There are cars with a rock-solid provenance - and there is this particular Ferrari Dino. Owned by the vendor not once but twice, he’s so enamored with it that he wrote a book about his time with the car, Dino Days. No vanity project, it’s been very well-reviewed by the classic car motoring press and is now available at Waterstones, with all proceeds going to the Sporting Bears charity.

Sold the first time to help pay his children’s school fees, he would now like to help them get a foot on the property ladder. We’re strong believers in the adage that you find nice cars with nice people, and Phill is one of the nicest chaps we’ve met in a long time - and just the sort of bloke you’d want to buy a car like this from.

Being something of a completist, his research was so dogged that he’s uncovered the name of every single one of the cars previous owners – all 18 of them – and spoken to as many as he can trace. He is, as you’re probably starting to understand, just the tiniest bit obsessed with his car. (And yes, while 18 is a lot the fact that he knows every single one of them, and each one has kept up with the car’s care means we can safely say that it has had 18 honeymoon periods, time when money was no object and no expense was being spared. In fact, five of the last eight owners covered fewer than 100 miles in it each; this is most emphatically not an old dog that’s been run ragged by a series of exasperated owners keen to move it on to the next poor sod as quickly as possible...)

The Dino made its first appearance in his life on the 9th of November 1992. He then sold it in 1997 – but the itch clearly hadn’t been properly scratched (despite spending some time with a Muira…) because he bought it back again in January 2017, selling a Ferrari 308GTB to do so.

The intervening years had been kind to it, and he discovered that not only was his old car now ‘tidier and shinier’ than when he last knew it but it had also been fitted with new camshafts, a clutch and alternator, and had been the recipient of some suspension work.

It also had the much-prized Classiche certification.

The process for obtaining this would have set the previous owner back more than £3,000, which might be a huge sum but then the work needed to obtain it is extensive.

And even more so in this case as the Dino lacked a crucial stamp on the casing of the gearbox. Not one to be easily dissuaded, the then-owner had the engine and gearbox removed from the car and shipped to Italy for Ferrari to corroborate their authenticity. Ferrari checked its own records and confirmed that it was happy to not only stamp the ‘box with the missing mark but to issue the certificate. This must have come as a relief to the owner, as the bill for removal, refitting and shipping alone came to £9,900...

So, as you can see, a Classiche certificate (which is supported by a fully illustrated folder designed to withstand forensic scrutiny in the event of a challenge) is an important document, and adds heft to the car’s already impressive provenance.

Built in 1973 and originally silver with a black interior, the Dino made its way to the United Kingdom in 1976 by way of a couple of years and 24,000 miles in Northern Ireland and Jersey. The book explains where it was during those years, and explores the car’s history in far more depth than we can here; if you’d like to see it, and the car, then please contact us to arrange a viewing.

Restored in 1990, the colour was changed to the current Rosso Corsa 300. The work, which was fully documented and is displayed in photos that will be supplied with the car, also included a change of interior colour to Pelle leather with Daytona striped inserts.

The final bill came to £42,343 – or the equivalent of £90,000 today. Interestingly, even that eye watering sum doesn’t include the labour and materials involved in the respray (£4,800), or the cost of re-trimming it (£3,750).

The Ferrari has still only covered 72,000 miles from new, which equates to a little more than 1,500 miles a year – and 7,500 of those have been in the vendor’s hands, which proves his claim that ‘old cars are there to be used’.

The car comes with the most comprehensive service history we have ever seen. Running to several files, it even includes some documents that he vendor thought had been lost in the period he didn’t own the car. They later turned up in the hands of an automobilia dealer who wanted him to pay handsomely to get them back! Needless to say, he did and nothing illustrates his determination to cataloguing his car’s life properly than this.

Not that writing a book about the car – a signed copy of which will, of course, be supplied with it – was a half-hearted undertaking. Beautifully written and illustrated with a huge number of colour photographs, Dino Days is a wonderful record of one man’s love affair with a car that stands as testament to another man’s love for his son.

1973 Ferrari 246GT

Video

About this auction

Viewings Welcome

Thinking of selling your Ferrari