Ho Ho Ho. I hope you had a good whatever you celebrate but I have saved the best present for you until today.
No, it isn’t a free beer at the Kensi. The Sultan got one last week. The first free beer in 57 years (true), just showing the miracle of Xmas and Chrismukkah and all the rest of what passes for celebrations marking the end of the financial half year, and the beginning of the long grind of seeing what you can shove into non-recurring items before the independent auditors, whose fees you pay, call enough.
No, it’s the auction of the ex-Steve McQueen, Jerry Seinfeld Porsche 917K – the “Hero Car” from the 1971 film “Le Mans” and one of the most recognisable race cars in all of history.
Before we move on to the usual Steve McQueen trivia and all the diversions this affords me, let me point you to the video. Cut and paste the following into your browser: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WMRvmsOb68 and watch it. It’s a petrol head test. If you can watch without having an emotional experience you are an EV driver, or something else.
Soon after Steve’s birth on March 24, 1930, in Beech Grove, Indiana, his circus stunt person father walked out. Not long after, his alcoholic mother who was a sex worker, did the same leaving Steve in the care of his grandparents who then moved into his great grand uncle’s farm.
Mum turned up again when Steve was 12 with a new husband, the family moved to Los Angeles and, as expected for a boy who was partly deaf, dyslexic and regularly beaten by his stepfather, he joined a few local gangs, got pinged for stealing and had a couple of stints at reform school. He joined the merchant marine, became a towel boy in a brothel, became a hero in the marines during WWII and in 1952 began studying acting, and bike and car racing. He was obsessed by actor and racer Paul Newman.
Newman had a 38-year race career, winning four SCCA Championships, second at Le Mans (winning his class) in a Porsche 935/77A and a heap of Trans Am races. He started racing at 46 in a Datsun and won his last race at 82. His car numbers reflected his age. In the 1995 Daytona 24 Hour Race his Ford Mustang was car 70. In the 2005 Daytona another car had number 80, so he drove car 79+1.
Anyway, back to Steve, the real King of Cool.
The highlight of his career was finishing second overall in the 1970 12 Hours of Sebring.
Driving a Porsche 908/02, McQueen got on to the podium despite driving with a cast on his left foot due to a motorcycle accident. This was a serious race and brutal for the cars involved.
Of the 68 cars that started the race, only 28 finished. McQueen and F1 co driver “Champagne” Peter Revson led for a number of laps near the end of the race.
Another diversion: The 1970 12-Hour race saw the all-woman Ring Free Racing Team drive a 1300cc four-cylinder Austin-Healey Sebring Sprite to 19th overall and first in class. Rosemary Smith, Judy Kondratieff and Janet Guthrie qualified higher than the 911 Porsche of Ralph Meaney and Bill Bean as well as the Camaro of Don Gwynne and John Elliott. They also finished ahead of the Camaro, a Corvette, two Ford Mustangs and two MG-Bs.
Janet Guthrie was the first female to qualify and race in the 1977 Indy 500 and the Daytona She raced in three Indianapolis 500s – 1977 through to 1979. She is also the first woman to lead a lap in NASCAR Cup series. Co-driver Rosemary Smith was the oldest person ever to test drive an F1 car. An Irish Rally champ, Rosemary hopped behind the wheel of a Renault at the Circuit Paul Ricard in 2017 aged 79.
An excuse to mark the death of Mary McGee, the first woman licensed to race motorcycles. Mary, clearly a temporary American, died at her home in Nevada, aged 87. In 1967, McQueen told her to “get off that pansy road racing bike of yours and come up to the desert”. In 1975, she became the first man, woman or other to complete the Baja 500 race solo. The Baja 1000 is the “single most dangerous race in North America, and one of the bloodiest in the world”.
Back to Steve’s Porker 917. After the movie wrapped, the car was sold to Reinhold Joest, a former race car driver and current team owner. During the past 25 years, his team Joest Racing has won Le Mans fifteen times. Reinhold sold it to Richard Attwood, now 84, winner of the 1970 24 Hours of Le Mans, in 1975.
Dickie sold it at auction in 2000 for around $1.2m. The car was repainted in its original Gulf livery before ending up in a Los Angeles dealership showroom on Wilshire Boulevard in 2002. Stand-up comedian and TV star Seinfeld checked it out and paid about $6m for it. Next month at Mecum’s Kissimmee 2025, the world’s largest collector car auction, you can pay around $30m for it.
Steve’s movie, Le Mans, didn’t do well. Maybe because there is no plot, very little dialogue and just film of a number of cars going around a town in France. McQueen starred in and co-produced Le Mans. Unless you are a serious petrol head it’s a movie to watch after ingesting an illicit substance.
If the inverse yield curves haven’t been treating you well then what about Sylvester Stallone’s 1972 Ferrari 365 GTC/4 by Pininfarina, which RM is selling this next month. Previously owned by Sly, who’s now 78, at school his teachers voted him “Most likely to end up in the electric chair”.
Sly has a pretty ordinary but expensive car collection. Completed in April 1972, this Ferrari 365 GTC/4, chassis 15471, left Maranello, finished in a combination of Oro Kelso (a gold that only three Dinos were painted in, then went on to other Feezers where the owners also had no taste) over beige leather.
It was imported to American shores and sold by William Harrah’s Ferrari distributorship Modern Classic Motors in Reno, Nevada. Bill was the founder of Harrah’s Hotel and Casinos, was married seven times to six women – twice to the same woman – had a 1500 car, $200m collection and was the West Coast distributor for Ferrari through his company, Modern Classic Motors of Reno. Harrah was a big fan of Ferraris, and his collection included his personal 1971 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona “Harrah Hot Rod”.
When Enzo Ferrari refused to build him a four-wheel-drive Ferrari, Bill had his own engineers build a Jerrari – a hybrid Jeep-Ferrari. Bill combined a 1969 Jeep Grand Wagoneer with the engine, transmission, and front end of a Ferrari 365 GT to create the Jerrari.
He used the Jerrari to travel between his casinos in Reno and Lake Tahoe. Sly’s Feezer is a steal at $250k.
jc@jcp.com.au
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