Appreciation for Ferraris from the Fifties - a golden era for the car manufacturer's racing models - has been steadily rising. Last week the 335S Spider Scaglietti sold for almost £25 million, breaking the record for the most ever spent on a classic car at auction. The result was no great surprise for a Ferrari of its era, let alone a model with history file that reads like a Who’s Who of Fifites motor racing.
The factory racing Ferraris of the Fifties are now the stuff of auto legend for their domination of the World Sportscar Championship, the combination of circuit and street races that saw gentleman racers compete alongside professional drivers – many of them Formula One drivers indulging in a spot of lucrative moonlighting.
The car pictured here, chassis 0674, left Ferrari’s Maranello workshops at the beginning of 1957. The 335S had a 3.8-litre V12 engine and a barchetta body by Carozzeria Scaglietti, the coachbuilder of choice for racing Ferraris of the day.
This car, one of just four 335S models built, was driven by some of the best drivers of the era, including Mike Hawthorn – who went on to become Britain’s first Formula One champion – and Sterling Moss, widely considered the greatest driver never to win the title.
In the 1957 Mille Miglia, which would prove to be the end of the glorious Italian road race, the 335S was piloted to a second place finish by the German driver Wolfgang von Trips. The race was hit by tragedy, as the driver behind von Trips, the Spaniard Alfonso de Portago – also driving a 335S – was involved in a horrific accident, killing driver, co-driver and nine members of the public. That spelt the end of the Mille Miglia as a competitive race.
After the race, chassis 0674 was returned to Maranello where it was fitted with a more powerful, 4.1-litre engine. With this new engine, which produced almost 400 horsepower, Mike Hawthorn set a lap record during the Le Mans 24-Hour race, breaking the then seemingly impossible barrier of a 200kph – he averaged just over 203kph, or 126mph.
The car was instrumental in another victory for Ferrari in the constructors’ title in the 1957 World Sportscar Championship. Then in January 1958 it was sold to a US owner who entered it in the Cuban Grand Prix, then in its second year of a total of three. The car was driven to victory by Sterling Moss, despite a disturbing night spent under armed guard after rival Juan Miguel Fangio had been kidnapped by revolutionaries on the eve of the race.
Chassis 0674 was retired from racing at the end of 1958. It was sold to an architect in Pennsylvania before later ending up in the hands of the collector Pierre Bardinon, who built up an unrivalled collection of racing Ferraris. The Frenchman died in 2012 and the car is sold directly from his estate.
