Wow.....that is all I have......wow.
The guy who owned these was from BOSTON.....awesome.
Got $20 million? 4 'very important' Ferrari cars to go on block
By Jerry Hirsch - LA TIMES
July 19, 2012,
A rare collection of four Ferrari cars is expected to sell for a combined $20 million or more at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance next month.
Santa Monica auction house Gooding & Co. landed the Ferrari collection, which was the property of Sherman Wolf, a Boston paging service and amphitheater entrepreneur who died earlier this year.
“It is a very important collection of cars,” said David Kinney, publisher of the Hagerty Price Guide for collector cars. “This is causing heartburn for some of the other auction companies that Gooding has grabbed this very important collection.”
The rarest vehicle in the collection is a 1960 Ferrari 250 GT LWB Alloy California Spider Competizione. Gooding & Co. said it is one of only nine alloy-bodied LWB – long wheel base - California Spiders ever built and is expected to sell for $7 million to $9 million.
The other cars include a 1953 Ferrari 340 MM Competition Spider, a 1957 Ferrari 500 TRC and a 1985 Ferrari 288 GTO.
“The Gooding sales have always been high-end and they seem to bring the right buyers to the room. The estate of Mr. Wolf will do very well,” Kinney said.
Although the GTO is fairly new by collector car standards, Kinney said its stature has grown, in part because not many were made. It could sell for close to $1 million. The other vehicles are expected to go for $3.75 million to $6.5 million each.
Ferraris are among the hottest part of what has become a strong collector-car market over the last year.
An index of rare Ferrari values calculated by the Hagerty Insurance Agency has risen 16% to $3.5 million as of April from the same month a year earlier.
Wolf was well-known in classic car collector circles, both for his collection and for his mechanical ability.
Jon Shirley, the former president of Microsoft and a collector, remembers meeting Wolf at Ferrari rally in Colorado in 1995.
Shirley was having trouble getting his 1951 Ferrari to run properly at the high altitude.
“He went over to his Ferrari 340MM Spyder and pulled out more tools and small parts in carefully marked plastic cases than I thought possible to store in a Ferrari,” Shirley said.
Wolf tinkered with Shirley’s Ferrari, tuning it “by ear until the car sounded quite good” he recalled.
Read the enclosed article - This is why I am looking forward to a time in the future when the two vehicles I will be driving will be my 1963 Jeep and the 1966 VW Bug I am rebuilding in the barn out back..... I don't need or want a computer in control of my car.
It's a car - not a laptop....The new cars are great, but take a look at a 7 year old computer and how it performs...that is the issue you will be dealing with when your new car gets older....and the cost associated with having it debugged...The computer allows your every movement, your every action to be tracked and recorded.
My old Jeep and the VW will never have those issues.
'Your' Car Won't Be After 2015
By Eric Peters on 4.25.12
After a certain point, it's not paranoia.
The latest brick in the wall is the predictably named "Moving Ahead For Progress in the 21st Century Act," also known as Senate Bill 1813. (See here for the full text of the bill itself; the relevant section is 31406.) This legislation -- already passed by the Senate and likely to be passed by the House -- will impose a legal requirement that all new cars made beginning with the 2015 models be fitted with so-called Event Data Recorders (EDRs). These are the "black boxes" you may have read about that store data about how you drive -- including whether you wear a seat belt and how fast you drive -- ostensibly for purposes of post-accident investigation.
These EDRs are not new. GM and other automakers have been installing them in new cars for years -- in GM's case, since the late 1990s. What's new is the proposed federal mandate, which would make it illegal to not have one -- or (in all likelihood) to remove or disable one in a car required to have the device.
The question arises: why?
Several possibilities come to mind:
First, the EDRs could be -- and almost certainly will be -- tied into your vehicle's GPS. (Most new and late model cars, conveniently, already have this, too.) Then data about your driving can be transmitted -- as well as recorded. To whom? Your insurance company, of course. Progressive Insurance already has such a system in place -- voluntary, for the moment.
When EDRs are mandated, you will no longer have a choice.
We'll be told it's all for the sake of (groan) "safety" -- just like the old 55 MPH highway speed limit and every radar trap in the country. Of course, it's really for the sake of revenue -- the government's and the insurance company's. Your rates will be "adjusted" in real time, for every incident of "speeding" or not buckling up. It'll be so much more efficient than using cops to issue tickets. After all, so many fishes escape! With an EDR in every car, no one will escape. Your "adjusted" premium will be waiting for you when you get home.
You've got mail!
And naturally, they -- the government, insurance companies -- will be able to track your every move, noting (and recording) where you've been and when. This will create a surveillance net beyond anything that ever existed previously. Some will not sweat this: After all, if you've got nothing to hide, why worry? Except for the fact that, courtesy of almost everything we do being either "illegal" or at least "suspicious," we all have a great deal to hide. The naivety of the Don't Worry, it's No Big Deal crowd is breathtaking.
But the last possibility is probably the creepiest: EDRs tied into your car's GPS will give them -- the government and/or corporations -- literal physical control over (hack) "your" vehicle. This is not conspiracy theorizing. It is technological fact. Current GM vehicles equipped with the same technology about to be mandated for every vehicle can be disabled remotely. Just turned off. All the OnStar operator has to do is send the appropriate command over the GPS to your car's computer, which controls the engine. It is one of the features touted by OnStar -- of course, as a "safety" feature.
In the future, it will be used to limit your driving -- for the sake of "energy conservation" or, perhaps, "the environment." It will be the perfect, er, vehicle, for implementing U.N. Agenda 21 -- the plan to herd all of us formerly free-range tax cattle into urban feedlots. So much easier to control us this way. No more bailing out to the country or living off the grid - unless you get there (and to your work) by walking.
The pieces are all coming together.
First, computer-controlled cars. Next, widespread adoption of GPS in cars. Then, EDRs tied into them.
Viola. "Your" car is suddenly under the control of others. Just as "your" other (cough, hack) property -- "your" home, for example -- is under the control of others. It does not matter that you paid for it. Or even that you have the legal fiction of ownership. You do not control "your" property -- hence it is really the property of others. You are merely allowed to use said property -- under certain conditions -- by the leave of the true owners.
And once SB 1813 is passed and signed into law, there will no longer be an opt-out. In fact, sure as the rooster crows in the morning, you can bet the next step will a law requiring older cars not originally fitted with the technology be fitted with it -- or else decommissioned. It is inconceivable that they -- the government and its insurance company cronies -- will allow anyone to drive a vehicle not subject to this monitoring and control. They will insist it's not "safe" -- and of course, "unfair" that owners of older cars not equipped with EDRs are able to "get away" with "speeding" and not wearing their seat belts.
Our cars were once a tangible expression of the freedom ideal. They are fast becoming mobile cages. And the really devilish thing is they're making us pay the costs of our own imprisonment, too.
About the Author
Eric Peters is an automotive columnist and author of Automotive Atrocities: The Cars You Love to Hate (Motor Books International) and a new book, Road Hogs.
