Money can’t buy happiness but it can buy a really great car, which is pretty much the same thing.
But you have to hurry because soon the only people owning cars will be collectors and country folk. Cars will be gone off the streets. When we want to go somewhere we will just call one of the public transport pods, hop in and it will take us to wherever.
But Stadium Super Trucks will still be racing. That’s because you can’t believe they’re real. Imagine 10 500kw, 210km/h trucks on giant wheels designed to fly up to 5m off the ground racing around Adelaide in this year’s Clipsal 500. If you watch them on television you’d think it was all fake, like the moon landing, aliens talking to Hillary Clinton and the VW diesel scandal.
Best of all, Australian legends such as Matt Brabham and Paul Morris were behind the wheel last year. The very experienced Paul is proof that NSW police are wrong in suggesting senior drivers should have to hand in their licences when they get to a certain age. Beside that, Paul and his father Terry make and sell the very tasty Sirromet wines at their vineyard near the Mount Cotton driver training track (sirromet.com). If that plug isn’t worth a case of Terry’s own 2012 LM Reserve Assemblage then nothing is.
Does the end of the auto age explain the rush to pay gazillions of dollars for classic cars — well, mainly Ferraris? Or is it because after 47 years, Ferrari is finally independent of Fiat? Why ask me?
Anyway, over the past 30 years the Sports Car Market magazine database shows that 40 cars have sold for more than $12 million at auction. Twenty-six were Ferraris. In 2014 Bonhams sold a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO for a record $53m. One of 39 made, it was originally owned by Jo Schlesser.
Schlesser was a serious rally driver, Formula One driver and 250 GT racer who slid into a wall and died driving an air-cooled, magnesium-bodied Honda full of fuel in the 1968 French Grand Prix. Back in 1962 when Jo picked the Fezza up from the dealers, he rang his ami (mate) Henri Oreiller and said: “Henri, let’s give the Italian a run in the Tour de France Automobile.” Henri said oui (yes), as well he would given he was a French resistance hero, the greatest winter athlete France has ever produced (“The Madman of the Downhill”) and gave up skiing for motor racing at age 26.
Now the tour wasn’t for wussy cheese eaters. No, it was 10 days, 5500km, circuit races, hill climbs and public road fanging. Only 40 per cent of the cars finished and Jo and Henri took the new car to second.
With the car out of warranty, Jo decided to put Henri in the driver’s seat for the 1962 Coupes du Salon. Henri went into a building and died and Jo put the car up for sale. Many of us thought Bonhams would get more than the $53 mill at auction but driving a car someone died in probably isn’t a big sales feature.
Let’s move away from death and Ferraris to show you a seriously beautiful English car.
The photo above is of the 1960 Jaguar E2A Le Mans Sports-Racing Two-Seater Prototype that Bonhams sold for $7.2m in 2008.
Read the rest of this article at The Australian
