Restauro épico: Ferrari 250 GTO #3589 GT

Photo: Tom Hartley Jnr.

In our conversations, even with car people, we often hear the saying "Paying 40 million for a car? How stupid is that!" Most of the times, these observations arise from the inability to appreciate historic car from its intangible side: the artistic component in its creation, the technical singularity, the history of the manufacturing, the history of the particular example but, even more so, the history of all people who intervened in that car's life.

When a car means a lot to us, because it belonged to a family member for example, we say it is priceless. When history has meaning to almost every enthusiast around the world, how do you price it?

However, above all this there's another component in the value which for us, ordinary mortals, is almost incomprehensible: the cost of a truly epic restoration like that of #3589 GT. The hours of investigation, the cost of maintaining the archive, the cost of period materials, including the manufacturing of parts according to obsolete techniques, the cost of each highly specialized worker, the rigorous documentation of the restoration, all of this, amounts to sums of millions, because it would be impossible to do it any other way and because knowledge is costly.

The racing history of #3589 GT is not the most fascinating from all the 36 units built, but it is of particular interest in the fact that it has a clearly documented route, which serves to illustrate the shift in the world of vintage cars, as this is the one car which, famously, was offered to a school for students to put their mechanical knowledge into practice and was later acquired by an owner who left it on top of a trailer, in a field, at the mercy of the weather for more than 16 years. Because no one wanted it...

It would later be acquired by a Swiss collector who, giving up on recovering the original bodywork, stored it in poor condition and had another one produced, completely new. In 2021, trader Tom Hartley Jnr. negotiated the purchase of the example and its original bodywork and brought the two together again, in an impressive restoration work carried out by Ferrari Classiche with the participation of Carrozzeria Brandoli, and which lasted three years.

The entire story is documented in this 25-minute video, which goe by too fast...