1956 Ferrari 250 GT Boano Coupe

The Pinin Farina-designed Ferrari 250 Europa GT debuted at the 1954 Paris Motor Show, where it officially launched spec car builder Ferrari into the world of low volume production cars. The demand for the 250 GT came so feverishly that Pinin Farina could not keep pace, so they called on design house Carrozzeria Boano. Boano built sixty 250 GT's in both steel and aluminum and all with a slightly lower roof line than the cars manufactured by Pinin Farina. When Mario Felice Boano moved on to FIAT, the design house was taken over by employee Ezio Ellena, who elevated the roofline back to original specifications.

This Ferrari 250 GT low-roof Boano-bodied coupe is approximately the 52nd of 88 examples built. The coachwork was done in lightweight alloy and is believed to be one of a few (possibly a dozen) such alloy-bodied Boanos.

This 250 GT was fitted with a 3-liter 128B motor that had a 2,953cc displacement size and offered 240 horsepower. It has a four-speed manual gearbox and four-wheel drum brakes.

The first owner of record was Luciano Pacini of Rome who took delivery in April of 1957. It was given registration tags 'Roma 286041' and purchased in December of 1957 by the Societa Immobiliare Agricola Rifugio, and the car continued to reside in Rome for the next three years. In February of 1960, it was acquired by Giuseppe Casagrande of Naples, Italy. Its history from that point until the 1980s is not fully known. In the 1980s it was acquired by Hans Thulin of Sweden. In 1989, it was auctioned off in Monaco, and was soon acquired by Robert Beachem of England. A short time later, it was given a restoration by Colin Clarke Engineering of London.

It passed to John Collins' Talacrest Ltd., and was sold in July of 1997 to Robert Korastinsky, an American residing in Basel, Switzerland. It was registered on Swiss license plates in August 1998. It was entered in the Mille Miglia Storica in May of 2002, but did not start the race.

At some point, the car was transported to Germany.

In August of 2012, it was sold to Mario Bernardi of Hannover, who conducted a mechanical restoration during January of 2013.

By Daniel Vaughan | Nov 2018