2014 Best of Show Winner
August 3, 2021
1954 Ferrari 375 MM Scaglietti Coupe shown by Jon Shirley
Many competition versions of the Ferrari 375 MM were built, but this is one of just five road-going cars and probably the most famous. It was ordered by film director Roberto Rossellini, one of Ferrari’s best customers, and started life as a Pinin Farina–bodied competition Spyder (0402AM). Rossellini drove it sparingly, but then an accident occurred. The original body was beyond saving and the chassis was sent to Carrozzeria Scaglietti in Modena for a replacement. This car became Scaglietti’s first passenger car design for Ferrari, a unique and finely sculpted Coupe Speciale.
After Rossellini, the car passed to Mario Savona of Palermo and then Charles Robert of Paris in 1970. It was later discovered rather unloved in an underground garage in a Paris suburb, and sold.
Jon Shirley first restored the car in 1995, and it won numerous awards, including a First in Class at Pebble Beach in 1998. But subsequent research turned up details of the car that were previously unknown, and Shirley restored it again before bringing it back to Pebble Beach in 2014, when his efforts were rewarded with the top prize—the first given to a postwar car in well over four decades.