by Chris Evans
‘Morning Chris, morning Mrs Evans,’ said the kindly, smiling, silver-haired proprietor as we walked in. ‘You might want to take a look at that little lady in the far corner,’ he added, pointing toward the front of the showroom. ‘She’s proper special, that one.’
Tash nodded encouragingly and having been given the all-clear, I fairly sprinted over to see what Graham was getting so excited about. Graham and I had known each other for years but he normally just left me to mooch. This was the first time he’d ever seen fit to steer me in the direction of a particular car.
When I set eyes on the work of art before me I could see why he had felt it appropriate to change his tactics. There in all its splendour, was an immaculate rosso-red Ferrari 328 GTS. She was perfect and looked brand new.
‘Isn’t she a beauty?’ he smiled, with the satisfaction of someone who knew they had hit the spot. ‘Fourteen hundred miles from new, original tyres, not a mark on the paintwork, probably the best in the world.’
He wasn’t kidding. This car had to be over twenty years old and yet it looked as if it had just been driven out of the factory gates in Maranello. It was love at first sight.
‘How much is it?’ I asked.
‘Forty-nine, nine-fifty.’ Graham had hooked his catch.
‘Forty-seven and you change the cam belts and give it a service?’ I countered.
‘Done,’ said Graham, knowing it was a win-win.
And that was it, she was mine. And now a disclaimer.
I just need to explain that although this may have seemed like an impulsive purchase, it was actually two decades in the making. This is because when the Ferrari 328 GTS came out, I couldn’t afford one for a couple of reasons:
I was only fourteen at the time
I was on £1.80 a week wages as a paper boy
Four days later she was in our drive back at the farm, but as I’ve said, that wasn’t the end of my Ferrari-purchasing days. She was only the beginning – there were more to follow in her wake, including the most expensive car ever to be sold at auction anywhere in the world.
TOP
10
THINGS I LOVE ABOUT FERRARIS
10 The aspiration
9 The rarity
8 The outrageousness
7 The history
6 The power
5 The speed
4 The smell
3 The noise
2 The engine
1 The curves
WITH THE PURCHASE OF MY NEW LITTLE TOY came all the memories and dreams of a childhood that had seemed to vanish into thin air. The more I thought about it, the more I became sad and angry.
I began to reflect on all the days, weeks, months and years that I had wasted, slumped in dark and dingy pubs and bars, paying good money to do nothing more than pickle my liver and addle my brain.
I made a promise to myself. From that day on I would fall back in love with my dreams and I would hunt down the greatest Ferrari of them all – a work of utter perfection that goes by the name of the 250 GTO.
At the same time Tash announced that she wanted us to have a baby. ‘Alright,’ I agreed. ‘Let’s go for both and see which arrives first. The race is on – may the best man win.’
Not so fast though, sonny. After some fairly basic research it was evident that the baby would almost certainly arrive before the beast, as Tash and I were able to undertake all that should be necessary to procreate, whereas I would have to rob several banks to lay my hands on enough cash to buy a GTO.
Blimey, I had no idea they had become so expensive; they were now changing hands for upwards of £15 million! The GTO, it seemed, was simply never going to happen.
‘Bums,’ I thought, as I recalled a guy once bringing a GTO onto The Big Breakfast back in 1994. It was billed as the most expensive car in the world – a mere snip at £2 million.
Why hadn’t I taken all the money from the Virgin deal and spent it on classic Ferraris? If I had I would own every single important classic Ferrari in the world and I would have been sitting on a profit of almost ten times the value. And even if the cars had gone down in value, I would still have had them in my garage to look at – unlike the useless pieces of paper which stated I once owned millions of shares that were now worth literally nothing.
How could I right this wrong? The fact was, I couldn’t. That particular ship in my life had sailed, I had to accept it. However, there were other Ferraris in the world.
‘This came through the post yesterday babe,’ Tash said one morning when I was sitting in the kitchen, aimlessly stroking the dog, still stewing on what might have been. ‘I think it’s the brochure for a car auction – something to do with Bernie Ecclestone selling off a load of his collection.’
Tash was right and there were lots of them. Where I had messed up, Bernie had lucked out and been buying classic cars for years. The rumour was that he had hundreds and it was time for him to thin his crop a little.
I studied Bernie’s collection but I didn’t understand it. It was all over the place. There were fifties Cadillacs and seventies BMWs and the odd Roller, there was even a VW Beetle. I already thought he was a strange, albeit brilliant, little man but looking at his car collection, or at least some of it, he seemed even stranger.
None of them were for me, not by a long shot. There was, however, another collection also up for sale, the majority of which were emblazoned with the infamous badge of a black prancing horse against a yellow background, the calling card of Signore Enzo Ferrari.
Tash and I went to the auction which was being held in London’s Battersea Park in a huge purpose-built marquee. It was more rock and roll than gavel and hammer, with dry ice and spotlights all over the place. It was exciting, which I suppose was the intention, and immediately I eyeballed a bright yellow 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB4 that was on offer. Sure, it was no GTO, but it was also £15.25 million less expensive.
‘You don’t want that, do you?’ gargled a gravelly Scottish voice behind me.
Blow me, if it wasn’t the guy who had brought the GTO on to The Big Breakfast.
‘JC, how are you? I smiled back at him. ‘Sweetheart,’ I said, turning to Tash, ‘this is John Collins, Ferrari dealer extraordinaire and one-time handsome, hard-drinking womaniser.’
If John was pleased to see me, which he seemed to be, he was even more pleased to see my wife. I won’t go into John’s history, other than to say he’s been there and got most of the T-shirts, and even though he’s nearly sixty now and a little craggy around the edges, you wouldn’t trust him with your worst enemy’s wife.
John said he had been out of the market for a while, having sold up and bought a polo team instead – well, you would wouldn’t you? But if I wanted a serious car he would be happy to find one for me, for his usual finder’s fee, of course. We talked about GTOs for a while and how he’d had not one but six of them go through his books.
After a few minutes, John suggested we grab a drink.
‘John, we’d love to but Tash only likes the bubbles and I really fancy a cold beer.’
‘Leave it to me,’ announced John.
It turned out that he had been a shareholder in the company that was running the auction and had a special supply of booze in their production office. He also had cigarettes and it was very much a cigarette night.
John asked me how serious I was about getting into highend Ferraris. I replied that I was deadly serious but had a limited budget that sadly would no longer stretch to a GTO. He said, no matter, GTOs come and go and if it was meant to be then it was meant to be. John suggested I think about a 250 Short Wheel Base, the predecessor of the GTO and the car Sir Stirling Moss described as the best car he’d ever driven.
Four weeks later, there was one in my garage – and a few months after that she’d been joined by a few friends, all Ferraris, and all absolute classics: an F40, a 288 GTO, a 275 GTB4, a Dino, a Daytona Spyder and a Lusso. A very tidy collection indeed, beautiful to look at, thrilling to drive and only ever going up
in value – I hope. But there was another roller-coaster ride around the corner.
In the spring of 2008, Tash and I were invited to Italy, to the home of Ferrari motor cars in the village of Maranello. It was a two-night trip, including a factory tour and dinner at Pavarotti’s old restaurant on the Saturday, followed by a second dinner in the ancient town of Modena on the Sunday. In the middle of all this was another auction, this time featuring only Ferraris and Ferrari-related merchandise.
The price for the whole trip was less than a thousand pounds a head. I told Tash I would love to go and she said she would be more than happy to come with me. Once on the plane, a privately chartered jet, the talk was only of cars, since all twenty people on board were on the same trip. JC was there, of course, having now jumped back into the market fulltime after kissing his polo-playing days goodbye.
Everyone was already excitedly talking about the auction and what they might or might not bid for. Some had deeper pockets than others, but they all sounded like they might be up for something. And of course there was lots of discussion concerning the ‘lead car’.
The lead car at an auction is the car they put on all the posters and the front of the catalogue to promote the sale, and when it comes to an auction like this one it has to be something very special. The auctioneers were in no mood to disappoint; they had somehow acquired the former property of Hollywood legend James Coburn – his stunning black Ferrari 250 Short Wheel Base California Spyder.
I knew this was some car, but not for a second, sitting on the tarmac at Farnborough airport flicking through pictures of it, did I think I would come to own it by Sunday evening. I wasn’t even considering bidding on any car, let alone that one! All I wanted to do was have a couple of days away with my wife, enjoy some nice wine and food, and see the factory where dreams come true.
I’d like to say the next forty-eight hours were a blur but I remember almost every second. The factory tour was fascinating for me and just about bearable for Tash, as she became the main attraction for many of the young Ferrari mechanics. Pavarotti’s restaurant, where we adjourned afterwards, was so typically Italian it was brilliant, with shiny tiled floors, big tables and mountains of food. Italy began to work its magic on us – after a late night and a lie-in of course! And I suppose that was the point of the whole trip.
It was almost midday on Sunday by the time we made it down to the foyer to grab a taxi back to the factory where the auction was being held.
I don’t know what happened to me in the next few hours but it was as though I had been possessed. As soon as we arrived back at the gates of Maranello, I began to think about the Coburn Car. Whilst Tash went to grab a much-needed coffee – not her usual frothy white but rather a fuel-injected double espresso, I crept off to have a quiet drool over the black beauty.
The California Spyder has often been described as ‘the most beautiful car ever made’ and now I could see why. Inspired by the sunshine of America’s West Coast and designed by the descendants of da Vinci – and with a whole heap of horsepower under the bonnet – this car combined the best of all possible worlds for a Ferrari fanatic like me.
As my inspection melted into admiration and then into love, I began to have a serious word with myself. I might not be able to afford the mighty GTO but I could probably just about afford this little belter – at a stretch. A very long stretch, as proved to be the case come hammer time.
I had to apply some logic to justify what I was about to do (I don’t know why – I just felt I should). The logic I plumped for was that I had once been able to buy a GTO but could no longer do so. Therefore, if I didn’t go for the Cal Spyder now, what if they too went the way of the GTO? Plus – if I needed an additional argument – they always say buy the best of the best and forget the rest and the Coburn Car had a history to die for. James Coburn had owned this car for over twenty-five years, after his good pal, renowned car nut and subsequent frequent passenger Steve McQueen, recommended he buy it.
The estimate for the Cal was between $4 million and $6 million. JC had reserved us three seats on the front row but still had no idea I was going to bid for the car. I leaned over, in between other bids from earlier lots, to inform him of my intention.
‘You’ve got to be joking,’ he said. ‘It’s due up in ten minutes. Why the hell didn’t you tell me, we could have prepared a strategy?’
‘I’ve only just decided,’ I whispered.
‘Chris, nobody decides to bid for the lead car in an auction like this without thinking about it for at least a few days beforehand, usually a month or two!’
Most of the big decisions in my life, as you’ve probably worked out by now, have been the result of impulse rather than planning.
‘So what do we do now?’ I whispered again.
‘Fuck! Give me a minute to think.’
John suggested we go in high and try to knock any other bidders out straightaway. It was a high-risk strategy, but one he said had paid off in the past. Pick your second-best bid, go in with that and have one more up your sleeve if you need it. If bidding carries on after that, you were never in with a shout anyway and you’re none the poorer for it – at least that’s the theory. The thing I have since learned about auction strategy is that once you’ve decided what yours is going to be, it’s important to stick to it.
It was time.
‘Alright, the James Coburn California Spyder. Who will start with a bid of two million euros?’ barked the auctioneer. The figure two million euros flashed up on a huge red screen behind the car, followed by its equivalent in sterling and dollars.
‘Four million,’ shouted John. There was a gasp from all around us.
‘Four million?’ exclaimed the auctioneer.
‘Four million euros,’ he repeated.
There was a deathly hush in the room as over a thousand voices fell silent. Something big was going down here and everyone in the room was about to witness it. This was the gamble, this was the moment. There were several other bidders in the room, plus perhaps seven or eight people participating via international telephone lines. Would this first bid – double what the auctioneer had asked for – be enough to scare them all off in one fell swoop?
The silence gradually gave way to a growing chorus of mutterings, as everyone tried to figure out what was going on.
My heart was already thumping like a bass drum. JC, on the other hand, was in the zone, his eyes fixed on the auctioneer like an assassin waiting patiently to squeeze the trigger. It had been a good few seconds now, maybe ten, maybe even twenty, and still no one had proffered a counter-bid.
I looked over to where the phone lines were. I could see the various auction company assistants trying to explain to their frustrated clients that the first bid had been double what the auctioneer had asked for. Many of them were already hanging up, conceding defeat. A minute had passed and still no counter-bid was forthcoming.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, what am I to bid next?’
‘Just put the hammer down,’ shouted John. He wasn’t joking; he was prepared to use every tactic in the book, including heaping pressure on the auctioneer.
For that first minute, it really looked as if we had pulled it off. A few seconds more and the auctioneer would have been forced to close the lot, but then…
‘Four two-fifty,’ shouted a voice from the back of the room, almost instantly followed by, ‘Four million, five hundred thousand.’ With the deal almost in the bag, two bidders had woken up to what we were trying to do and were not prepared to be railroaded.
‘Fuck it!’ said John. ‘We’re done.’
And we were – according to our plan. The story had now moved on and the bidding was very quickly at five and a half million euros.
‘Can you lend me £2 million?’ I asked him.
‘Fuck, I don’t know,’ he answered. ‘I could probably get it. Why?’ I didn’t have time to answer but that was all I needed to hear. When you’ve borrowed £85 million in the past, £2 million is a drop in the
ocean. ‘Six million euros,’ I shouted. From nowhere, I was back in.
John almost passed out. Tash had long since turned pale, which is not easy considering her dark Persian complexion.
I had upped the stakes yet again, in a final attempt to get my hands on Mr Coburn’s baby.
‘Are you crazy?’ hissed John under his breath.
We could see that the third bidder had now come off the phone, so where there had been two rival bidders there was now only one.
‘Ladies and gentleman, this car is now at a new world record for any automobile ever sold at auction,’ declared the auctioneer triumphantly. This solicited an almighty cheer and much applause from the crowd. We were now in a movie, but we were not alone.
‘Six two fifty!’ countered my nemesis, who was clearly as crazy over this car as I was. At this moment I knew the end was nigh and I remember suddenly feeling eerily calm and peaceful in a room verging on hysteria.
‘Alright,’ I said to myself. ‘How much do I want this car? I know I don’t have the money but I also know I can probably get it.’
The auctioneer was now looking at me as I’d taken over the bidding from John, who wanted no further part of it. This was my call now – what was I going to do?
Honestly, I had no idea.
‘Mr Evans, would you like to give us one more bid, or … are … you … done?’ the auctioneer asked me directly.
And then I thought to myself, How often in life does a person get to buy a car like this? Sure, I don’t have the cash but that’s never stopped me before and who’s gonna want to know about the afternoon we ‘almost’ bought the most beautiful and expensive car in the world? That’s not a story I wanted to tell.
I made up my mind to go one more time.
‘Six million four hundred thousand euros,’ I said.
‘Six million four hundred thousand euros is Mr Evans’s bid and that, I believe, is his final bid.’
And it was, I promise. If the other bidder had gone just one hundred thousand more, to six and a half million, I would have bowed out gracefully. But they didn’t and, as the hammer came down, the car was mine.
