Although I’ve been working on all sorts of projects, the restoration of the dark blue SII 330GT 2+2 continued in the background. A big batch of white cadmium plating came back from the platers. I inventoried the parts and made sure I got all my parts back!

What a difference from a few months ago!

The brake caliper bodies still needed some more work before I could start assembling the brakes. Gone are the days that I could just send these calipers bodies out for rebuilding, and they would come back plated, sleeved, and assembled with new brake seals ready to be installed on the caliper frames. The quality, and consistency of the rebuilds just weren’t good enough for me and I found myself redoing some of the work, so now I send these parts out to each shop that does the work I like and do the rest myself. The first step was to clean and blast the parts myself, then I sent them out for cad plating. When they came back they looked like this, but the bores are still needed work.

Some of the calipers showed some bad corrosion, but this would all be machined out when I sent the pistons out to another shop for stainless steel sleeves.

Some shops use brass sleeves, but I like the durability of stainless, and should only require new seals in the future if there are any problems. Brass is a softer material, and although easy to machine, can corrode and pit and even deform.

This shop inserted the stainless sleeves, and put a nice chamfer so the new seal would install nicely.

Even the badly corroded piston has a nice smooth bore ready for seals. I will be installing the seals myself as the next step to rebuilding the brakes.

Assembly of the doors continued. I glued in the window guide felts before moving onto the window glass installation. I didn’t take a lot of pictures of this process, but trust me when I say it was a pain in the butt! Getting the windows installed, putting in the cable winding mechanisms, getting the routing right, making sure the electric window motor worked, and finally making sure everything worked together was a real struggle. I was so deep in grease, electrical wiring, and window winders that I didn’t get a chance to photograph it!

After I got the windows installed, I was met with another challenge, a seized vent window knob! When I disassembled the winder mechanism I found the set screw was stuck and chewed up, so I managed to remove the whole assembly without removing the knob, but now that it had to go back together correctly, the knob had to come off. The set screw had stripped, so I had to carefully drill out the little screw, but even after removing all the remnants of the screw, the knob was still seized securely to the shaft. After a few days of soaking in penetrating oil and some tapping, the knob eventually came off!

I started making up a batch of chrome plating I needed to get redone for the car. I already sent larger things out like the bumpers, but there were still a bunch of little parts that needed disassembly like this door handle.

There 330GT door handles are notorious for bending when they are over tightened, so before I took them apart, I needed to straighten them out.

I gingerly bent the ends back into shape without cracking the pot metal. There’s a slight wave to the part, but I don’t think it’ll be noticeable once back on the car.

The door handle needed to be disassembled of all the nuts, bolts, springs, and pivot rods before sending the parts out for plating. These pictures will also help me reassemble the door handle when everything goes back together.

The chrome on the dome light was also wearing thin on this car, and I tried polishing it to see if I could save it, but decided it would have to be re-chromed. With all the interior chrome being refreshed, it wouldn’t match the rest of the car, so apart it had to come.

The plastic lens was held in place with these clips, so I had to carefully heat the plastic enough so it would flex past the clips for removal.

The next challenge was to disassemble the locks to have them re-chromed. There’s a small pin that holds the lock cylinder in place so the internal mechanisms would release. One door lock was working with a key, but the other one was very sticky, so I decided to send the door locks along with the the trunk lock to my locksmith to disassemble them and to check their operation instead of having me fumble through them!

The owner of this SI 330GT 2+2 won his first Platinum Award and the second one for this car, but he decided to take it back to Cavallino this year and try for another award! Despite the accolades, I still felt there was room for improvement on this car. One thing that drove me nuts on this car was the discoloration of the headlights. Once I point it out, it becomes very obvious! Even with the ribbon on this car, I was embarrassed by how stained the headlight looked!

What happens is the seal between the headlight glass and the steel reflector starts to fail, and moisture starts to corrode the metal. Rust starts to form, and there is nothing you can do except to re-silver the headlight reflector, or replace the headlight.

I decided the best option was to find a set of new old stock Marchal headlights in better condition. I contacted a guy I know in Europe who sells headlights and asked him to sell me four of his best lights. Two were the standard 7 inch light, but I also needed the special 5-1/2 inch high beam light for this Ferrari four headlight car. Luckily, he had both sizes and shipped them to me in the States.

The silver reflectors on the old lights were dull and peeling. They were also rusting underneath the silvering and causing the staining you saw in the picture.

The NOS lights I bought were in much better shape, with nearly perfect reflectors. The gaskets were a little yellowed, but that would be expected with over 50 year old lights. They were still better than what we had.

The other difference was the surface of the lights. The old ones were pitted and pock marked from years of service and exposure to road debris.

The NOS ones were clean and unmarked. What a difference!

I carefully installed all four headlights, and felt proud of how nice these lights looked. Now I can show at Cavallino and not be ashamed of the headlights!

Here’s the video of the work I did!

I’ve had a Maserati this Maserati Ghibli Spyder at my shop for several weeks now and I’ve been fixing all the minor issues I found before having the car shipped out to its new owner.

One of the issues it had was a non working headlight motor. I don’t normally work on Maseratis, so everything was a learning experience. The first thing I learned was the pop up head lights were operated with one central motor and gearbox that turned a rod that actuated both headlight doors. The motor was the same three wire electric window motors I found some Ferraris.

After removing the motor from behind the front grille, I found one of the reasons why things weren’t working. The internals of the motor were badly burned from overheating. Luckily, I had an old motor from a Ferrari window mechanism that I could install in place of the burned out unit, but the headlights still wouldn’t move. I studied the wiring diagram I bought from the Maserati Parts supplier, and tried to figure out what was wrong. I learned there were two types of wiring harnesses, a 4.7 and a 4.9 harness. From my investigation, this 4.9 liter Ghibli SS had a 4.7 harness that was modified to work in a 4.9 car!

After a few days of head scratching, I figured out there had to be a missing set of relays hidden in this car. I traced the wiring to behind the center console and found what I was looking for.

There were the missing relays, with a blown fuse hidden in the center console! After replacing the 30 amp fuse, everything started working again! What must have happened, was the old headlight motor started to struggle to move the headlight doors, but the limiting switches in the mechanism kept feeding power to the motor, overheating it. Even with the motor stopped, current continued to feed the motor until the everything burned out, and the fuse eventually blew. I was really happy when I finally figured it all out.

Here’s the video to my fix!

Michael Greenspan wanted to throw a party in Connecticut to celebrate 20 years of ownership of his Ferrari 330 America and the beginning of a friendship that began with a phone call about a Ferrari!

I remember the call as clear as it was yesterday, when Michael reached out to me to say it was time to make the leap into Ferrari ownership and he wanted to know if I had any advice on how to proceed. His wife Dorie and son Joshua wanted to celebrate Michael’s 60th birthday by getting him something he always wanted and a Vintage Ferrari was at the top of the list! I had just returned from the Monterey Car weekend, and stopped in Redwood City to visit a friend with a 330 America that I mentioned to Michael.

The car needed an engine rebuild, and Michael agreed to buy the car and have Francois rebuild the engine. 20 years later, Michael still owns the car and we’ve become old friends.

The invitees came to join us at Joshua’s house to celebrate the cars, the friendship, and the next generation of car enthusiasts with Michael’s grandchildren! We’ve thrown these gatherings in the past, and it was great to have some party alum come back all these years later. Tom Wilson flew out from Los Angeles and joined us with his wife Paula, and Kerry Chesbro came out from Seattle! Here’s a picture of Sam Hallowell, Michael Greenspan, Kerry Chesbro, and Francois Sicard, sharing a story together!

We were joined not only by some old friends, but also some new ones that I wanted to include with this group. Some of them were long time lurkers from my website that broke the ice and came in person to join us at the party. Others were enthusiasts that I knew would enjoy sharing our love of old cars, and it was great to bring them all together.

Tom Wilson and his wife Paula spent the weekend with my wife and I in Upstate NY, and Tom got a chance to drive my 330 America down to the Connecticut as I drove Michael’s car down. Of course, we took the back roads down, and I hope he enjoyed them as much as I did!

One family and car that I was looking forward to seeing, but had a bittersweet reunion was Michael Meehan’s Ferrari 599GTB. Mike was a usual fixture at these gatherings through the years with his 365GTC/4 or this wonderful 599. His wife and kids would often join us and they became good friends with my wife and I, spending time together throughout the year. Unfortunately, Mike passed away unexpectedly last year, and I agreed to help Marie, his widow, sell the cars. Tom Falzone and I had a mutual friend and I introduced him to Mike Meehan for advice on buying a 599. Shortly after that conversation, Mike passed away, so I reached out to Tom a few months later to offer the car. I think it was fate that we were brought together, and it was great to have Tom, Marie, and Mike’s daughter Kate, meet for the first time at one of these parties. I know Mike Meehan was with us in spirit with a smile on his face knowing he’ll always be in out hearts.

I want to thank the Greenspans for sharing their home and hearts with me, my family, and the Vintage Ferrari community. These old Ferraris started it, but it’s the great people that keep it all together. I am honored to be friends with all of you and look forward to many more years of all of this!

The same week I was out in Los Angeles about 1995 working on the Late Show with David Letterman and drove Dave’s Dino, Dave and I were trying to make plans to see the rest of his collection. Dave had only started doing Late Show at CBS for a couple years, and his car collection was still on the west coast in a airplane hanger at the Santa Monica Airport. A few Hollywood celebrities kept their cars out there, among them Charlie Sheen.

We were doing a week of shows in Los Angeles and the whole crew went out to shoot the late night talk shows from CBS Television City. Dave would drive up every day in another car that he would swap out at the hanger and he invited me out to the hanger to see the rest of the collection. The problem was Dave needed to find a free night after the show to take me out there. My time in the evenings was spent bar hopping with the crew, but I waited night after night for the call from Laurie, Dave’s assistant, to meet Dave at the airport. Friday came, and Dave never found the time to get away for the tour. I got a call from Laurie as they were flying back to NY telling me Dave really wanted me to see the collection, and gave me the instructions to meet his “guy” at Santa Monica Airport. I told my crew mates in the hotel lobby I had other plans that night and drove over to the airport.

I met John Devico at the hanger and inside was about a dozen cars ranging from Austin Healeys to a Jaguar XK120, He had a Sprite, a 100/4, a 3000,…a MGA and a MGA twin-cam, and the Porsches! There was a 1600 Speedster, a Carrera Speedster, a Convertible D, a B Coupe, a 911 Carrera Coupe, and the list went on! It was pretty impressive. I think I knew each model more than Diveco! As John gave me the tour, he told me he had orders from Dave that I was allowed to drive anything I wanted! Not wanting to overstay my welcome, and knowing I was taking up John’s Friday evening, I had to choose one car to drive. Which one did I choose? The Porsche 914/6!!!

Here was my logic. It would have been fun to drive a twin cam Speedster, or a Big Healey, but the differences would have been subtle from 356s and English cars I had driven in the past. At the time, I was really into Porsches, and I had always heard about the great handling of the 914, but imagine one with a 6 cylinder 911 engine stuffed inside? John pulled the car outside and I jumped in for a drive. He let me take the car out by myself and I slowly took it out of the airport tarmac after finding a gear in the sloppy shifter.

As the car warmed up, I wanted to see how stuck to the road this mid engine car really was, so I took a right hand turn a little hot, leaving my foot on the throttle on the exit, but the rear tires broke loose and I tried to catch the swing with some opposite steering. I must have over corrected, but was determined to keep on the throttle. After a couple of elbow knocking opposite lock, I managed to save the car without smashing into a row of parked cars! When my heart jumped back into my chest, I drove the Porsche back to the hanger thinking about how the phone call to Dave would have gone if I had wrecked his Porsche!

John asked my how the drive was, and I simply said, “Fine!” I thanked him for meeting me and went back into town to catch up with my crew for the wrap party!

It was nice to see this car again 30 years later, and sad to see it go up for auction. I hope it brings a smile to the face of the owner, as it did mine seeing her again!

Just a reminder about the Greenspan Party I’m co-hosting in Redding Connecticut on September 9th from 11am-4pm. Michael and I are celebrating 20 years of ownership and friendship along with many other Vintage Ferrari fans who will be coming out to join us. Tom Wilson of the GTE Registry, and Kerry Chesbro from 330gt.com will both be flying out from the West Coast, and we’re honored to have them join us!

If you’d like to come, please reach out to me at tom@tomyang.net and I’ll give you the details.

I agreed to meet my friend Steve at the Transporter Lot at Pebble Beach at 5 am to get the cars on the Lawn at Pebble Beach. The rest of the year, this area is called the Equestrian Center, but all the car guys that come to Monterey this time of year know it by a different name!

Even at 5 am, we weren’t the first ones at the venue, but the cars we had to place on the lawn were ready!

My ride into Pebble Beach was this 1961 Ferrari SEFAC 250SWB.

Every one of these cars lined up to drive onto the lawn at Pebble Beach had a story. Some were owned by the same family for decades and were making their first trip to Monterey, while others were restored by billionaires to add another trophy to their collection. This line up brought all these cars together in nervous anticipation.

The owner of this car was invited to show his car without the stress of trying to win a trophy. It was for display only, and I volunteered to drive it onto the lawn so he could get a couple more hours of sleep!

I think the opportunity to drive a 10 million dollar car onto a world famous car show was worth being a little sleep deprived!

I followed Steve onto the lawn in the other car asked to display on the lawn, a rare Porsche Prototype 550A Spyder. This car won the Targa Florio overall for Porsche back in 1956.

After hours of waiting in line, we were finally summoned to drive onto the lawn. The organizers must have changed the way they loaded the cars onto the lawn as in years past when whole line of cars followed each other in, but this year, they were allowing only a few in at a time. It certainly gave the early morning crowds ample time to photograph each car, but the stress of overheating in a 60 plus year old car was on the minds of all the drivers!

I shot a quick video of my drive into Pebble Beach.

This year I really had a real scheduling conflict. Saturday of Monterey week was usually when I went to Concorso, and I had bought a ticket to attend, but I was planning on spending some time with Steve Hill shuttling a couple of Ferraris to the lawn for the Casa Ferrari event. Casa Ferrari is an area on the entrance to Pebble Beach that Ferrari has taken over to display customer’s cars and new cars in their current line up. It’s a free display with a very impressive collection of cars, but also with an special admittance section for all day food and drink. Last year I was able to pop into Concorso, and still make it over to Pebble Beach on Saturday to drive the cars onto the lawn. This year, they wanted us to be ready with the cars a little earlier, and I just couldn’t be at two places at the same time, so I had to scrap Concorso plans!

I love going to Concorso, but the choice to see Concorso or a chance to drive a LWB Alloy bodied Cal Spyder was probably an easy one to make!

Steve had two cars to bring to the Casa Ferrari event, and his ride was a 1959 TR, so I got the keys to the Cal Spyder.

We met a couple of young Ferrari enthusiasts at the staging for the drive onto Pebble Beach, so we offered shotgun seating to the two brothers. Jack rode with Steve and Blake rode with me in the Cal Spyder.

Blake and I were having a glorious drive along 17 mile drive in the middle of all the Ferraris heading to Casa Ferrari for our entrance when something fell out from under the car and started dragging on the ground. I was mortified with all the people watching on the side of the road when our 18 million dollar car drove by dragging part of its exhaust pipe! I had to decide if it was worth me pulling over to check what was dragging, or just push through the mile or so we had left to get to Casa Ferrari! I soon decided it was too risky to keep driving and pulled over into someone’s driveway. What I found was the rear pipe section had broken clean off the muffler flange. There was nothing to slip the pipe back onto to hang the pipe back into place. I didn’t have tools, or anything to tie it up. The only thing I found in my bag was a lanyard from RM Auctions to tie the pipe high enough off the ground to stop it from dragging.

With my emergency fix installed, we quickly fired the Cal Spyder up and caught up with the rest of the group! I couldn’t believe my luck, first the bad luck, then the good luck!

You really get a sense of how this disaster was averted in the video. Looking back, I made the right decision as the fallen pipe was pointing in the direction of travel, so if it caught on a manhole cover, or driveway curb, it could have catapulted the car, ripped off the back of the car, or punched a hole in a gas tank! Any of these scenarios would have been bad, so I’m glad there was a happy ending to the story!

A little known group of Ferraris came up for auction last week in Monterey at the Mecum Auction that belonged to my former boss, David Letterman. I left the Letterman Show as an audio engineer 18 years ago to pursue a new career working on Ferraris for a living, and Dave is one person I can blame for my crazy decision. Seeing his collection quietly come up for sale and dispersed into the world without much fanfare is what Dave wanted, but many of these cars had special meaning to me, and it all started with this DIno.
I was in my late 20s, making good money in television and really into Porsches. I was driving my ’72 911 at Porsche Club driver’s ed events, and having a great time learning how to drive this car on a race track. Every Monday after an event weekend, I would be expounding the virtues 911s, and how thrilling they were to drive. Although Dave owned Porsches, he was probably getting tired of hearing me go on about “Porsche this, and Porsche that…,” and one day he interrupted me, and asked, “Tommy, have you ever driven a Ferrari?” Of course, I replied “No.” Where would I get a chance to do that? Dave then said, “When you get a chance to drive a Ferrari, we’ll talk.” I shut my mouth about the Porsches.

The Late Show staff and crew traveled to Los Angeles to shoot a week of shows at CBS’ Television City in 1995. At the time, Dave Letterman had a few cars stored on the West Coast, and every day Dave would come to work with a different car. We had only been in town for a couple of days and Dave drove a beautiful Ferrari 246GTS Dino onto the back lot. The whole crew was outside admiring his car as he parked it in a space reserved for “Mr. Letterman.”

During rehearsal, Dave asked if I saw his car parked outside, and we chatted a little bit about the car. He then asked if I was interested in driving it. Caught by surprise, I blurted out, “well, um…Yeah!” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his keys. Realizing that I still had work to do, and my colleagues wouldn’t appreciate it if I left them to do the work while I went for a spin in Letterman’s car, I asked we could do it later. He agreed, and said, “Let me know when you’re ready.”

At the end of rehearsal, I had some time, so I told Letterman I was ready. I followed him out to his car, and quickly, a crowd collected. He handed me the keys, and I started the car. I tried to get into reverse in the gated shifter, but for some reason, I couldn’t get the reverse lock-out to disengage. Dave watched me struggle along with the twenty other crew members before he offered to show me how to get the car into reverse. He jumped into the driver’s seat and immediately got into reverse. Under intense crew mockery, I gave it another try, only to find the shifter refusing to go into reverse. I couldn’t believe my first and only chance in driving a Ferrari was going to be thwarted because I couldn’t get reverse! I was just about to get out and push the car out of the parking space, when I realized the trick to get the shifter to unlock. Dave knew all along that all you had to do was push the shifter down into the floor to get it past the lock out, but he was having too much fun watching me struggle!

I pulled the Dino out of the space, and asked Dave again to join me, but he refused. I slowly pulled away from the crowd, but was not sure how far I should go. I kept in first gear, and zipped around the parking lot. weeeEEEEEg g g g weeeEEEg g g…As I made a full circle, The Vice President to West Coast Operations was just getting out of his car with his wife as I howled past him. He immediately flagged me to a halt. In front of his wife, he decided to really lay into me. “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE? I DON’T EVER WANT TO SEE YOU DRIVING THAT FAST THROUGH THIS PARKING LOT AGAIN! IS THAT CLEAR!” Now, I’m sitting in this tiny red sports car looking up at this man through the open top of the Dino, knowing I was wrong, so all I could say was, “sorry!”

After the berating, I rolled the car forward another 30 yards to where Dave and the crew were waiting. Having seen the yelling, Dave asked what happened. I told him I got reprimanded for driving too fast. I could still see the Vice President in my rear-view mirror watching us talk. I watched as his expression changed from anger to all smiles as he realized it was Dave’s car. Not wanting to upset the “client,” The Vice President was all smiles, calling, “Oh, Hi Dave!” Dave smiled back, but also understood what had happened.

I took this opportunity to ask Dave if I could “really” drive the car. I asked if I could take it out on the street. He replied, “Of course you can, that’s what I want you to do!” I then asked again for him to get in the car with me, but he angrily refused. I figured I better not lose my chance by pissing him off, and pulled away. I saw Wali Collins, the show’s warm up comedian at that time, standing near the stage and called to him. A little confused, he came over to the Ferrari. I told him to get in the car. When he asked why, I told him that I would need a witness if we got into an accident in Dave’s car!

I got the car onto Beverly Boulevard, and mashed the throttle. I zipped through three gears, and we were easily doing 80! Wally couldn’t believe we were driving around Hollywood in Letterman’s car. We laughed at the thought of getting pulled over by LAPD, and explaining that Letterman had lent an Asian and a black man his Ferrari to go for a joy ride!

Driving Dave’s Ferrari was an experience Ill always remember, and although in many Ferrari circles, a Dino is not actually a full fledged Ferrari, it made me fall in love with the company that makes these wonderful cars.

This picture was taken that day in California, and I don’t think I could have smiled any wider!

It was bittersweet to see the whole collection come up for sale, but things change, and people move on. We’ll never know why Dave sold all his cars, but I was lucky to have enjoyed some of them with him back in the day. Who knows where my life might have ended up if Dave hadn’t tossed me the keys to this little red Dino 30 years ago!

One of my first stops in Monterey was to see the auctions. There are a handful of auctions all around the Monterey Peninsula with a large assortment of cars up for sale. Ferraris were always popular.

One interesting collection up for sale at the RM Sotheby’s Auction was Walter Medlin’s collection of “barn finds.” I met Walter 10 years ago and had a three hour “coffee” in Florida talking about his car collecting and time with the FCA in the 70s and 80s. You can read about my visit here.

A lot of these cars were once stored in a building in Orlando Florida when a hurricane blew in over a dozen years ago, flooded, smashed, and ruined a lot of cars. Walter moved the collection out of the public’s eye to another warehouse and they sat untouched for many more years. RM took the cars and brought them back into the light to sell this weekend. I thought the prices paid for some of these cars were a little high. I hope the new owners were preparing to keep them as display pieces, because many of them may cost more to restore than the worth of a good car. Ironically, the highest price paid for this wreck of a race car may be the only one that might come close to breaking even if the new owner decides to restore what’s left!

On the weeks leading up to Monterey, I am often contacted by people considering the cars up for auction. One car I was asked to inspect in person was this black 246GTS Dino. It was a chairs and flairs car, which is considered desirable to collectors. My buyer wanted a black car and this one seemed to check off all his desires. He couldn’t make it to Monterey this year, and asked if I could inspect the car and possibly bid on the car in his stead if we decided it was worthy. I looked up the information on the car prior to arriving in Monterey, and researched the shop and work that was previously done to the car.

Auctions don’t make it easy to inspect a car, as it’s very difficult to look underneath, perform a compression test, or even drive the car. There is usually only one or two days to look at the car before it goes across the auction block, but still seeing the car in person can show a lot of things that don’t resolve in pictures. Luckily, my friend Jake O’Gorman works for RM and I can schedule a personal tour of the car, even off hours if need be. This car looked really good in person. The paint work was exceptional, but I confirmed the thickness with my hand held paint meter. Often times, paint can look mirror smooth, but this is sometimes achieved with layers of plastic filler filed and sanded down to a smooth finish. The problem with this is as the paint ages, the different layers of filler, primer, and paint begins to shrink, expand and contract, and can affect how the paint and finish of the car ages. Trying to determine how much filler was used under the paint would help decide if this car will hold up over the years.

Inside the car, everything was restored, but some of the materials that were used were not actually concours correct. The “mouse fur” dash on this car was a material that was available several years ago, but has since been superseded by a better more accurate material to the original. I’m sure at the time this car was restored, this was all that was available but can be considered wrong to a Dino Concours Judge. The “Daytona Stripes” in the seats were not the correct molded vinyl stripes that was used originally on this car, but rather strips of black leather with holes punched in the stripes. These little details may not offend 99% of the world, but if my client was going to pay top dollar, he might as well know what he’s spending his money on! Despite my protestations, we decided he still wanted me to bid on the car. After my inspection, I went into the auction office and registered on behalf of my client for a bidder number and checked when this car would come up for auction in the next day or so.

While I was there, the same buyer asked me to look at a Bizzarrini that was up for sale at the same auction. I told him I knew very little about Bizzarinis and the closest thing I came to one was I drove and inspected an Iso Griffo several years ago! I could, however, inspect the car as I would any car, looking over the condition of the paint, the fit and finish, and even ask some friends for their opinions on this particular car.

It didn’t take long for me to find a paint issue of the right door of this car, and make me take pause how such fresh paint on a car like this could show rust swelling in a lower door corner. I also bumped in to a friend and collector of these cars, and was introduced to an expert on Bizzarrini via e-mail. I soon was filled in on the history of this car and his issue with the it being possibly a post bankruptcy continuation chassis. To some this car is a legitimate Bizzarrin, while others feel differently. I got back on the phone with my buyer and told him in my opinion, this was a pass. Moving on!

There were plenty of other cars to see on display, and whenever I see a 330GTC for sale, I always check to see if the shock mounts have been fixed. I’ve talked about this issue extensively, but it’s always good to make sure all the GTC have been fixed.

Well, this one was not! Not only was it not fixed, but it looks like someone had already done some welding, but in the wrong place to offer any support to the weak shock mount.

I hope whomever buys this car, learns about the factory recall and the danger of this failing shock mount and gets it fixed before driving this car. Keep an eye out for this serial number guys and please tell the new owner to get this fixed!

I found another familiar car parked in the front of the Portolo Plaza where the RM Auction was being held. I met the owner and his family many years ago at Concorso Italiano during a Monterey weekend and they told me the story behind this car. It was bittersweet to see this car for sale as it had been with the family for so long.