A car with a truly rich history
12/20/2014
There are fifty-year-old cars about which hardly anything is known, there is hardly anything to know. This Ferrari 250 LM, however, is the complete opposite, its history is full of exciting facts and events.
Chassis 5899 GT with engine 5899 was the ninth 250 LM built. It was completed on June 3, 1964, painted red and equipped with blue seats.
The first buyer of the car was Georges Filipinetti, who immediately entered it with his Scuderia Filipinetti in the Sierre-Crans-Montana hillclimb race with Ludovico Scarfiotti in August 1964.
The new car won straight away. And it repeated this success the following weekend when Nino Vaccarella drove it in the XV Coppa Inter-Europa in Monza.
At the 1000 km of Paris in Montlhéry, a defect prevented further success.
The fast car was then exhibited at the Geneva Motor Show in March 1965, where it was sold to Zurich architect Werner Biedermann. From then on, the mid-engined sports car with Zurich license plates raced under the license of Ecurie Basilisk and continued its series of successes with ten more victories in 15 events.
During the SAR hill climb in Engelberg on October 18, 1965, Biedermann crashed and overturned his Ferrari. Although he was largely uninjured, he obviously lost his enthusiasm for the fast racer and sold it to Hans Illert from Feldmeilen on Lake Zurich.
Instead of simply repairing it, Illert extensively modified the Ferrari. The Scaglietti body gave way to a plastic body of a Porsche 906, which also required the chassis to be shortened and the 906 shape to be adapted. With gullwing doors, the Ferrari now started out 200 kg lighter under the name "LM-P" in the Scuderia Tartaruga racing team. The first victory soon followed, with Illert winning the 23rd hill climb from St. Ursanne to Les Rangiers on August 20/21, 1966. This was followed by many more victories and podium finishes in the Swiss Championship in 1966 and 1967. Hans Illert alternated at the wheel with Dieter Spörry and Heini Walter.
At the beginning of 1968, Illert sold the racing car to Pierre Sudan in Zug. Sudan was looking for more power and found it in the four-liter engine of the Ferrari 330 P (engine number 0818), which he was able to buy from David Piper. The car was now called the 330 LM-P. Sudan subsequently took part in many hill climbs throughout Europe, but then advertised the car in Auto Motor und Sport magazine. In April 1969, it was bought by a company in Austria called "Autoreparatur-Handelsvertretungs GmbH" with wireman Stefan Sklenar, who again entered the car in hill climbs, but also in the 200 miles of Nuremberg and the Tyrol Grand Prix in the summer of 1969.
In 1970, chassis 05899 GT suffered another accident, to which the Porsche body fell victim. The car subsequently changed hands several times: Paul Blancpain, Rob de la Rive Box and Paul Schouwenburg were the new owners. The latter was then able to buy the original engine again, while David Paper got the 4-liter engine back as part of this trade.
Schouwenberg then sold the Ferrari 250 LM, which was now technically complete again but still unrepaired, to Eric Stewart, guitarist of the English rock band 10CC. Between 1967 and 1971, Stewart had the car completely restored with a rebuilt LM body and test drove it at Goodwood. However, Stewart soon sold the restored car to Germany, only to be moved to California shortly afterwards, where it changed hands several more times until the early 1980s.
The next destination was Japan, but in 1992 the 250 LM returned to Europe, or more precisely England.
In July 1995, Lord Irvine Laidlaw bought the 250 LM and had it completely overhauled. Two years later, Federico Della Noce and André Lara Resende took over ownership, had the Ferrari completely restored again and now used it in historic racing.
In 2006, the car returned to Switzerland and was now owned by Henri-Louis Maunoir, an enthusiastic collector and racing driver. Interestingly, Maunoir is married to Georges Filipinetti's granddaughter, which brought the car back into family ownership, so to speak.
Now the car, which has been restored to its Filipinetti livery, is to be auctioned at the RM Auction in Arizona on January 15/16, 2015 . The estimated price is USD 9.5 to 12.5 million, so there is a good chance that the sale price will be in the eight-figure range - no wonder with so much history, even if the really big victories are missing ....
