Nigel Boothman reports on an amazing French find, a preserved BMW M1 and an original but decayed Porsche 356
Nigel Boothman debriefs us on a recent barn-find fire sale – and wonders how a burnt-out Miura rear end can be worth €150k...
A210, Miura, Ace, Montreal
An extensive collection of sports, GT and competition cars from the estate of a French enthusiast must rank as one of the more startling finds in recent years.
Cars belonging to Gérard Gombert, nicknamed ‘ La Gombe’, were offered in garden-find condition by auctioneers Osenat from the Gombert property in Provence. Almost every car was
dans son jus and some, such as the rear third of a burned- out Lamborghini Miura, were little more than fragments.
Yet most prices soared beyond the estimates, most notably that of an Alpine A210 prototype with history of three outings at Le Mans in the Sixties. On an estimate of € 80k, it sold for a staggering € 873k.
The car was apparently obtained by Gombert shortly after the end of its racing career and used briefly on the road for trips to the Paul Ricard circuit, but as sold it was missing the upper half of its Gordini motor and its engine lid. Expect it to be a star entry at the biennnial Le Mans Classic as soon as restoration work is complete.
The Miura wreckage, which included an engine, sold for a baffling € 150k, the same price paid for a very restorable 1958 AC Ace Bristol. That car’s first owner was the young novelist and girl-about-town Francoise Sagan, who’d smashed up her Aston Martin and needed something new. A later owner had the nose and wings modified to resemble a Cobra. At that time the car also gained a set of 14in Borrani wires from a Ferrari California Spider.
A total of around 50 cars were sold, mostly French and with a strong emphasis on Alpines – Gombert had owned a garage specialising in them. He also seems to have had a fondness for Lotuses (five of them) and motorcycles (50 or more) as well as sympathy for any lost oddities he came across – also sold were an AMC Gremlin (€ 1250), an FX4 London taxi (€250) and a BMW ‘Farmobil’ mini-truck (€ 1750). A folorn-looking Alfa Romeo Montreal fetched € 15,000; a heady sum considering its state.
BMW M1
If we ever doubted that Eighties cars could make dramatic barn finds, those doubts were removed at Christmas when a German specialist announced the discovery of a low-mileage 1981 BMW M1.
The car is said to have been parked in a private garage in southern Italy for the past 35 years, with a service sticker announcing it last received a sump-full of Castrol GTX with just 7302km on the clock, and that the next change was due on New Year’s Eve 1982. The odometer had only clicked round to 7392km (4593 miles) when the car was interred.
It still wears its original 1980- coded Pirellis and the uncluttered, dust-free bits of the interior look like new. Indeed, the car responded well to a clean-up when it arrived at Mint Classics near Munich.
Felipe Garcia runs the business and says he intends to restore the car to perfect working order before it’s offered for sale. As readers will know from a recent Epic Restoration story on a very similar car, M1 parts and repairs can be immensely challenging, so something as apparently well-preserved and original as this must give any restorer the best possible start.
Porsche 356 Speedster
For the second month in a row we can report the discovery of an unrestored Porsche 356 Speedster in America, and as most of the production run of 4854 went to the US it surely won’t be the last. This one will cross the block as we go to press in late January, offered by Gooding and Co at its Scottsdale, Arizona sale.
It was completed in December 1957 before its sale through Competition Motors in Los Angeles in 1958. Back then it was finished in Porsche’s duck- egg-ish Meissen Blue and fitted with a 1.6-litre, 75bhp Super engine. The paint has since disappeared under a sober Navy shade that has itself been partly obscured by red aerosol primer, but the original engine remains. The car’s third owner acquired it from a well-known Los Angeles disc jockey, Bruce Mitchel Reed, and thereafter allowed it to remain scruffy in an apparent attempt to deter thieves.
With no road use since 1974 and what must have been a lengthy period of outdoor living at some point – the interior is positively shredded – the car is too far gone for a clean-up to ‘ preservation’ concoursclass status, but with an estimate of $200k$275k (about £162k to £222k) the cost of acquisition is likely to make a significant dent in anyone’s restoration budget.
‘The 356 Speedster’s previous owner thought the scruffy paint would deter potential thieves’