The Ultimate Stories Car
Hi Friends!
Years ago, when I started working at Russo and Steele, one of the first terms that I heard thrown around that I was not familiar with was “stories cars”. In that situation, this almost always referred to an offering trying to be passed off as something it wasn’t. As we all know, a lot of times, auction consigners will try to sneak things through (example: numbers being filed off an engine block) or try to upsell their vehicle in a way that is often highly ambitious and impossible to prove (Mick Jagger conceived his second child in the backseat of this Rambler). This kind of stories car is a little different…
Probably the most talked about offering in Monterey this year is at Gooding & Co and it’s a 1938 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Lungo Spider. Of course, anytime a car like this hits the market, it’s newsworthy. These are considered by many to be the finest pre-war sports car ever produced and with its incredible rarity (just one of five known to exist), astonishing beauty and incredible engineering, it’s no secret when these come to auction (which is incredibly infrequently – in fact, this is the first time this car has been sold at public sale) they command prices of upwards of $20 million.
Obviously, this is an incredibly special car that has been shown at basically all of the most significant events on the planet by some of the world’s highest profile collectors and it checks nearly every box for an A+, blue chip, top tier collector car, but that’s not exactly why everyone’s talking about it right now.
In July of 2022, while parked outside of a Holiday Inn Express in Latta, South Carolina, this car along with its truck and trailer became the victims of what is likely the highest dollar single example automotive theft (and subsequent theft recovery) of all time. When news initially broke, the automotive world collectively gasped and became instantly obsessed, as this case became documented and followed frequently by a number of publications and online sources not only in the classic and collector car space but also beyond into major publications as well.
Note: John Draneas’ Legal Files column in Sports Car Market Magazine documented this case over a couple of articles. You can check those out HERE and HERE.
The car, theorized/fantasized by many to be targeted and stolen by sophisticated, high-end auto theft professionals, was almost instantly assumed gone for good. As a result, AIG Insurance did what they were supposed to do and issued an alleged payout of a stifling $23 million.
This is most definitely not where the story ends, however. Over the next several months in a joint effort by the FBI and ATF, the car was recovered in a warehouse in North Carolina, wherein everyone’s grand visions of an Ocean’s 11 type operation were put to rest as the initially obvious appeared to be correct: it was a random theft by two individuals who didn’t really know what they had and didn’t really want to find out either. Minor damage was sustained to the vehicle, but nothing significant, as it was corrected quickly by the insurance company with the help of a Marque expert in California.
However, a whole new set of issues was on the table. As an insurance provider, what do you do with a car that’s so valuable, in a situation that is so well documented, where your own financial relief is clearly required? This is certainly a special circumstance on a bunch of levels, so the only logical road to take would be to offer the car to the same people that became obsessed with it and the trials and tribulations of its recent adventures.
You would think that this car has definitely achieved some sort of celebrity status above and beyond what it already had to begin with. We oftentimes see with barn finds, where particular scenarios play out and the story becomes the only thing that matters. We’ve all seen the headlines and all witnessed auction lots crossing the block in terrible condition, that draw prices over a restored example because of the air of exclusivity that the story provides. This is an incredibly exclusive automobile, that isn’t in terrible condition, that now has what may be the granddaddy of all stories like this. Gooding & Co has an estimate on this vehicle slightly below what the alleged insurance payout was. They think this car is worth somewhere between $16 million and $20 million. Of course, this is an enormous sum of money, but this car was already floating around that altitude anyway.
Do we think that this story is going to add or detract from the value this car achieves on the auction block? Will it sell at all? What happens if it doesn’t? Although I’m leaning towards the story helping, I can certainly see both sides of this and I think it could very easily go either way. This said, there’s no doubt that this is one of the most interesting auction lots that we’ve seen in a long time and the world will definitely be watching.
That’s it for this week…
Darin Roberge