One of the Earliest Ferraris Could Fetch Nearly $8 Million at Auction

In 1948, a young Enzo Ferrari introduced his first race car intended for the road and available to customers, the pint-sized 166 Spyder Corsa. It came with a new Tipo 166 2.0-liter Colombo V-12 engine, a new five-speed racing gearbox, and a featherweight steel-tube chassis.

The first two examples that Ferrari built and sold were matching cars purchased by brothers Soave and Gabriele Besana—aristocratic playboys and racers—who commissioned cycle-fendered custom bodies from Modena-based coachbuilder Carrozzeria Ansaloni. Gabriele was allocated chassis No. 002 C, while his brother got chassis No. 004 C.

Fast forward 77 years and Soave Besana’s 166 Spyder Corsa, now the most-original early Ferrari in the world and a car never publicly offered for sale before, is about to cross the auction block. It’s the worthy star of Broad Arrow‘s inaugural Villa d’Este sale on the banks of Lake Como, Italy, on May 25.

“The 166 Spyder Corsa is quite literally the earliest and most important Ferrari in existence today. While it is chassis No. 004, anything built prior to this car doesn’t exist in any intact or original form,” says Barney Ruprecht, Broad Arrow’s car specialist and its vice president of auctions. “Nothing else on the market today, at any price, offers the cachet of this car.”

Highlights of the vehicle’s remarkable history include a sixth-place finish in the 1948 Targa Florio, competing in the grueling Mille Miglia road race in both 1948 and ’49, and a multitude of Formula 2 and hill-climb starts in Italy and France.

After its racing career ended in 1957, this Prancing Horse was preserved during an unbroken 50-year stewardship by the Clark family, owners of the Long Island Automotive Museum, in Southampton, N.Y. During the Clarks’ ownership, it received such high-profile accolades as Best of Show in Ferrari Club of America National Meet in 2003, the Coppa per Dodici Cilindri award at the 2004 Cavallino Classic, and a class win at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance that same year. Since 2015, it has been the prized possession of a prominent U.S. Ferrari collector who presented the car at Pebble Beach’s Casa Ferrari gatherings in 2019 and 2022.

Broad Arrow’s Ruprecht believes that, for any collector, the car’s Classiche White Book certification is key, verifying the originality of the bodywork, V-12 engine, and gearbox. According to Ruprecht, originality is virtually unheard of with any competition car of this age. In addition, the Ferrari comes with a mountain of documentation and samples of media coverage, including an extensive profile in the September 1966 issue of Road & Track magazine. In it, American author and Ferrari authority Stan Nowak discusses his brief ownership of chassis No. 004 C.

Nowak writes that, after a long search, he heard about the car being on the market from a friend living in Paris. “I was sure we had found one of the oldest Ferraris in the world. The owner too had the same idea of the importance of the car and the price was rather high, but there was no turning back and I bought it.”

Shipping the car back to New York, Nowak discovered the vehicle was in need of a complete restoration. “The estimates were staggering and it was apparent that I could not keep the car and restore it. I needed help and quickly.” The automotive museum’s Henry Austin Clark offered to take over the car and fund the restoration, with Nowak overseeing the work. Clark paid $3,800 for the vehicle.

The exhaustive, concours-level restoration was completed in 1966, just in time for Nowak to enter that year’s Vintage Sports Car Club of America races in Connecticut. It was the first time he’d ever driven the car, and the first time he’d piloted a Ferrari.

“The handling is a joy; plenty of predictable oversteer coming out of turns. Hairy. But very safe. If you do get into trouble, you just back off and steer out of it,” wrote Nowak. “What’s a Ferrari all about? It’s that 12-cyl engine, and it’s the smoothest, most turbine-like device imaginable. In most other cars of this type, you feel the power come in with a bang at about 4,500 rpm and you know it’s ‘on the cam,’ but not the Ferrari. It’s just there and all the time.”

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It seems the concours-quality restoration of the car attracted the attention of even Enzo Ferrari himself. In 1971, Clark was reportedly offered $25,000 for chassis No. 004 C, which at the time was more than the price of a new Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona Coupe. Instead of selling, Clark transferred ownership to his son, James H. Clark, in 1973. For the following 42 years, James entered the storied Ferrari at high-profile automotive events around the country, while methodically maintaining it.

This rarefied and storied example from Maranello is estimated to fetch between €5.5 million and €7.5 million (between $5.8 million and $7.9 million). Regarding the car, Ruprecht opines, “Any enthusiast of the Ferrari brand, including both older, established collectors and the rising generation now in the market, will feel drawn to the DNA of such a legendary marque. It would be an immediate world-class acquisition. . . .”

Click here for more photos of this 1948 Ferrari 166 Spyder Corsa.