[Sarc]

These were featured on Bring A Trailer a couple weeks ago. Within the comments was a guy who claimed to have seen the cars in person awhile back. In Texas.

Dirty Tease: NorCal Ferrari, Dino, and Maserati Vault « BaT – The best vintage and classic cars for sale online




Ok guys, to answer some questions, since I’m the only one here that seems to have actually seen the cars…

The first deal, when they were in getting them out of storage, was real for the three cars. They were one owner cars, the gentleman died a while back, and the widow (who is in her 90’s) was cleaning up the estate with the her Attorney. (Who is a real nice guy, by the way.) The Daytona is a maroon with bad cracking paint everywhere and surface rust underneath. It is an under 10,000 mile car as I recall. Paint too bad to save even with Griot’s Garage products! Interior is going to need some freshening, but the fuel system, brakes, and most likely the engine will need to be gone through and while your at it, we don’t know if the clutch is good or not so replace that, too.

The Dino was Red , interior very nice, paint looked presentable and possibly could be polished out (didn’t/couldn’t want to remove the dust as that is half the attraction here) same issue mechanically here though I seem to recall a mouse nest in the engine bay and the swirl tank looked rusted which may mean further corrosion inside the engine.

The Bora, the car with the least value seemed to be in the best shape. Engine compartment looked nice, interior very nice, though could use a gallon of Griot’s Leather Rejuvenator. Color was an Azzurro Blue (Ice Blue). All of the cars are going to need recommissioning so their were many unknowns… as in, how much damage is done to the engine blocks, brake systems, gas and coolant systems. Parts for these cars are not cheap. The cars were kept into a typical storage unit (not hermetically sealed) in the Dallas area and stored since 1989, not 1979. I can tell you I stepped out of the bidding at $375,000 thinking it would take, at a minimum over a $150,000 to get these cars to the point where they would be running and driving again. That included taking the Daytona engine apart, and most likely the Dino as well. Don’t forget the Bora has the Citroen hydraulic system which will need attended to they operate the, brakes, suspension. I could have justified a higher number if the Bora had been non-big-bumper car, the Dino been a coupe and not a GTS, (personal preference of mine) and the Daytona had better paint. I was unable to start any of the cars because of the risk of damaging the engines, though we did know the Daytona engine was NOT frozen. The number above was the bare minimum to get the cars running and presentable to run through an auction, not to keep in your personal collection. For that, you are going to want to tear all the mechanical apart, remove gas tank, put a $30,000 paint job on the Daytona… the list goes on and on with these cars. Yes, they are true one owner, low mileage barn finds, but were left neglected for 22 years in a unheated garage, high heat and freezing temperatures in the Dallas area.

I’m told that all three cars went in the area of $450,000 to $500,000 range. As far as the eBay ad, it is really not clear if is for all three cars, (people do list other things in the headline ad) no vin numbers are attached, etc. This was a deal that started out pretty quiet, then erupted with lot of people saying all sorts of stuff. Now I believe the cars are probably going to be hyped up to go to auction somewhere and eBay is a great way of doing that. If you don’t mind, I’m going to step out of the conversation, but the Bring-A-Trailer guys can email and have a phone conversation with me and fill you guys in on the rest of the story…. I have to work to afford my car addiction!!!