Iso Grifo Sold! - Ex Mike Hailwood and Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour"

by Mike - 

Below is a first hand account from the Coys auction on 14 May by Chris Lackner* where the yellow Iso Grifo sold for £164,850 ($267,000)! Quite a great price considering how it was seriously damaged in an accident. It was however, restored to as good as new condition.

This is one of the highest prices paid for an Iso Grifo in a public sale and may be an indication that Iso Grifo prices are increasing.

Photo Paul Whittingham.

by Chris Lackner

I've just got back from the Coys auction at Ascot Racecourse where the ex-Mike Hailwood Grifo #162/D had pride of place right in front of the auctioneer's podium. Pretty stunning it looked too, in its dazzling Giallo Limone paint and brand new chromed Borranis.


The Grifo was quite late on in the programme, Lot 149 out of 160 lots, and it had a 4 page spread in the catalogue, whereas most cars just had a single page, or sometimes two, with 5 large colour pictures and a couple of small ones, of which one was a black and white of Hailwood with the car in the 1960s, and the other being a slightly fuzzy still from the Beatles film "Magical Mystery Tour".


After mistakenly referring to it as the Mike Hawthorn car, the auctioneer got on with the sale. There were multiple phone bidders, plus some in the room, and the bidding started at £90,000. It quickly got up to £130,000 then slowly crept up to the hammer price of £148,500, well into the £140,000 - £170,000 estimate. With buyer's commission added, the final price was £164,850 or about $266,990!

There were only a couple of higher prices realised, a 1952 Frazer Nash Targa Florio with good competition history which made £200,000, and a quite superb 1971 Mercedes 280SE 3.5 convertible, which made £170,000, a new world record, they said.

Incidentally, the gentleman sitting beside me bought the Frazer Nash, and turned out to be none other than John Coombs, famous for his Jaguar racing team in the early 1960s, with Mark 2 and E-Types, notably one of the first E's registered "BUY 1". A real legend in Jaguar circles.
 So, quite an exciting afternoon!

*Chris Lackner is a well known Iso collector, Iso/Bizzarrini historian and president of the Iso/Bizzarrini Club in the United Kingdom.

My other posts on this Grifo are here, here and here.

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Update 2-Iso Grifo For Sale - Ex Mike Hailwood and Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour"

by Mike - 

The information and pictures below are from a friend who inspected and wrote the report on the Iso Grifo formerly owned by Mike Hailwood now for sale at the Coys Auction, The Spirit of Motoring - Ascot on Saturday 14 May 2011.

Mike Haliwood was living in South Africa at the time and the car went there shortly after he purchased it in 1967. It was well known there as Mike´s daily transport and what he drove to get to and from the race tracks. It was also in South Africa that Mike had an accident in the car while travelling between races with Peter Gethin.

They hit a cow or a buffalo while going too fast and apart from damaging the front the roof was peeled off!

One of Mike´s employees was Tony Santos, a Portuguese panel beater by trade, and he repaired the car between 1970 and 1971 using original spares ordered from the ISO factory in Italy.

1978 – 2004 ... the long sleep

After passing through a couple of owners the car landed in storage in 1978 where it remained until 2004 when the owner decided to get the car going again; however he soon discovered that the 25 years of storage had taken their toll and a comprehensive restoration would be required.

In 2007 Mike´s Grifo found a new owner and was imported to Germany, where for the last 3 years a very comprehensive, no expense spared, restoration has brought the car back to being as close as possible to how the car was when Mike Hailwood bought it new in 1967.

Not all of this information made it into the Coys description of this car.

My previous articles on this special Grifo are here and here.

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Update-Iso Grifo For Sale - Ex Mike Hailwood and Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour"

by Mike -

Since I published this article I have learned that while this Grifo was in South Africa, Mike Hailwood had an unfortunate high speed encounter with a water buffalo.

The result for the Grifo is shown in the pictures below.

Photos courtesy of Chris Lackner.

This car has been completely restored to near new condition according to the Coys description, however, they do not mention this accident. They do mention the number plate "17241 EE" which is just visible in these pictures above.

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Iso Grifo For Sale - Ex Mike Hailwood and Beatles "Magical Mystery Tour"

by Mike -

This beautiful 1967 Iso Grifo was bought new by multiple Motorcycle World Champion Mike Hailwood. It is for sale at the Coys Auction, The Spirit of Motoring - Ascot on Saturday 14 May 2011.

The Estimate is £140,000 - £170,000 ($232,000 - $281,000).

The engine is the original Corvette 327 V8 with 350 hp mated to a 5 Speed ZF gearbox. It also comes with the rare factory air conditioning.

This car appeared in the Beatles film A Magical Mystery Tour. The picture below is from the movie.

It is right hand drive.

Mike Hailwood with his prize Grifo below. I wrote about another Grifo formerly owned by Mike Haliwood.

It seems that the Beatles liked Iso cars, I wrote about John Lennon and the Iso Fidia recently.

Now, this is a very special Grifo.

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