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Amelia Island: More Results

We will be on the road for the next few days trying to find a dry path up north to Mint’s home in Connecticut. Today’s stop is Asheville, North Carolina. Until we return, posts may get a bit spotty unless some of our readers sends us something really interesting.

The Gooding & Co. auction produced a lot of interesting results but here is one that reflects back to our early days – the ’69 Michelotti Fiat Shellette. Michelotti was asked to design and build a successor on the newer 850 platform for Philip Schell. posterOnly 80 cars were built and we have no knowledge of how many survive. This pretty blue Shellette is a barn-find with 9,900 miles and is in excellent working and cosmetic order. We featured it in February 2013 for $58,000 without any takers. So the seller had the guts to give it to Gooding & Co with no reserve. The selling price of $55,000 includes buyers premium so they didn’t quite get what they wanted but they didn’t suffer too bad. The Ferrari 365 GTC4 at RM was another car of interest. We have one at Mint’s go-to shop/office. The owner may want to sell but no commitments yet. 72 GTCThis 365 was impeccable, probably top of the food chain. It hammered at an eye-watering $335,500. Good for the seller and what a great car. The Iso Grifo is unique and may not be representative of the Iso Grifo market. It was built with original “left over parts” assembled after the factory was closed. GrifoIt had a few modifications performed by one of the owners reportedly the former Bizzarrini shop manager. It is a really nice car and sold for $440,000. Will that make my customer who owns an original 7-liter Grifo happy? Not sure the story of it being the last Grifo makes it special or the modifications hurt it. Everyone loves a beautifully restored Mercedes-Benz 280SE 3.5 Cabriolet. 71 280 SE 3.5An extraordinary example sold at RM Auction for $335,000. We guess when a nice 190SL can sell for upwards of $200,000, an equivalent 280SE 3.5 Cabriolet deserves this number. We admired the Pray ’70 Maserati Ghibli Spider (Spyder?) from the back of the room. And we thought the hammer price of $605,000 was fair, maybe a little high. Hagerty and Sports Car Market say top cars should go for this number. We met one of our frequent readers and a Maserati expert, Ivan R., on the lawn during the Concours. He was standing next to his triple black Spider with a big purple ribbon on it so he knows them well. 70 Ghibli SpyderHis opinion of the Pray car was less than enthusiastic. Nice and blingie but in need of at least another $125,000 in work. Did the buyer know that or were they attracted to the ethereal beauty of the Ghibli? Don’t know but one must assume that the buyers in the floor seats know what they are doing so the Spider market is on the move to 7 figures for sure. 59 Fiat Jolly 600The Fiat Jolly by Ghia that went on Saturday sold for $99,000. It was the longer 600 based version but hey, did that really make a difference? Cute sells.

 

One Response to Amelia Island: More Results

  1. I was there with my red 600 Jolly in the “Beach Cars” display on the field. The French Blue Shellette was listed as having ‘fiberglass bodywork’. No, it had steel body panels like all other ones. The car was very nice but the Bimini-style top didn’t fit well – like a bad toupee’ it listed to one side and had little support. Of greater interest was a “500 Mare” Jolly-like vehicle on the field. I never saw the owner/handler the entire day. It was more petite than a 500/600 Jolly if you can imagine that. Bodywork by…..ask me later after I review my photos. BTW, I maintain the world’s Registry for these odd little vehicles as well as for the Fiat Multipla. Also on the field was the “Eden Roc” Multipla-Jolly and an elegant green Renault-Jolly (with a too-funny snail mascot on her hood).

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