For first time ever, a Ferrari wins Best in Show at Pebble Beach
Everything’s coming up Maranello thoroughbreds at Monterey this year. First, a Ferrari takes the world auction record Thursday night, setting the vanguard for at least a couple other eight-figure Ferrari sales around the peninsula. Then on Sunday afternoon, to cap the weekend, a 1954 Ferrari 375 MM Scaglietti coupe takes Best in Show at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, making it the first Ferrari to win the car world’s top honor.
The 375 MM, chassis number 0402 AM, started out as a Pinin Farina-bodied spider when its first owner, Italian film director Roberto Rossellini bought it, but when Rossellini ran the one-of-five car into a tree about a year after buying it, Sergio Scaglietti got the nod to rebody it as a coupe. Though Scaglietti had worked with Ferrari on racing cars in the years prior, this would be his first shot at a road car for Ferrari. Scaglietti decided to form the aluminum panels over a metal lattice work, taking a year to finish the one-off body.
Rossellini then kept the coupe, now painted grey but still powered by its 330hp 4522cc V-12, until the mid-1960s. It then passed through at least a couple of owners in Italy and France over the next few decades, eventually falling into disrepair and suffering from a half-hearted attempt to restore it, until current owner Jon Shirley of Medina, Washington, bought it in the mid-1990s and commissioned a full restoration. He then debuted the freshly restored car at the Ferrari Club of America’s meet in 1998 before presenting it at that year’s Pebble Beach concours, taking first in class and reportedly coming within a hair’s breadth of Best of Show that year. In the intervening years, he did come back to Pebble and take the top prize – in 2008 with a Touring-bodied 1938 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Berlinetta – but this year returned to complete what he started with 0402 AM more than 15 years ago.
Not only does Shirley’s win represent the first for a Ferrari in the history of the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, it also represents the first win for a postwar car since 1968 – when a 1964 Maserati Mistral coupe won Best in Show – and only the second win for a postwar car since 1955.
Kurt Ernst contributed to this story.