Please help me find a specific 250 GTE

erik330 · Post by **erik330** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 6:06 pm

Here's a puzzler. My best and oldest friend's father owned a 250 GTE from new which he traded in 1964 for a 330. My friend has no idea what the chassis number was and his father died. Is there a 250 GTE registry online similar to the two 330 registries? My friend would like to find the car if it exists. We know that the car was silver gray, and that's about it. However, there were only a few hundred made, so going through a registry listing looking for gray 250s delivered to a dealer in Germany would probably narrow it down to a manageable few cars.

The car was delivered originally to Auto Becker the Ferrari dealer in Dusseldorf which inconveniently recently went bankrupt. We could probably come up with the original German license number.

Over on Ferrari Chat, Kare from Finland offered this:

250 GT 2+2 sold via Auto-Becker were:

2213-2397-2427-2761-3153-3267-3595-3817-3947-3969-4011-4161-4261-4559-4771-4959.

Thoughts?

Post by **tyang** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 7:10 pm

Hi Erik,

There is no online version of the 330 regestry that Kerry Chesbro has done a fine job of sharing with us. There is however a 250GTE Registry, and is available in print form from Bill Preston. I don't have his e-mail right now, but I'm sure someone here can supply it.

Tom

lukek · Post by **lukek** » Wed Aug 11, 2004 7:18 pm

conveniently enough, it is
newsletter250gte@aol.com

I have the print copy, but there were lots of silver ones. Mine is silver, but I think it was deivered to FBA in France.

erik330 · Post by **erik330** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 9:42 am

I emailed Mr. Preston yesterday, but so far no response.

Lukek, would you mind looking up the numbers I posted in the original post and see if any of those s/n s were silver or gray?

kare · Post by **kare** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 11:33 am

Smart move at this point might be waiting to see the photos. 11 of the cars above were Series 1/2 cars and last 5 cars belong to Series 3.

Very little is known of the early life of each car. Germany was a very young Ferrari-nation at the time; with a rare exception here and there these GTEs were about the first new Ferraris sold in Germany ever! One more thing making it difficult is that (AFAIK) Ferrari has not published complete records providing exterior/interior color for each GT/E. Fortunately such records were made at the time!

Only well known example is 3153GT. It was anthracite with ivory leather and raced by Hermann Cordes while he waited for his wrecked Berlinetta to be replaced. One should also be aware that destinations are not always 100% reliable;sometimes (luckily quite rarely) a car was shipped to another dealer/customer and replaced with a new one rolling down the production line.

One more thing; do you know the s/n of Mr. Sack's 330GT?

Best wishes, Kare

erik330 · Post by **erik330** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 11:40 am

6161, it's the car I now own!

lukek · Post by **lukek** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 1:02 pm

I do not have the electronic version of the database, so searching through 950 entries would take some time (I am leaving for the show). I am sure Bill left for Concorso and will reply as soon as he gets back.

thx
luke

erik330 · Post by **erik330** » Thu Aug 12, 2004 1:37 pm

No Luke, you misunderstood me. I didn't mean for you to look through all the entries, just these 16 chassis numbers which were cars delivered to Auto Becker: 2213-2397-2427-2761-3153-3267-3595-3817-3947-3969-4011-4161-4261-4559-4771-4959

Any of these in gray or silver would likely be the car we're searching for.

lukek · Post by **lukek** » Sun Aug 15, 2004 1:32 am

I just came back from Concorso and took a look through the 2004 copy. Your best bets are 3817 (gray) and 4959 (silver/red). Quite a few of the serials you listed have no current info on file. Also, keep in mind that the color changes were more frequent on these cars.
E-mail Bill for a copy of the registry. I think it is still around a $100. You might find some more leads if you scan the entire history of any particular car. I did not see any more silver references, but some of the names or cities, or where the car was sold might mean something to you.
Good luck with your search.

thx
luke

Tom Wilson · Post by **Tom Wilson** » Sun Aug 15, 2004 1:29 pm

Bill has the Register on computer and can search it by a number of criteria, including color, but I don't know about delivery destination. Drop him an email and see what he can do.

erik330 · Post by **erik330** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 9:07 am

I suspect that Bill must be around the Monterey area and computerless, because I have received no response from him since I emailed him last week. Hopefully once the whole fiesta is over he can get back to me.

Luke, thanks so much for those two numbers. Gray and red is what we both remember so it may well be one of the two you mention.

lukek · Post by **lukek** » Mon Aug 16, 2004 11:35 am

Yes, i saw Bill at the 250 GTE party on Friday. FCA festivities stretch into this week, as well (I am coming back for a volunteer gig on Tuesday).

thx
luke

erik330 · Post by **erik330** » Mon Aug 23, 2004 6:45 am

Bill replied with color information on the 16 cars. 4959 seems to be a likely candidate and it is in the US. Anyone have an idea of who might own it now?

DavidWP · Post by **DavidWP** » Sun Dec 23, 2007 11:35 pm

erik330 wrote:Bill replied with color information on the 16 cars. 4959 seems to be a likely candidate and it is in the US. Anyone have an idea of who might own it now?

I owned 4959 until 1995. It was silver/red when I owned it but the instrument panel was dark gray and looked original, so I assume it was dark gray/red when new.

As noted in my 4959 thread, I sold it to "The Fine Car Store". I am still curious about where it is.

David