When Enzo Ferrari delayed the delivery of Count Giovanni Volpi di Misurata’s second Ferrari for the 1962 Le Mans 24 hours the Count turned to several former employees of the Ferrari team to convert his 250 GT SWB into a GTO challenger the infamous Ferrari “Breadvan”.
It would appear that Count Volpi and Enzo made up their differences the following season when the Count is believed to have taken delivery of today’s featured GTO chassis #4757GT after it had been entered in the 1963 Le Mans 24 Hours by the factory for Carlo Mario Abate and Fernand Tavano who crashed the car after completing 105 laps from 12th on the grid.
Carlo Abate is then known to have driven #4757 to class victories on four hillclimbs before it was entered in the 1963 Tour de France by Scuderia SSS Repubblica di Venezia for Fernand Tavano and Lorenzo Bandini who retired from the event after an accident.
Georges Marquet acquired the for the 1964 season and under the Ecurie Francorchamps umbrella competed in at least a dozen events including races and hillclimbs winning the Coupes Benelux, Zandvoort, Anvers hillclimb and Bomeree hillclimb events outright.
There after the car made it’s way to the USA via Jaques Swatters in 1965.
In 1982 Christopher Murray of Middletown Rhode Island is said to have bought #4757 for $345,000 two years before fleeing to Spain to avoid a drugs related indictment.
Murray was murdered in Spain in 1987 the same year the FBI who had confiscated the car in December 1984 sold it through a sealed bid auction for $1.6 million.
From 1988 to 2009 #4757 resided in The Netherlands and returned to the USA in 2010 when it’s present owner bought the car.
My thanks to Geoffrey Horton who took these photographs of #4757 at last years Sonoma Historics meeting.
Thanks for joining me on this “Confiscated By The FBI” edition of “Gettin’ a li’l psycho on tyres” I hope you will join me again tomorrow when I’ll be looking at only surviving Le Mans Bristol. Don’t forget to come back now !
