Bonhams Goodwood Festival of Speed Sale on June 27 will offer one of the earliest Ferrari Coupes ever built – an example which has participated in three Mille Miglia retrospectives. Chassis ‘027S’ to be offered by Bonhams wears Touring bodywork and is a fine and beautifully restored example by Dino Cognolato of this rare early-model right hand drive Ferrari. Estimated price for this Ferrari 166 Inter Coupe by Touring of Milan is £800,000-1,000,000.
The Ferrari 166 Inter model was Ferrari’s pioneering production Gran Turismodesign, a sports car for road use wearing stylish bodywork hand-crafted by any one of several alternative specialist carrozziere. Only 37 Ferrari 166 Inter cars were manufactured at Ferrari’s Maranello factory between 1948 and 1950. Such boutique styling houses as Touring of Milan, Stabilimenti Farina, Boano, Vignale, Pinin Farina and Bertone worked their artistry upon the Ferrari 166 chassis.
While the very first prototype sports car ever to wear the Ferrari marque’s illustrious Prancing Horse badge emerged in 1947, and only a handful of developed variants then entered small-scale production in 1948, manufacture of this particular 2-litre Ferrari 166 Inter Coupe – chassis serial ‘027S’ – commenced on November 28, 1949.
The car was supplied as-new via Enzo Ferrari’s friend Francesco Severi on August 18, 1950 to Roman Augusto Caraceni, son of the Italian menswear celebrity Domenico Caraceni, ‘The father of Italian tailoring’.
This Ferrari Coupe subsequently provided enjoyable motoring in considerable style – all to the accompaniment of its 2-litre V12-cylinder exhaust note – for several other well-heeled and enthusiastic owners before it passed in 1973 into the ownership of Luigi Rezzonico Pindemonte, the Count of Castelbarco, resident in Imbersago, Italy.
In 1983 Count Castelbarco’s Ferrari was acquired by Dr Danilo Pizzo of Padova, in whose hands it ran in the Mille Miglia retrospective events of 1992, 1997 and 2000. It was also during his ownership that the car was invited to the marque’s 50th anniversary celebrations in Rome in 1997.
