There is not much left of this 1954 Ferrari Mondial. And there is not much to save. Despite all the ‘not much’-es, someone paid almost $2 million at an RM Sotheby’s auction to take it home. No word on what they are planning to do with it.
The car got completely consumed by fire in the 1960s. But six decades have passed, and the car is still in the same condition. Nobody ever dared to commence restoration. It would be too time-consuming, heart-wrenching, and, of course, costly.
In its heydays, it was a Ferrari 500 Mondial Spider Series I, coachworked by Pininfarina. The model has been on the RM Sotheby’s website, advertised for the Monterey Car Week auction, for the past six weeks. And it was indeed in the spotlight. On the auction day, bidding went straight to $1.875 million, exceeding the $1.6 million expectation. So it’s almost $2 million for a car – if it can still be called that way – that might never set wheels on the road again. What wheels, right?
Only 13 such cars were ever made. Chassis number 0406 MD was the second of the 13. It rolled off the assembly line in March 1954, wearing the oh-so-popular Rosso Corsa over a Similpelle Beige vinyl interior.
In April, Enzo Ferrari himself sold it to Milan-based sports car dealer Franco Cornacchia, which purchased it specifically for driver Franco Cortese to use it. The model raced for the Scuderia Guastalla starting that very year.
A second spot in its class in the 1954 Coppa Toscana and a participation in the Mille Miglia were in its CV before getting re-bodies by Scaglietti. It finished eighth at the Iola Grand Prix right after.
But then the beginning of the end came. The car, then powered by an American V8 instead of the original engine, was crashed, and it instantly caught fire.
Burned to a crisp and looking like French fries, it ended up in the hands of marque specialist Ed Niles, in the early 1970s. But it wasn’t much he could do, so he sold it himself. In 1978, Walter Medlin, the new owner, sentenced it to 45 years of seclusion.
The shell was stored away, with no intention of a complete rebuild whatsoever, because the procedure might end up costing just as much as the new owner paid for the burned metal at the RM Sotheby’s auction.
After 45 years of seclusion, it came back into broad daylight. The price paid for what is left of the Ferrari includes a numbers-matching gearbox and the 3.0-liter Tipo 119 four-cylinder engine.
By the way the model looks right now, restoration would really make not much sense. But displaying it as Ferrari racing heritage would. If it is worth almost $2 million.