Off to Europe after a weekend in hell

I WAS minding my own business, driving through what I thought were the gates of heaven, the entrance to Wakefield Park racetrack, when there it was.

Alpha Romeos at Wakefield park

IN his really long poem Inferno, Italian crooner Dan Aligheiri writes of his descent into the ninth level of hell. It is so crook that even Satan is trapped and, contrary to recent reports, not all that happy to be there. Friends, I have to report that last weekend I was there, at the very centre of hell.

Like Dan, I was just minding my own business, driving in through what I thought were the gates of heaven, the entrance to Wakefield Park racetrack, when there it was.

Readers, no words can convey the despair and terror I felt when I saw and heard 38 Alfa Romeos on the grid waiting to start in what can only be termed, heat one of the race series from hell. Seeing one Alfa on the road is enough to make you reach for the garlic, the stake and the large bottle of Bundy OP. Seeing nearly 40 invading the track so badly that the tail-enders were actually lining up on the corner before the straight would have turned Satan himself into a Mormon.

Look, given my ethical responsibilities under the motoring writer’s code of conduct I have to report that Australia’s finest shopfitter, Doug Selwood, the Dracula of the Veloce Series, took out the very wet four-race series in his 1984 Alfa Romeo GTV6.

OK. Enough of my penance for having too good a time at Pebble Beach. The European auction season starts this month. It’s like the US auction season but with better wine, better-looking cars, impressively better-looking persons of the opposite sex and, best of all, a certain weirdness.

Let’s just say you’re sitting in your office on the Terrace and you suddenly realise you are meant to be sipping a 2010 Art Series chardy with Denis Horgan at Leeuwin Estate. You have two alternatives. Hop in your Bentley Continental GTV8 (around $400,000 from Chellingworth Bentley down on the Stirling Highway) and spend three long and boring hours in the late-afternoon Margaret River rush, or be there in a minute.

Yes, you can do that if you join me on Monday at RM’s in London. Item one is the CIAM-NASA Hypersonic Kholod. The Kholod is good for 7926km/h, roughly 20 times the top speed of a McLaren F1, or 8000 times faster than Doug Selwood’s Alfa. Developed jointly by the Russians and the Americans, the vehicle is an experimental system for testing a dual-mode scramjet, boosted by a modified Russian SA-5 missile.

As well as another 300 F cars, Rob Myers will be selling “Gentleman” Tom Payne’s 1964 Shelby 289 Competition Cobra prepared by Shelby and raced as a factory-sponsored entry. Yours for just $3 million, which is four times the value of Doug’s Alfa.

Bonhams have a good Italian up for sale next weekend: the 1969 Abarth 1300 sport spider SE010 “Quattro Fari” sports-racing prototype. This was a track racer and hill climber that split drivers. Carlo Abarth preferred the engine at the back — in fact, so far at the back it was out past the rear wheels.This former museum piece is yours for about $500,000.

Talking of Minis, why not invest $80,000 in a 1964 Austin Mini Cooper 1275 S competition saloon? Mechanically brilliant, this one has probably the best historic race record of any Cooper in the world.

Finally, you could do worse than bid for the 1936 Lagonda LG45R Rapide sports-racing two-seater. Anywhere under $3m will be good buying for a car with impeccable history and pedigree — it’s worth a mill or two just for the provenance. This is the ultimate between-the-wars race car. Don’t forget the formerly US-based Lagonda had recently appointed Wocka Bentley as chief designer and he pushed the company into racing.

This Lagonda or Doug’s Alfa GTV? Clearly the descent into hell fired my brain.

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