This amazingly rare and elegant Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 was owned by the late Mr. Brian Eckersley, Surrey chimney sweep, for some 42 years, from the time he purchased it from a dealer in Warren Street, London, in 1956 to his untimely death last November.
With supercharged 2.3-litre straight-8 engine, long-wheelbase chassis and rakish Cabriolet coachwork believed to be by Pininfarina, this must be the ultimate "British barn find" Alfa Romeo.
According to Portello factory records, its chassis and engine serials-20311075-fall into the Second Series production run of 1932-'051 to '097-indicating only 47 Second Series 8C-2300s were produced that year. Overall, combining both First and Second Series models, sixty-eight 1932-built 8C-2300s are recorded, in both long-wheelbase, "Lungo," and short-wheelbase, "Corto," form.
In its initial form such Lungo chassis as this carried either heavyweight luxury road-going coachwork or stark, stripped torpedo styles. Their designer, Ing Vittorio Jano, was one of the first to produce high-performance cars desgined for sustained full-throttle use on high-speed roads.
This particular car's early, pre-1949, history is shrouded in some mystery. It's believed its Pininfarina Cabriolet coachwork dates from 1937 to '39. Alfa Romeo authorities suggest that '075 here may have spent its early life in the Turin area, where contemporary Alfa Romeo registration records have yet to be explored. Certainly in the late '30s several Alfa Romeos of similar age were 'modernized' by a group of marque enthusiasts. They would in effect take the aging beauties to an haute couturier to be re-clothed, one such being Pininfarina.
As Mr. Eckersley's widow, Pauline, recalls: "It was a very fast car which frightened me a bit at first. But it certainly turned heads. We always called it the 'ooh-aah car' because whenever anyone saw it they would say, 'Ooh-aah, what a lovely car.'
This car, registration PXY 63, is accompanied by a documentation file, including some correspondence relating to the car and translations of the Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 handbook. Mr. Eckersley experimented at one time with alternative trim features, but otherwise it is perfectly unaltered. This is a beautiful example of an extremely rare breed, one of very few, if not the only, Pininfarina Cabriolet-bodied Alfa 8C 2300s to have survived in almost completely original form, the chimney sweep's "Ooh-aah car" indeed.
{analysis} The car described here sold for $931,553, including commissions, at the Brooks London sale held April 14, 1999. Any time a collector car nears the $1 million mark at auction, it can be identified as a member of a very special group whose rarity, history, styling and visceral appeal help it transcend its role as a motorcar. Call it sculpture or simply art, cars that sell for the price of a very nice home have gone beyond the bounds of their raw materials and to the next level. It is interesting that in the case of the Alfa 8C 2300, the long chassis is actually the cheapest version available of the glorious 8C lineup, its more expensive cousins being the short wheelbase Mille Miglia and Monza versions. Those short wheelbase models can sell for three times the price of the 8C shown here, which probably explains why so many long-chassis cars were "cut and shut" into Monzas.
Rebodies, even poorly documented ones, are common on machines of this caliber, and the sale price could even have gone past the $1 million mark if more documentation on the coachwork and ownership history could have been researched. Even as presented, the sale price fell short of the middle of the SCM range. This can be considered well-bought and, with a bit of research, perhaps even a bargain.-Michael Duffey.
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