Bit of a blow but its OK it will buff out

She, they, zie was/were probably a petrol head and thinking of the 20 Ferraris, “a treasure trove of dormant stallions (and mares) that have remained untouched for decades in Florida, left to gather dust hidden away from Ferrari collectors, restorers, readers of motoring in the Weekend Australian business section and the public at large” that RM Sotheby’s will be auctioning off during August’s Monterey Car Week.

See, if you had ignored your chest-feeding parent’s advice, you would have called Miami (Florida) council and told the phone officer (grade 3) you had 20 extra red bins for collection and that you had, as per council ordinance 4c (113), placed the Feezer waste on top of or near your bins, and you would have been out 100 million big ones.

Twenty years ago, due to the widespread scourge of global colding, Hurricane Charley along with the gender-balancing hurricanes Frances, Ivan and Jeanne, wreaked $10bn worth of havoc along the coast of Florida.

One highlight of the widespread havoc was a barn that housed a collection of oldish but rare Italian stallions and mares.

According to RM, Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne exposed the forgotten Feezers to the highly polluted sunlight for the first time since 1990 when the barn they called home partially collapsed. “Bearing the scars of debris from their dilapidated enclosure, the Ferraris were carefully relocated to a secure warehouse in Indianapolis, where they have since remained undisturbed.”

First up, the price of entry to even make a bid is at least a million. Second, it would be fair to say the Maranello masterpieces aren’t in showroom condition, so make sure you read our exclusive piece on how to wash your car; although the 1954 Ferrari 500 Mondial Spider Series I by Pinin Farina might need a bit more elbow and other wax than you are up for.

The Mondial is an example of how a very small number of cars can be racetrack winners, highway cruisers, pieces of art and something almost spiritual.

In the years after the second big one, Enzo Ferrari (EF to his amici) noticed that hot four-cylinder race cars were threatening his big V12s. Being a committed environmentalist and wanting to sell lots of cars, Enzo commissioned a little engine car for the equivalent of the 1952 and 1953 F1 seasons. It worked. Bert Ascari, 34, of Milan, won six out of seven in 1952 and five out of eight in 1953, becoming campione del mondo.

So EF named the car he put into production, and sold only to his private customers, the Mondial (world or global in Italian). By the way, Bert and Lou Villoresi placed second in a Mondial in the romantically named 12 Hours of Casablanca in 1953.

EF had Battista “Pinin” (an Italian nickname like Bluey or Boof) Pininfarina, design the spider and they made 13. This was a car that the Double Bay/Toorak/Peppermint Grove cowboys of the period rushed to, of course, thinking – like the yellow Lambo drivers of today – that it had the magic sauce that made persons of the opposite or same sex swoon into the passenger’s seat.

Cow persons such as Rubi Rubirosa, the Dominican diplomat, political assassin, propeller-setting, polo-playing Le Mans racing driver and play person, who had Tinder dates with persons like Eartha Kitt, Marilyn Monroe, Ava Gardner, Rita Hayworth, Joan Crawford, Veronica Lake, Eva Peron, Kim Novak, Judy Garland, Doris Duke, Barbera Hutton, Zsa Zsa – but not She Wolf songstress Shakira, who is said to be dating the Hamster. Anyway, the common theme among these persons is that they had enough of the readies to support his polo and racing habits.

Despite what you’re thinking, Rubi didn’t die of horizontal folk dancing exhaustion, but succumbed when he crashed his silver Feezer 250GT cabriolet into a horse chestnut tree in the Bois de Boulogne after an all-nighter celebration at Paris nightclub Jimmy’s after winning the Polo Coupe de France.

Back to the Mondial from Florida. RM quaintly says: “There is no denying that 0406 MD will require a comprehensive restoration to return the car to the condition of its glory days.” Hmmm. Resto presto! This Mondial looks more like a lump of scrap metal waiting for the steel crematorium than anything resembling a Pimp My Ride candidate that a spray with WD40 will fix.

True, it has a correct-type Mondial replacement engine while retaining matching-numbers gearbox and documented with copies of factory build sheets and CSAI homologation papers, but if you buy it, you and the resto person will become really good amici over the next 10 years and your bank account will submerge into the depths much like the lost city of Atlantis, the Warwick Farm racecourse and Australian tarmac rallying under the new regulations.

Talking of Feezers at auctions, this week RM sold a super 1955 Ferrari 121 LM Spider by Scaglietti with a serious racing history for $10m. Also, this week on show at the London Concours at the Honourable Artillery Company City of London 2023 was the 1921 Leyat Helica. Snail eater Marcel Leyat had a really good idea. A biplane designer before the first big one, he thought carmakers didn’t get it. So, he made a wingless aeroplane for the road.

As Loz Blain from the New Atlas writes: “Leyat’s propeller car, and several other designs not dissimilar to it, were a roundly awful idea from the beginning, because, well, they had great big propellers on the front of them. Errant pedestrians and wayward pigeons alike could end up getting fed through a several-thousand-rpm blender, showering driver and passenger with an exuberance of gore.

“Leyat had also taken an aircraft-inspired approach to the steering, eschewing the complexities of a steering rack for a very simple, cable-operated rear wheel steering system that threw the back end out sideways to turn the car.” Much like our WART BMW then.

One of this column’s top hero persons, Toby Price, won last weekend’s Finke Desert Race by a million miles/kilometres/etc. It’s the Tobster’s third straight win and third straight cars victory, adding to his six bike wins. The Tobster was steering a Mitsubishi TSCO Trophy Truck, and the Finke has the worst website in motorsport.

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