To be sold at the Gooding & Company Amelia Island Auction on March 8, 2013. For further details please visit www.goodingco.com or contact a vehicle specialist at 001.310.899.1960 or specialist@goodingco.com.
Engine Specifications:
3,286 CC Tipo 226 DOHC Alloy V-12 Engine
Six Weber 40 DCN 17 Carburetors
300 BHP at 7,500 RPM
5-Speed Manual Transaxle
4-Wheel Servo-Assisted Disc Brakes 4-Wheel Independent
Coil-Spring Suspension
About this Car:
“It is, first and foremost, a serious and comfortable gran turismo, but it retains the lineage of a race car in the response of the engine and the quality of the handling. The 275 GTB/4 is one of the greatest automobiles created in our times.”
– Jean Pierre Beltoise, l’Auto-Journal, January 19, 1967
Unveiled at the Paris Salon in October 1966, the 275 GTB/4 was a groundbreaking Ferrari. As Maranello’s first four-cam road car, the GTB/4 paid homage to the dominant sports prototypes of the era and pointed to the future of Ferrari design.
Subtly differentiated from the long-nose 275 GTB by a slight bulge on the bonnet, the true beauty of the GTB/4’s design lay beneath the surface. The 3.3-liter Tipo 226 engine was derived from Ferrari’s successful line of “P” cars, which were more modern derivatives of the dominant four-cam sports racers of the late 1950s. Beyond its revised cylinder heads, the GTB/4 featured dry sump lubrication – as found on the GTB/C – and an impressive lineup of six Weber carburetors, an arrangement that was made optional on earlier GTBs. The result was a free-revving 300 bhp engine with improved low-end torque and greater overall flexibility.
Beyond its exquisite four-cam engine, the 275 GTB/4 benefitted from other notable refinements, from the implementation of the improved torque-tube driveshaft to more modern interior appointments. Beautiful, civilized, and devastatingly fast, Ferrari’s four-cam Berlinetta had few peers on the roads of 1967.
Completed at the Ferrari factory in October 1967, this 275 GTB/4, chassis 10511, was originally finished in the vibrant color scheme of Giallo Fly with black Connolly leather and equipped with Campagnolo alloy wheels and instrumentation in kilometers.
In November 1967, 10511 was delivered through official concessionaire M. Gastone Crepaldi S.a.s. to its first owner, Sig. Frigerio of Milan. After five years of use on Italian roads, the 275 GTB/4 was sold to an American enthusiast and shipped from Italy to New York.
Offered for sale by a New York owner in June 1974, the Ferrari was eventually sold to Stephen Stepner of Miami, Florida. A regular Ferrari customer and client of FAF Motorcars in Tucker, Georgia, Mr. Stepner offered 10511 for sale in the September 1975 FCA newsletter, describing the Ferrari as “chrome yellow with black leather, just completed extensive restoration, steel body, 29,500 miles on car, 2,500 miles on engine rebuild with new cams.”
Evidently, the advertisement captured the interest of Robert Panella, a Stockton, California, collector who owned a varied selection of important cars over the years, from a SWB California Spider to a 427 Cobra. Between 1976 and 1977, Mr. Panella was listed as the owner of 10511 in both the Ferrari Club of America News and the Ferrari Owners Club USA membership roster.
In 1977, Mr. Panella sold the 275 GTB/4 to Hal Burroughs of Beverly Hills, California.
From an Important Private Collection Formerly the Property of Mel and Noel Blanc
From an Important Private Collection Formerly the Property of Mel and Noel Blanc