Completed on January 12, 1956, this was the 26th alloy-bodied Gullwing off the Untertürkheim production line, and actually the first completed in 1956. Its data card, a copy of which is included in the file, records all of the usual Leichtmetallausführung glories — alloy body, NSL engine, sports suspension, Rudges, etc. — as well as a windshield-washer system, special-order paint and 3.42:1 rear axle ratio.
On January 16, the completed car departed the factory, bound for Milan agent Saporiti. It would reportedly be delivered by Saporiti to none other than Luigi Chinetti, the renowned figure who had won the 24 Hours of Le Mans as a racing driver and gone on to become Ferrari’s North American importer and owner of the famous North American Racing Team (N.A.R.T.).
Rudi Klein met Luigi Chinetti while attending the 1976 Daytona 500, and there agreed to purchase the Alloy Gullwing for the sum of $30,000; Rudi placed a $3,000 deposit with one of Chinetti’s employees at the race. Photographs in the file show the Gullwing as acquired by Rudi, in silver with its original red leather interior, and in a letter Rudi notes that the car was “sound [with] no damage. Equipment on car includes radio, spare, etc. and knockoffs.” A further photograph depicts the car finally arriving on the premises of Porche Foreign Auto.
The Klein sons believe that the Alloy Gullwing was the only prize among Rudi’s collection of various significant vehicles that he never drove or exhibited. Upon its receipt from Chinetti, the car was tucked away inside the central building of the junkyard, and until its display at the RM Sotheby’s Monterey auction in 2024, remained there. Over time, as was its owner’s wont, a few pieces were sold off, the front bumpers, the shift knob, the toolkit, the jack, and the spare wheel among them. Yet with 73,387 kilometers (about 45,600 miles) recorded at the time of cataloging, the car remains, unimpeachably, spectacularly genuine, retaining its original, matching-numbers engine, gearbox, rear axle, steering box and front spindles, all numbered and correlating to the data card; its four road wheels, all with matching date codes; and its factory alloy bodywork, with the two digits of the body number, 26, found on both doors, the edge of the dashboard, and in the interior roof panel. Extremely few of these oft-raced, oft-wrecked competition cars led such an apparently benign life and have survived so well.
(Introductory description courtesy of RM Sotheby’s.)
