Buying the Last Ferrari Enzo produced (It was a Disaster!)

so as you guys know curated was essentially formed about seven years ago and really we we sort of used this year to celebrate our fifth year anniversary as our fifth year having our dealer's license our fifth year having a real location but prior to that uh you know when we've talked about this numerous times we didn't really have the money to buy cars we were using basically jordy my business partner was raising money from investors and we're using investors money and really in a well-structured way but the reality was we weren't a real dealership so at any given point we'd buy you know one car here you know one car there and and max we'd have two or three cars in our inventory um at any given point and one of the first i would say big purchases and probably the most important car that we had owned for a long time um was a ferrari enzo now it wasn't just any ferrari enzo it was a huge leap for us um i think at this point uh we had maybe owned three or four other cars that were about two hundred thousand to three hundred thousand this was a ferrari enzo that at that period was about two million dollars so imagine this was a huge jump almost ten times more than a countach in that period so i get a call from a very very good friend this guy's like my big brother and he tells me that there is this enzo for sale the guy needs to sell it and it needs to sell in the next 24 to 48 hours and i said well okay you know is it a deal and we start talking he says listen it's the last production enzo ever made and you know my reaction was oh my god get me the paperwork get me everything and he said sorry i don't have anything on the car we don't have anything on the car you have to trust me it's the last production enzo and you have like 48 hours 72 hours to close so again this was in a period where raising money was was difficult for us and and even researching the cars was a little bit more difficult i mean now we have resources where we can get on the phone with the factory or we can get on the phone with a numerous uh amount of historians that will give us the details we need and i also believe and i know this sounds funny to say seven eight years ago there wasn't actually that much information online about a lot of these cars whereas today there's a lot more information online and even social media so he tells me basically we've got to move so i we start moving we you know gears are turning we're gonna buy this car we immediately find one investor was actually my business partner in the rental car business and we said okay let's go buy this car let's close this car let's figure it out so prior to sending almost two million dollars um to someone we didn't know uh that was in europe we decided that i needed to do some research how was i going to verify was the last production enzo and we knew that very publicly there was the quote-unquote pope enzo which was the 400th enzo produced and basically the pope enzo was not considered the last car because it was not a production car it was actually considered like almost like a prototype built after the production line so i start you know goo i started with google and and i actually found one post um and the post online was from ferrari chat and it was a very famous historian by the name of marcel massini um hello marcel marcel is probably the leading ferrari expert in the world marcel actually produces something called the massini report and the messini report for a fee you basically get a detailed history of the car i don't know how he does this um he can do it for almost every uh important ferrari i would say all the enzo era ferraris um some testerosa even though they produced a lot and then all of the major significant cars so you know things like enzos f40s f50s etc so i sent an email to to marcel and and now we have a great relationship so we banter back and forth about cars all the time but he didn't know me then so i had to pay for the report and i got the report and it said yes this chassis number was you know essentially a one owner car um it was given to a very significant ferrari collector in italy and this was truly the last production card deemed 399 of 399 and it actually had some unique features so it actually had um instead of ferrari uh and and and a few other details on the rear of the car it actually had enzo ferrari's signature and metal which was very very cool we had realized in that process that it was truly a european car so it we couldn't just ship it uh to the us and we'll get into that a little bit more as this story progresses uh and we'll i would say we'll get into that disaster as this story progresses so essentially we had verified that yes it was the last production car and okay let's go buy it so i'm talking to my friend and you know we're discussing okay how do we bring a car so if you're not familiar the epa dot which started in the 1970s and and now is a very important uh organization basically allows certain cars into the u.s or not they are the the requirements of the environmental protection agency and the dot division of transportation department of transportation and they basically will will have safety standards or or requirements of any car coming to the u.s if it's not a u.s spec vehicle now us-spec vehicles historically had different bumpers they had different door beam frames they had different lights different turn signal lights different gauges obviously we use mile per hour so there's all these different things and the biggest thing i would say with the epa is the exhaust so you have catalytic converters you have all these different things that make a us car a us car and a european car a european car now the law is that a car that's x amount of years or older does not need to have these things done so you could ship a car that's like 1995 you could ship it to the us and it's deemed legal you don't have to make any changes so with a lot of collector cars you you can just simply just ship a countach between italy and the us now uh there was a incredible law that was passed it was partially spearheaded by mr bill gates when his 959 was actually seized it was taken by the us government and that was called show and display now with show and display there's a bunch of different little rules there's a list of cars that are eligible for show and display but show and display is i would call it almost a gray area of what's considered significant or important and we can actually probably maybe publish the exact wording uh on the screen about show and display but basically one of the thoughts was show and display would allow us i would call a very legal and understandable loophole to bring this european spec enzo into the u.s so as we're funding the car we start doing some research about what would it cost to convert a euro-spec enzo to the u.s now because of this car i've become i would say a self-proclaimed expert on importing a ferrari enzo into the us and at the time we just basically said okay we'll we'll buy a us exhaust system at the time there was i think there was like two or three systems for sale on ebay so you have your catalyst you have your headers uh there was another piece in the catalyst system and then your rear muffler so we could buy that and it was like 15 to 18 000 so okay not that bad um and then it was the gauge cluster we could find a us gauge cluster it was seat belts um enzos are actually were quote unquote sort of like a world spec car so if you look on all enzos they do have side marker lights so the cars had that already so we didn't have to modify the bumpers we didn't have to modify the body we did have to change the rear tail lights were exactly the same as a ferrari 430 so again very easy and we did have to do something with the ecu's um so really we were looking at i don't know 30 050 000 so this started to look like a very attractive business decision buying a eurospec enzo bringing it to the u.s not just any enzo but the last enzo ever made and in this period probably not today enzos were actually much more expensive in the u.s because production was lower and a lot cheaper in europe where uh i would say that an enzo was probably 1.5 to 1.7 in europe where an enzo in the u.s was maybe 2.1 to 2.5 so a huge spread it as well so there was probably money to be made just on importing a euro enzo and bringing it to the us and and then adding the fact that this was the last production enzo ever made excited we start getting all the paperwork together we pay for the car we plan on the shipping and in my head i'm thinking that i have just struck gold i've hit the lotto without really doing much work um you know we're gonna buy this used exhaust we're gonna do all these things and this was gonna be a slam dunk in two months i don't know maybe max 90 days okay so the enzo arrives here to the us and it goes to one of the i would say the more important import companies that do this process so i believe there's maybe four or five companies in the us and what they do is they actually import the car and it goes into a bonded warehouse and then they systematically change everything and basically in in a book they're then approving and submitting everything to the epa and dot so they're saying we did this here sign off on this okay so we start expediting this process we're excited i'm in communication with them the car arrives and what was really cool at the time and now looking back i mean it's even it's really special was that the last enzo ever produced was actually imported at the same time by the same company and we were involved in this as well as the michael schumacher enzo which was a very special enzo a unique color combination unique wheels made from michael schumacher um i believe it even had something like his signature on the door frame or some something very cool so imagine we had these great photos of the cars arriving in the us michael schumacher enzo last enzo produced they're going to the same importer and we're just so excited now now i'm i'm really feeling like my career is about to take off everyone is going to know who curated is prior to this we had sold like two dashes in a 355 but everyone is going to know who curated is so i start publishing photos online and i'm excited and i've published a couple great photos on ferrari chat and people are so excited they're like oh my god how are you going to do this has anyone ever imported in enzo before so one of the hopes was we were going to get the car brought in under show and display you actually have to petition for that so we put together a whole package on why this car is important why it should be in the u.s and we were actually shot down it was not allowed to come into the u.s it had to go for full epa dot conversion which um at the time i was i was still very optimistic um i've always been an optimistic person my entire life but i said okay not a big deal show and display didn't work we're gonna go through the formal process and we'll get the car certified so a few months go by and everything gets started and and i hear after probably 60 days um that we have a problem and the importer calls me and i said oh my god like what's what's wrong and they said well the parts that we ordered we were able to order them from a ferrari dealer but the problem was that they didn't have some of the parts and i said well not a big deal i found used u.s parts let's try to save them some money and they said no no you actually can't use used usa parts you have to buy new factory north american spec parts from italy okay so i said okay no worries let's sort of see what they can do is it on back order so they said they're going to find out fast forward another couple weeks and guess what they called me back again and they said okay well the bigger issue is that they can potentially get these parts but the parts are on indefinite back order well essentially what that means is they don't have the parts they're not sure when they're going to remake them so you're basically waiting for someone in italy to make the parts so now we have this enzo that's almost two million dollars sitting in a bonded warehouse we can't touch it we can't really photograph it excuse me we can't even sell it we can't do anything with this enzo and we are waiting for italy to start making exhaust parts so i'm just sweating and i'm watching you know the days go by weeks go by and finally um we we get some good news that some of the exhaust parts are made and they have to be shipped then they have to be cleared and all these things and the days are just passing we go from month three to month four to month five now in this process as well we were originally hoping to buy some used u.s parts to install on the car which would have provided us with a huge cost savings buying brand new parts from ferrari as you i'm sure are aware or not aware can be very very expensive so the original thought process of spending thirty to forty thousand had now swelled up to about eighty thousand dollars for new north american parts for the enzo so again was not that concerned about that because we sort of had this maybe potential lottery ticket of the last enzo ever made it was getting it imported we're going to have it here ready in a couple months so still very optimistic even though the price went up to 80 000 to complete the car so now we're on probably month eight and now i'm starting to sweat um our investors asking us for an update um people are asking us about the car um our friends on ferrari chat or wondering what's going on with this car and time is ticking um at this point in my life remember i also wasn't really that financially stable um you know selling one or two cars a quarter or you know renting even exotic cars or rental business uh it paid me a decent salary but again i was bootstrapping my way to success or trying to at least so i started to get nervous i started to sweat and just sort of had to be patient every time i called the importer they would get really upset with me and they'd say hey you've got to be patient and they weren't really i would say understanding of my stress or pressure um at that i would say at that juncture of let's call it 10 months now we hit a year and my investor is ready to shoot me and um i'm telling him calm down don't worry the enzo market is fine you know this car we're gonna we're gonna make a profit um and it's gonna be released very soon and i'm on the phone with the importer and finally the exhaust arrives the exhaust is on it passes epa and i'm just so thrilled um the dash clusters in uh you know the ec user and all of these things are being finished the rear tail lights are on and it looks like we are at the finish line and i am i am so excited i already have two potential buyers i mean i've just got this this incredible momentum for this moment and about i would say a couple weeks go by after that year mark and um i found out that we have now what seems like a very insignificant problem a massive problem and the massive problem is that the u.s seat belts that were installed in the car um they had jammed which to me seemed like okay you take it apart unjam it and you're good um but apparently uh you can't do that when you're bringing a car into the u.s under d.o.t laws it has to be a new seat belt it has to be working so i immediately freak out um i'm calling around everywhere there are no new u.s spec seat belts at the factory there are no u.s spec seat belts anywhere in the country um and now i'm just on panic mode i need this car to be released i need this car to pass epa dot and i need to figure this out quickly so i'm calling everyone i'm posting ads you can probably still find my ads for u.s enzo seat belts if you looked online um and i'm literally praying that i can get something to work so i finally actually call the importer and i decide that i'm going to fly up and basically go plead with them to help me help them help curate it to get the seat belts released so we could then pass and the car could be released to us so i fly up and the importer did not want to meet me they did not want to see me they didn't even want me to see the car so imagine this is part of this whole process is this is in a bonded warehouse it's safe blah blah blah blah and i'm just pleading with them i'm saying i don't think you get it my livelihood now depends on these seat belts getting these seat belts to work like we need to figure this out like i this this could break me emotionally financially you name it so finally after two days of pleading um they said that they would take an extra look at the seat belts and try to figure something out i'm sending letters i'm writing uh god rest him dick merritt who is the head of epa dot i'm right d.o.t i'm writing him saying hey can you help me can you help me with this um and he was just such an instrumental guy he passed away i believe last year and this was a guy that's been head of this division for years he was also a huge car guy he'd written ferrari books so i was hoping hoping that he would see me as a young guy trying passionate anyways so finally was able to get some letters and get some things approved to be able to fix the seat belts to be able to get the car released and the importer did actually get the seat belts unjammed i wonder if they were really jammed whoever knows i wasn't allowed to touch it or i wasn't allowed to check it i was actually ready to take them apart right there but it was definitely cool i got to see the car i got to go through the bonded warehouse which was very very cool and ended up coming home and and the car passed and released so the car finally arrived to miami and it was probably the most exciting thing to see the car come off the truck to be sort of vindicated um in front of our investor and be vindicated for curated i mean this was at this moment the biggest thing we had ever done the most important thing we had ever done and finally after almost a year and a half car was released um the bad news was that the bill um for the epa dot had swelled into about 180 000 um from the original i don't know 30 50 000 we thought it would be so 180 000 almost a year and a half and finally our enzo gets released now immediately i go to work marketing taking photos we have some really incredible shots that we had taken at the time i was taking photos myself we had put it on display at every event imaginable that we could um and i was trying to milk it for everything it was worth ends up one day a uh a very significant ferrari historian calls me um by the name of joe saki he wrote the 288 gto book and he also wrote the mura bible says i have a client for your car and i was actually i knew the second he called me i just had this gut feeling that he did have the client i mean he was that sure in his voice um and he said hey this is going to be the price this is what we're going to do together we're going to work this deal together i'm going to introduce you to the guy he's going to fly and he's going to do the inspection himself and then he'll tell you what he thinks so imagine this massive collector who you know i know has 20 30 40 cars who has also had other supercars comes flies into miami he inspects the car himself which is very rare in our industry if you don't know that people are sending other experts they're sending other historians this gentleman's that passionate and that knowledgeable that he inspected the car himself and basically looked at me in my face and said this car will never see the light again never see the light of day again um because he was going to shove it away and put it away and at that moment he decided he was buying the car i mean you could see the emotion on him he was that excited about the car he was that passionate about the car and he bought the car so obviously we celebrated um that car and my profit from that car became the down payment on my diablo sv the bad carfax car and later i rolled that into a gt3 rs and i rolled that into a few other cars the 355 challenge so all these different cars so that actually that little profit on that car ended up helped me immensely um start my career and sort of watch me grow um but the funny part about it was uh there was always this big question of what was the car really worth like what is the value of the last enzo and a lot of people had said that i had sold the car too short i said oh you didn't get enough money how can you put a v how can you put a price of you know x on this car and i said well you know i'm in the business of selling cars so about a year later um maybe a year and a half later max two years we'll have to look in the dates and we'll put something up on the screen the pope enzo comes up for auction and you know in my eyes the pope enzo was probably just as important you know right right there um obviously i would say a little bit more important in the sense that it was a gift to the pope it was for charity but you know this is the last production car that was the last car so there's this you know balance okay the biggest difference was the pope enzo was essentially a brand new car so it had no miles um this car was a one-owner car but it was well loved and driven i believe it had 9 000 or 10 000 miles so anyways i said okay wow this will be an interesting you know data point to see what the last enzo would bring you know what is the value you know everybody was always saying oh i didn't ask enough we didn't get enough get enough money so um obviously the market for ferrari supercars had increased at that time anyways um so i figured you know okay uh maybe it's gonna bring if a normal enzo is gonna bring 2.4 2.5 2.3 then maybe the pope enzo was going to bring 3 million i have to look back on my notes but i believe that pope enzo brought five or six million dollars at auction um so immediately uh upon the auction my phone started to explode collectors clients everybody wanted the last enzo number 399 hey do you still have it can you buy it back can we get it can you help me get it and um unfortunately and i would say fortunately the the gentleman that we sold it to is just too passionate about the car he loves it too much he'll never sell it and he's told me that a million times i'm not selling the car but it's definitely probably one of the most important stories in my career and most important stories for the history of curated because it was a test of patience it was a test of knowledge it was a test of basically being tenacious and not giving up i could have easily given up at six months i wanted to but ending up turning i would say you know lemons into lemonade um we ended up making a profit it ended up helping me start the rest of my career but definitely was one of those cars that if we kept and didn't sell not that i'm saying we could do it financially at that time but it would have been worth a lot more looking back thank you guys again don't forget to subscribe don't forget to like all our content we have a ton more great vintage supercar content coming thank you again

Channel: Curated TV by John Temerian

Views: 101,841

Rating: 4.8751245 out of 5

Keywords: ferrari, enzo, supercar, limited, production, hypercar, disaster, nightmare

Id: QJMHGuWWfdg

Length: 25min 0sec (1500 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 15 2021