HOW TO WIN PRIZES (and influence judges)

Take a rookie concours entrant, an obsessively restored Ferrari, a curious Octane editor and set them loose at Salon Privé. James Elliott reveals all

This story was conceived on one of the world’s premier concours lawns and played out on another. Issue 221 of Octane came out in September 2021 and included a feature by Italian correspondent Massimo Delbo on being a judge at the Pebble Beach Concours. Almost immediately after, at the Concours of Elegance, an idle discussion between myself and Tom King of Bell Sport Classic led to a year-long plan for Octane to feel what it is like to experience the other side of the coin, by presenting’ a car at a top-tier concours Salon Privé the following year.

The conversation was prompted by the presence on the Bell Sport Classic stand at Hampton Court of a nearnaked Ferrari 330GTC bodyshell. All it wore was its bewitching Verdi Chiaro Metallizzato paint. That’s simply light green metallic to you and me, but say it in Italian, drink it in with your eyes and that was a concours-winning colour if ever I had seen one.

Above The Ferrari as discovered, before it was restored to its original colour of Verdi Chiaro Metallizzato; interior was weathered but all salvageable, though black vinyl was replaced with (optional) black and tan hide.

It is the original colour, too. Chassis 09069 was a firstyear example of the 330GTC, a stop-gap GT for which Pininfarina’s Aldo Bravarone gorgeously melded the front of his own Superfast with the rear of the 275GTS. It was in production for just two years, shifting around 600 units, and is an exceptionally dainty and purposefully pretty especially in profile) GT straddling the eras of when Ferrari was all curves and when the creases and edges started to take over.