RM auctions 410 Superamerica 0671

This tailfinned ferrari i once saw at a concours at BH car dealer, with Greg Garrison showing it. Were those tailfins on it when it was originally built or was this a retrofit custom by Ferrari? What about those polished alloy rocker panels? Were those on any other Ferrari? The stainless steel roof I have seen on '57 Caddys (broughams) but I didn't know Ferrari offered them, or was this too a retrofit. In other words, there seems to be a lot of Kustom Kar on this one but if it was all done in the original era by the authorized bodybuilders like Pininfarina and Scaglietti, I guess this is fully accepted. Or did it take a long time before the car was "accepted" and Garrison was simply more prescient?

 

Why wasn't the farmer who had the stolen chassis
in Oregon arrested for buying stolen property?
I expect the answer will be that Garrison, wise in the way of lawyers,
settled with the previous owner and/or the insurance company and
made it possible to buy the chassis without the farmer being arrested. That was the real art in buying the car--followed by convincing Ferrari to help him get a new body made.

Here's the website about the car
http://www.rmauctions.com/FeatureCars.cfm?SaleCode=AZ12&CarID=r155

 

Thanks for the incredibly fast answer containing unique info.
But now I'd hafta ask

--do you think the rebody you saw was done in Italy and, if so, by Pininfarina or Scaglietti?
If so wouldn't either party remember that?


--Is it possible it wasn't "stolen" but merely "reported stolen?" One wonders how the Oregon farmer sold it without a title? (of course in Calif. you can buy a car without a title on a bill of sale but that's void if someone comes up with a title later)

--Do you think the original body was sold for scrap metal? It's hard to believe such a unique and beautiful body would be tossed out or sold for scrap but then aluminum is worth more per pound than scrap iron or steel.

Would you agree that back in the late '60s and early '70s, Ferrari speciales such as the 330GTC with the Dino rear window and others went ignored on used car lots for a time while most people went for the stock looking car or the hot dog/boy racers (with you excepted of course because we know you owned many a race car) wanted a former racing car (preferably with the roundel still on the side left over from LeMans...) If you agree, I think Garrison was the point man on the speciales, but few followed him until decades later.

 

Ed probably didn't see the RM press release when he wrote the answer above so I'' reprint the relevant passage here,guessing that, when he described the more or less Tdf body that he saw the car wearing when it was for sale in Los Angeles, it was this body (as quoted in the current RM press release)

"In January 1958, s/n 0671 SA was purchased by Count Enrico R.P.A. di Portanuova, who had Carrozzeria Boano personalize the car for him by re-profiling the rear fenders, painting the fins dark red to match the body, extending the front fenders with covered headlights, changing the hood scoop, redesigning the instrument panel to place the speedometer and tachometer in front of the driver and re-boring the V-12 to a 5.1-liter displacement.

The 410 SA was sold again in 1961. It passed from Switzerland to Texas. In the 1970s it was sold to Gary Wales in California, followed by Stan Sokol. "

(from http://www.rmauctions.com/FeatureCars.cfm?SaleCode=AZ12&CarID=r155)

Alas I dont have the CAVALLINO issue that would make it clear with pictures but I am hoping that this is the body Ed saw because otherwise it means that there was yet another body, and the question of who did that one--it's hard to imagine it went to Italy again for bodying because there wern't that many craftsmen in America at that time who could roll aluminum that well (though there was Carrozzeria Sports Cars and also Fantuzzi).

But going back to who really owned the chassis, in America when a stolen Cobra popped up after some 19 years, the original owner , who had never settled with the insurance company, was able to claim it, so I am surprised Mr. Sokol never claimed it as his long lost car. I thought all the people who bought a stolen car after it was stolen have no rights to a car, because it is "the fruit of a stolen tree" (maybe that phrase is used in some other area of jurisprudence but I been itchin' to use it)

 

The Ferrari in the Lake is a story that haunt me...still missing a piece of the puzzle. So Grrison hears this car has been sighted in Grant's Pass OR and runs an ad, iand s contacted by a farmer who has the complete chassis and it is purchased. But was the car seen around town with the complete body? I don't see why the insurance company that had to pay out on the stolen car claim didn't ask for the return of the car and also ask the FBI to arrest the farmer for trafficking in stolen property...?

Did Garrison ever mention what he paid the farmer for it? And I looked at a map of Grant's Pass a(and the satellite view)nd couldn't find a lake, only the Rogue river, so maybe it was near Grant's Pass. As far as barrister Niles' comments about the body on it now not being the same styling as the car he once owned, I am inclined to believe Mr. Garrison liked to exaggerate his influence on a car, as once he told me a long story about his 412 cabriolet which he claimed was built especially to his own specs and then I found Ferrari had built it for their own tests and Garrison merely happened upon it and asked if he could buy it.