The French 250 TdF

Bought 10 September 1956 by a Turin based lease company (where from it was leased by Jacques Peron from Nice), this 250 TdF is likely the first car you’ll see when you Google “250 TdF”, which has 2 reasons, 1: it was reviewed by Chris Harris, and 2: It was sold for nearly £4.9M at RM Sotheby’s London auction, but besides that, this car was rather succesful in and around its time.

S/n 0563GT is the 10th “no-louvre” 250 TdF made and was leased by Jacques Peron for 2 years, he entered 17 races, of which he finished 15, and won 5. He used it mainly as rally car*, he’s driven the Tour de France and Coupes du Salon Montlhéry twice, entered a number of other rally races throughout southern France, and the only GP he entered was the Paris GP, in which he came 8th over-all, and 1st in class. In 1958 it was brought back to the factory, after which is was sold to the American Bruce Kessler in 1959, who probably daily’d (or perhaps never drove it at all) it as he never entered any events with it, in 1960 it was sold to Ron Wakeman, who did the same for 13 years instead of 1, who then sold it to Larry Taylor, who crashed it somewhere in the year that he bought it, 1973.

*Clarification: Rally as in long distance sprint races such as the Tour de France, or otherwise hillclimbs.

In 1983 it was bought by Richard W. Gent, who had the car restored somewhere in the ‘80s, and only entered concours events with it. In 2008 it was bought by Tony Schwartz, who owned it for 5 months after which he sold it to RM Sotheby’s, who auctioned it off at Monterey for $3.9M, in 2009 it was bought by Martin Gruss who did all the right things, race it like it was meant to, AND enter it in concours events to show its beauty, he entered the Mille Miglia twice. Eventually it was sold again at RM Sotheby’s London auction for £4.872.000 when it was bought by Adrian Labi, who entered the Ferrari 70th anniversary Maranello celebratory rally last year.

What do you think of this wonderful mid-‘50s Ferrari? is there any particular car model or a Ferrari chassis number you’d want a blogpost about?

Admittedly, the no-louvre TdF is my least favourite, but that does not by any means mean I don’t like it, it still is an awesome looking car, with great heritage and rarity, and the no-louvre is the only Ferrari to have used an aftermarket Zagato Coachbuilt body, even if it was made in co-op with Ferrari. My favourite 250 TdF would be the single louvre, if you wonder. It’s basically a coupé variant of the 250 California, just like the triple-louvre, but because of the shape of the louvres, it doesn’t really look as good.

• MH