Prior to last Friday, just four cars had ever sold for more than USD $30 million at auction – now there’s a fifth, and it comes as no surprise that the Ferrari 412 P that fetched $30,255,000 was sold from the collection of film and car maker James Glickenhaus. Glickenhaus’ appreciation of visual aesthetics made the car a natural fit for the proprietor of a company that transforms race cars into road cars.
Scuderia Cameron Glickenhaus builds elite road-legal race cars for both on- and off-road environments and after Glickenhaus’ 18 years of personal ownership of this Rubenesque (automotive) renaissance beauty it was probably time to transfer custodianship.
The car really is an artifact of the automotive renaissance that resulted from the Ford-Ferrari wars. It played an integral part in winning the 1967 World Sportscar Championship for Ferrari with the four championship points it scored for its third place in the 1967 1000kms of Spa making all the difference – Ferrari ultimately won the championship by two points from Porsche.
The Ferrari 412P's last competitive outing was at Hockenheim (Germany) in July 1969, and before the end of that year it had been sold to Chris Cord, the grandson of E.L. Cord of Auburn/Cord/Duesenberg fame, and registered for road use in Pennsylvania, USA. Over the subsequent five decades, it has often been used as a road car as it has been passed between elite collectors.
Barchetta has a complete competition history of the car, which includes wins at the 1968 Nuremberg 200km, Solituderennen and Swedish Grand Prix, and it also details known sale prices for the 412P which range from $9,976.70 in 1970 (there’s nothing quite as unappreciated as a race car that has just been deemed no longer competitive), to $3.5 million in 1995 and $5.0 million in 1997 … charting its remarkable journey into the appreciative and expert custodianship of Glickenhaus, and its remarkable $30,255,000 sale price last Friday.
Source: Bonhams