Way back when I was a teenager my folks took me to the Cinema to see a film staring Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway called the Thomas Crown Affair, a story about a millionaire businessman, Thomas Crown played by Steve McQueen, who got his kicks by executing a near faultless bank robbery.
After the job a dirty thinking insurance investigator Vicki Anderson played by Faye Dunaway is sent to help squeaky clean Detective Eddie Malone solve the case, and after narrowing the list of suspects down correctly intuits that Thomas Crown is her man. She shows up in a high profile dark read Ferrari 275 GTB/4 NART Spyder at a polo match in which Thomas is playing and starts to openly film with on a small movie camera, they inevitably meet and she introduces herself as an investigator and makes no secret of the fact that he is the person she is investigating.
Later on Thomas turns up at an auction room and parked outside is the dark red NART Spyder which catches his attention and his assistant remarks “isn’t that one of those red Italian things” to which Thomas responds in the affirmative.
After much cat and mouse Thomas decides to do one more job and lets Vicki in on the idea to see if she really loves him or wants to turn him in. I’ll leave it to you to see the film to find out what happens, here is a link to the trailer.
Luigi Chinetti had plans to have 25 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 NART Spyders built with Pininfarina bodies in 1967. The first chassis 09437 was supplied with a 330 hp race motor, Chinetti had a roll cage fitted and entered it into the 1967 Sebring 12 hours for Marianne ‘Pinky’ Rollo and Denise McCluggage who finished a credible 17th overall and second in class behind a Ford Mustang. The car was later scouted for The Thomas Crown Affair and painted dark red for the film.
McQueen liked the car that Dunaway had in the film and ended up buying chassis #10453. Todays featured car is chassis #10691 which won the Carmel by the Sea Concours d’Elegance best in show award last August where these photographs were taken by Geoffrey Horton.
Despite the good performance at Sebring and the appearance in the Oscar winning, best original song, Thomas Crown Affair Chinetti had trouble selling ten NART Spyders with out heavy discounts and so only ten were built. They now change hands depending on history and condition for between US$ 3 to 4 million.
My thanks to Geoffrey Horton for sharing his photographs.
Thanks for joining me on this “One Of Those Blue Italian Things” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres” I hope you will join me again tomorrow. Don’t for get to come back now !
