Description
This car is Lot 144 to be auctioned by Bonhams|Cars at Les Grandes Marques du Monde à Paris Sale on 6 February, please see the Bonhams website for full details.
Public Viewing:
Available Tuesday 4 February from 08:00 until 18:00 and Wednesday 5 February from 9 AM - 6 PM, at The Grand Palais Historique, Paris.
Lot 144
The Ex-Mike Hawthorn, 'Nino' Farina, Piero Taruffi, Paul Frere, Peter Whitehead
1954-55 Ferrari Tipo 555 'Super Squalo' 2. 5-litre Formula 1 Racing Single-Seater
Registration no.
Chassis no. 555/ 1 - FL 9001
Scoring World Championship points with a fourth place at Spa-Francorchamps 1955
One of only two known survivors
Extensive in-period competition history
Won its class at the Monaco Grand Prix in 2000 with Martin Stretton
Eligible for the most prestigious international car events
Very few surviving front-engined Grand Prix cars have ever been driven in earnest by a Formula 1 World Champion racing driver. Even fewer have ever been driven by two. This sleek-bodied Ferrari 555 'Super Squalo' is exceptionally rare in having been campaigned for the legendary Italian factory team by both the sport's very first World Champion racing driver, Dr Giuseppe 'Nino' Farina, and also by the first-ever British driver to win that Formula 1 World Championship title, John Michael 'Mike' Hawthorn.
It contested four World Championship-qualifying Grand Prix races during the 1955 season which was itself truncated by the after-effects and bans imposed following the Le Mans 24-Hour race disaster in June that year.
Mike Hawthorn had won his second title-qualifying Grand Prix, the Spanish race on the Pedralbes circuit in Barcelona, at the end of 1954, driving an uprated Ferrari 555, the latest Formula 1 design from the Maranello factory with its fuel tankage focused upon broad pannier tanks, clad beneath voluptuously swelling side panelling, and with an abbreviated tail cone housing just a fuel header tank and the dry-sump engine lubrication system's oil tank. Money was tight for Ferrari as it prepared for the forthcoming second season of 2½-litre Formula 1 racing, through 1955. One new Squalo or 'Shark' was prepared for the opening non-Championship race of the European calendar, the Turin GP on the city's twisting, bumpy, Valentino Park circuit.
This public debut for '555/ 1' saw the car confined to practice, driver Farina preferring the rugged reliability of the well-developed Ferrari 625 for race day. Two of these latest 'Super Squalo' cars then appeared at the non-Championship Bordeaux GP in France, driven by Farina and Maurice Trintignant. After having burst an oil pipe during practice Farina drove furiously during the opening stages of the race, and broke his car's gearbox. For the Monaco GP at Monte Carlo, Ferrari ran five drivers, the Belgian journalist Paul Frere being the reserve together with Farina, Trintignant, Franco-American Harry Schell and 'The Silver Fox' veteran, Piero Taruffi, who ended up co-driving '555/ 1' with Frere. Sadly their race day was dogged by gearbox problems.
The high-speed Belgian GP followed at Spa-Francorchamps, for which three 'Super Squalos' were entered by Ferrari. They ran faultlessly, Farina finishing third in his while Paul Frere brought '555/ 1' now offered here home in fourth place, scoring World Championship points. Trintignant, hampered by a leg injury from a recent sports car crash, finished seventh.
For the Dutch GP at Zandvoort the same three 'Super Squalo' cars appeared, '555/ 1' driven by Mike Hawthorn finishing seventh. Hawthorn had left the team for Vanwall at the end of 1954 but rejoined Ferrari in part since Farina had abruptly decided to retire from racing. Lancia had collapsed and young Eugenio Castellotti ex-Lancia would drive for Ferrari from Zandvoort forward, alongside Trintignant and Hawthorn, who was fastest but lost much time with gearbox problems, finally finishing seventh.
Convinced that the 'Super Squalo' was a fast-circuit contender, the cars did not reappear until the Italian GP at Monza in September. But by then Ferrari had fallen heir to the highly-sophisticated V8-engined Lancia D50 cars, and the three 'old' 'Super Squalos' were run for Hawthorn, Trintignant and Umberto Maglioli. The cars featured a new five-speed transaxle and a fourth 555 had been completed, which Castellotti took over for the race after his Ferrari-entered Lancia was withdrawn. He drove his heart out to keep the works-entered Mercedes fleet in sight, finally inheriting third place overall. Mike Hawthorn in '555/ 1' was forced out by gearbox failure while Maglioli and Trintignant finished distantly sixth and eighth.
Into 1956 Ferrari concentrated upon developing its V8 ex-Lancia D50 design. The 'Super Squalo' cars were surplus to Ferrari's needs and buyers were found for two of them in long-time British Ferrari private-owner/ driver Peter Whitehead and his veteran friend Reg Parnell. For them two of the 4-cylinder cars' chassis were slightly lengthened, and big 3. 5-litre 4-cylinder Ferrari 860 Monza sports car engines installed for Formule Libre racing in the 'down under' European-winter races in Australia and New Zealand.
The debut event for these twin-sister cars with their immensely experienced British drivers was the celebratory 1956 Olympic Games event run in Albert Park, Melbourne, Victoria, on November 25... which Peter Whitehead won comnfortably. Staying on in Melbourne he and '555/ 1' then finished third in the December 2 Australian GP. The cars were then shipped to New Zealand, where on January 12, 1957 Whitehead finished second in the national GP race at Ardmore Aerodrome, Auckland, on the North Island. Further success followed in the local international Libre series, Whitehead winning the Lady Wigram Trophy race in this car at Christchurch, South Island, on January 26, then placing third at Dunedin on February 2 before winning again at Invercargill on February 16.
Both of the Whitehead/ Parnell équipe Ferrari 'Super Squalo' cars with their big 3. 5-litre Type 860 engines were then sold to local racers, '555/ 1' going to Tom Clark, wealthy head of the iconic Crown Lynn Potteries business. He campaigned the car for the following three years, as follows:
1957
March 3 - Levin, New Zealand FIRST
April - Bathurst, Australia - Preliminary Race FIRST
April - Bathurst '100' Retired
October 6 - Bathurst Retired, accident
1958
October 6 - Australian Grand Prix, Bathurst 9th
November 23 - Melbourne, Australia 3rd
November 30 - Melbourne Heat 2 4th
November 30 - Melbourne Grand Prix 10th
1959
January 10 - New Zealand GP, Auckland 10th
January 24 - Lady Wigram Trophy, Christchurch, NZ 9th
January 31 - Waimate 50, NZ Retired
February 7 - Teretonga Heat 2, NZ 3rd
February 7 - Teretonga 5th
February 28 - Ohakea Preliminary Race 2nd
February 28 - Ohakea Main Event 3rd
March - Levin Hudson Trophy FIRST
This Ferrari 'Super Squalo' was then bought from Tom Clark by fellow New Zealand enthusiast Bob Smith who continued to race it at both national and international level within the country from 1960-63. The front-engined car was outmoded by new rear-engined designs from Cooper followed by Lotus, Brabham and others and its best finishes were 10th places at both Dunedin and Waimate in 1961.
During the February 2, 1963, Auckland Car Club Trophy meeting at the city's new Pukekohe circuit... "Bob Smith led the field away at the start ... but overshot the right-hander before the back straight to finish up through the straw bales and almost on the railway track. The car was only slightly damaged but could not continue the race." Damage was largely confined to bodywork and front suspension but the cost of repair probably exceeded the contemporary value of the car itself. It was abandoned in a used-car lot in Auckland, progressively losing its steering wheel, dash panel instruments and its still powerful engine, which was used in a speed boat.
It was eventually revived for racing by Garth Souness, who clothed the chassis with a modified Morris Minor two-door body (accommodating near identical wheelbase) and installed a powerful Chevrolet V8 engine. As an 'all-comers racing saloon car' , driven by Souness, it looked (and proved) fast but just about controllable. Originally entered as a Morris-Chevrolet or Morris-Corvette, it quickly gained notoriety in New Zealand as the 'Morrari'.
The car was subsequently rescued and preserved by Southland Motor Museum founder Len Southward before being acquired by New Zealand jeweller and classic car enthusiast Gavin Bain who began restoration. In the early 1970s the car was acquired by like-minded British collector Nigel Moores together with its original Whitehead period Ferrari 860 engine from Mr Southward. Into the 1980s the car passed to Tom Wheatcroft, celebrated founder and owner of the Donington Collection of Grand Prix Racing Cars. From him it passed to Yoshiyuki Hayashi's Italya Trading company in Japan, who had it restored to original Formula 1 2. 5-litre engined guise, and body form, by the well-respected British specialist Tony Merrick.
He drove the car in the Monaco Historic Grand Prix at Monte Carlo on May 3-4, 1997 and in 1998 it passed to broker Nick Harley. It appeared in the inaugural Goodwood Revival Meeting that September, driven by Willie Green, and was later displayed at the Techno Classica show, Essen, Germany by Klaus Werner. It sold subsequently to Roger Willbanks, and reappeared at the 2000 Monaco Historic GP, driven by Martin Stretton. That August saw it pass into the hands of the current Spanish collector who entered it in some of the most prestigious events in 2016, including the Monaco Historic Grand Prix, Goodwood Revival, and Chantilly Arts & Elegance. For its maintenance, the current owner relies on the esteemed Corrado Patella of Autofficina Omega, a renowned Ferrari specialist located in Northern Italy.
This is one of only two known survivors of the Formula 1 Ferrari 555 'Super Squalo' design. With its provenance of having been driven by not just one World Champion, but by two, plus its World Championship points-scoring finish in the 1955 Belgian Grand Prix, and its subsequent race-winning performances in 3. 5-litre Formule Libre form in the hands of both Ferrari's pioneering British owner/ driver Peter Whitehead, and indeed of New Zealand business celebrity Sir Tom Clark not least its spectacular 'stealth' appearances as the spectacular 'Morrari' this is a unique Ferrari, indeed. We commend it to the market...
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