In this week’s Wednesday Want we’ve found something truly special in the classified adverts and thought it really deserved some attention. You can check out past Wednesday Want entries right here.
If you live outside France, you might not know who Johnny Hallyday is. Dubbed the “French Elvis Presley” he’s credited with bringing rock and roll to France in 1960. If he still sounds unfamiliar don’t worry, all you really need to know about him is that he had fantastic taste in cars.
Hallyday passed away last month after losing his bout with cancer. While the country of France mourned, it seems that his estate wasted no time getting his possessions to auction. The most notable of these items is a 1965 Iso Grifo A3/C.
Like Hallyday, Iso might not be a name you recognize. Well, unless you’re a Gran Turismo Sport player, where the name recently showed up on a new Vision GT model. Back in the last century, however, one of its most famous works is a vehicle you’ve undoubtedly heard of — the Isetta.
Yes, before BMW got its hands on the nameplate, it was an Iso.
By the early ’60s though, the company was no longer content building ten horsepower bubble cars.
Its first entry into the world of GT cars came in 1962 with the Rivolta IR 300. The following year, it debuted the gorgeous Grifo.
Unlike the high strung V12s from other Italian manufactures at the time, Iso opted for something with a bit more grunt.
Sourcing the 327 Chevy small-block from a Corvette, it turned out somewhere between 300 and 350 horsepower. This made it an Italian muscle car wearing a grand tourer suit.
While this example wears an Iso badge, it’s really a creation of ex-Ferrari engineer Giotto Bizzarrini.
After the debut of the Grifo, it split into two different models. The AL/3 was a Renzo Rivolta design that focused more on luxury. The AC/3, however, is the brainchild of Bizzarrini.
Once the car started production, the intention was to have Bizzarrini turn it into an all-out endurance racer. However, the car in stock form didn’t have what it took to win Le Mans. Bizzarrini stripped away the bodywork and instead used a light-weight alloy known as avional.
Avional is a mixture of copper, aluminum, and magnesium with some unique properties. It’s lightweight, but also flexible making it easier to form the panels. It does have a drawback though: it’s nearly impossible to weld. Due to this, the Grifo needed 10,000 rivets to attach the bodywork.
Following the history of the car, RM Sotheby’s found this example to be number eight of the ten made in 1964.
Despite the Concours condition of this example, there is a slight blemish on its history. When this AC/3 rolled out of the factory it was coated with deep red paint. Over its lifetime time it sported a white and blue motif, before returning to the “Ferrari Red” color it wears today.
Even though the paint isn’t original, nearly everything else on the car is. This is why when it heads to auction on February 7 it will fetch a tidy sum. Currently the estimate is between €2,500,000–€3,000,000 ($3,000,000–$3,680,000).
The connection to Hallyday will certainly help its value as well, since the auction takes place in Paris.
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