With the recent news of a Ferrari 250 GTO selling for $70 million USD it started me thinking of other stories published here about the Ferrari icon, the 250 GTO. Here is a favorite.
This is a slightly updated re-post of an article originally published on My Car Quest in October 2011.
by Mike –
In October 2011 I wrote about a mystery, at least it was a mystery to me, about pictures of a Ferrari 250 GTO that I found in the August and December 1963 issues of Road & Track.
Bev Spencer in Ferrari 250 GTO No. 4219 at the Hillsborough Concours d’Elegance in May 1963
The August 1963 issue had a color picture of a red Ferrari 250 GTO being driven by Pedro Rodriguez who won the 3-hour Daytona Continental race in this Ferrari 250 GTO.
The December issue had a black and white advertisement for Ferrari 250 GTO No. 4219 for sale that was raced by this same driver and won this same race. This car was a light color with new racing stripes down the middle.
In addition the seller was Spencer Buick (Bev Spencer) in San Francisco also an Authorized Ferrari Dealer.
The mystery for me; what happened to this Ferrari 250 GTO between August and December 1963 that caused a color change? And was a Buick dealer also really an Authorized Ferrari Dealer in 1963?
The answers were supplied by an article on MercedesHeritage.com written by Roy Spencer who is the editor of MercedesHeritage.com and also the son of Bev Spencer the owner, and seller, of Ferrari GTO No. 4219 in 1963.
A My Car Quest reader sent the link to this article which was published just 3 weeks before my GTO Mystery post. And no I had not seen this article before, which is no longer available on MercedesHeritage.com.
Bev Spencer with Ferrari GTO No. 4219 at the Del Monte Lodge in Pebble Beach after racing at Laguna Seca in the fall of 1963 – note the Ferrari is being towed by a Buick Riviera, after all Spencer was a Buick dealer as well as a Ferrari dealer
Roy Spencer writes a fascinating story and explains that the paint job between August and December 1963 was because his father was using the car to race for the North America Racing Team (NART) and the car was painted in the blue and white color scheme of NART. The stripes were blue and the car was white.
Bev Spencer also owned another Ferrari 250 GTO and the first Ferrari Testa Rossa made. All three of these special Ferraris were in Monterey in August 2011. The two GTOs were at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance and the Testa Rossa was sold at the Gooding auction for an all time record price at auction for any car (up until 2011). This record has been beaten since then.
Ferrari 250 GTO No. 4219 at Pebble Beach August 2011; now owned by Brandon Wang
It was pure coincidence that I found those two pictures from 1963 and asked some questions about this Ferrari 250 GTO. The answers were more fascinating that I could have imagined.
The Comments below are also very interesting, they are worth reading.
The photos above used by permission of Roy Spencer.
Below are the two pictures that triggered the mystery.
Pedro Rodriguez in the 3-hour Daytona Continental-winning Ferrari GTO. Kodachrome photo by Robert L. Downing; from August 1963 Road & Track
Advertisement for Ferrari 250 GTO No. 4219 from December 1963 Road & Track
Let us know what you think in the Comments.
Fascinating! By the way, a framed print of Pedro Rodriguez at Daytona in the GTO hung on my wall long before I acquired 3987.
Associated Press photo of Mamie & Pedro after Daytona victory.
I purchased it on Ebay a few years ago.
mamie-pedro-back-of-photo.pdf
Front of photo
mamie-pedro-02-18-1963.pdf
Stephen,
Yes it is fascinating. I had a Twilight Zone moment when I read Roy Spencer's article discussing the very GTO that I had found in those old magazines.
I suspect that the R&T fold out of Pedro Rodriguez in GTO 4219 was hung on a few walls in 1963.
I attended that race (1963 Daytona Continental) on my 13th birthday. I lived near Daytona at the time & my older brother took me to see the sports cars race for my birthday.
His wife was from Asheville, NC & was friends with Mamie Reynolds. Mamie was the heiress to the Hope Diamond at the time. She married Coco Chinetti, Luigi’s son, & that’s the Ferrari connection. My brother’s wife told my recently that we had lunch with her before the race. I don’t recall that too much but I remember Auggie Pabst in his XKE lifting the front wheel off the ground every time he came out of the hairpin. We were sitting in the infield near that turn. I recall Pedro’s red Ferrari & how cool it sounded…unlike any of the Nascar stuff I had heard run before. I stumbled across the February 1963 Road & Track that had the article about the race. The picture of Auggie’s XKE Jogged my memory & I immediately called my brother to ask him what he recalled about the race. His wife (now ex-) told me more about it & how she and Mamie had been friends as young girls in Asheville. She told me how they had once tied the Hope diamond around Mamie’s Great Dane’s neck & it ran around the yard like that. I was pretty skeptical about that, but then I read some stories on-line about how Mamie had played with it in her sand box. It didn’t sound so impossible after that.
Thank you for sharing these great stories.
The story about Mamie is incorrect. The hope diamond was sold to Harry Winston in 1945. Mamie was a friend of my fathers.
Angela,
I have a newspaper article from the New York times that quotes Mamie talking about the Hope diamond in the sandbox. You can find it here:
https://www.nytimes.com/1963/07/28/archives/mamie-s-reynolds-married-in-chapel.html
See attached article on Coco Chinetti / Mamie Spears Reynolds…
https://mycarquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/mamie-pedro-02-18-1963.pdf
https://mycarquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/mamie-pedro-back-of-photo.pdf
https://mycarquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Mamie.pdf
Mamie.pdf
Per wikipedia, Harry Winston purchased Hope diamond in 1949 not in 1945.
1963 Daytona Continental was a great race. corvette even came in third! The #18 Pedro Rodriguez Ferrari infield image is iconic. Can anyone verify that two page image IS from the Feb. 1963 Road & Track issue? The race occurred on Feb. 17, 1963 so that date for the photo is suspect… Road & Track ran an article on that race in the May 1963 issue with a image of #18 Ferrari near a wall. The May 1963 issue image was shot by R&T photog Alice Bixler – i contacted her about the #18 Ferrari imagine. i am trying to locate the real source of this INFIELD image of #18 Ferrari for copyright purposes. Could the image be from Car & Driver, Sports car graphic or another periodical ? Thanks for ANY additional info ! PMR
The fold out of the red GTO is from the August 1963 issue of Road & Track.
The captions of the photo is: Pedro Rodriguez in the 3-hour Daytona Continental-winning Ferrari GTO. Kodachrome photo by Robert L. Downing; from August 1963 Road & Track
Mike, Thanks ! now i have to track down the copyrights/ release through the photographer. In 1963 R&T assigned the rights to the photoog…. PMR
Mike, thanks again for the Ferrari GTO image details. Does anyone know of any contact method to reach the photographer – Mr. Robert L. Downing . I have scanned the Web and sent a email note to Hearst publishing ( Road & Track ) ,but have no leads yet. thanks ,PMR
I do not know how to reach him.
My comment above about the Road & Track issue being February 1963 was incorrect. It was the May 1963 issue.
I have scanned the article & could email it to anyone who wants it. It is 4 pages with black & white photos.
Thank you for that date. I just dug through my old R&T magazines and I found the article. I will read it now.
Please send article from R&T. Thanks! Lee
R&T may 1963 article on Pedro’s victory n #4219
https://mycarquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/pg43.pdf
pg43.pdf
pg 44
https://mycarquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/pg44.pdf
pg44.pdf
pg 45
https://mycarquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/pg45.pdf
pg45.pdf
pg 46
https://mycarquest.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/pg46.pdf
pg46.pdf
Also, there is an article on the history of SN# 4219 in the June 1999 issue of Forza magazine. I had held on to that magazine for over ten years before I even realized that I had witnessed the race it won, let alone had met its owner,
Mamie Spears Reynolds.
BTW- I have a scan of a newspaper article from Mamie & Coco Chinetti’s wedding. I found it online.
Some information that may be of interest
Mamie Spears Reynolds Chinetti Gregory was left the Hope Diamond in her grandmother’s will (Evalyn Walsh McLaen), but the trustees decided to sell it to jeweler Harry Winston to discharge some of McLaen’s debts. He sold it to the Smithsonian Institution, where it remains today. The story about a Great Dane wearing it to parties is true, but the dog belonged to Mamie’s grandmother, not to Mamie. Evalyn also often used it for a sort of Easter Egg hunt during parties.
Thank you for the information Michael. I love your book, American Sports Car Racing in the 1950s.
http://www.amazon.com/American-Sports-Car-Racing-1950s/dp/0760303673/ref=la_B001KH8BN0_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1437803952&sr=1-1
I had read most of that but thanks for the update.
Mamie’s father, Robert Rice (Buncombe Bob) was quite a character…
.From Wikipedia..
“57-year-old Reynolds married for the fifth and final time to 19-year-old Evalyn Washington McLean (1921–1946) daughter of Edward B. McLean, the former publisher and owner of the Washington Post, and Evalyn Walsh McLean, owner of the Hope Diamond.Together, they had one daughter:
Mamie Spears Reynolds (1942–2014), an owner and driver for the Reynolds Racing Team of Asheville, the first woman to qualify for the Daytona 500, and co-owner of the ABA Kentucky Colonels professional basketball team.[16][17] In 1963, she married Luigi “Coco” Chinetti Jr., son of Italian racecar driver and Ferrari agent Luigi Chinetti, and divorced two years later.
On September 20, 1946, his wife, Evalyn, (then only 25 years old) died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills, which some believe is a result of the Hope Diamond curse.”
That left Reynolds with 4 yr old daughter, Mamie. He died Feb 13, 1963, 4 days prior to her car winning the race.
My sister in law was childhood friends with Mamie & they worried that the Mafia had put out a contract on her.
I tried to clean up that one shot.. http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h245/adm06/HOT%20WHEELS/FERRARI%20HOT%20WHEELS/250GTORT.8.63_zpslddm0qod.jpg
Thank you Dale, very nice.
I had the fortune of seeing one on the street in Monte Carlo a few years back.
The amount of attention that it drew was amazing.
It was quite a sight to behold seeing such a classic beauty in person.
Unless I recollect incorrectly, I am pretty sure I saw the Spencer ’64 GTO (Serie Due) at the Bridgehampton Can-Am race in 1966. It was pretty seriously street-racing a 250LM on the two-lane road in front of one of Bridgehampton’s bars. We heard them coming a long time before they passed us at obvious three-digit speeds. It was fantastic. And not long after, both cars came back, rolled into the parking lot and their drivers went into the bar. What a night…