porsche Carrera GT 761.600

Lot 572: 1969 Ferrari

365 GTC 739.200

Lot 588: 1994 Bugatti EB110 GT 616.000

Lot 896: 1996 Porsche 993 GT2 616.000

Sothebys ought to be applauded for cranking up the pre-event hype to the rafters.

An example of the nature of the bidding? If you were coming in at the more affordable end of the scale, the race-prepped 1974 Beta Coupé 1800 might have looked a tempting target. Against a pre-event estimate of 7,000, the hammer fell with the car reaching 56,000, eight times estimate. A manual Ferrari 599 is rare but hardly a landmark car, yet this example fetched 537,600.

As this sale was a distressed divestment brought on by tax issues, many of the lots were in less than stellar condition, but auction fever set in hard.

As far as bang for your buck goes, it was hard to top the massive 1984 CUV Lamborghini #1 Offshore Class 1 ‘Miura’, powered by two giant Lambo V-12s that sold for

117,000.