The phone call came on a Tuesday afternoon in late November, and it began the way these stories always begin: with a rumor. A friend of a friend had mentioned something to a dealer in Lyon, who had passed the information to a broker in Geneva, who eventually relayed it to our contributor in Paris. There was a car, supposedly, in a barn somewhere in the Dordogne. A Ferrari. Possibly a 275. Possibly original. The details were vague, the source was third-hand, and the whole thing had the unmistakable flavor of wishful thinking. But the broker was a serious man, and the fact that he had bothered to make the call suggested something worth investigating.
Three days later, I found myself driving a rental Peugeot down a rutted farm track in the rolling countryside south of Bergerac. The farm belonged to the family of a recently deceased gentleman named Henri Laroche, who had been, by all accounts, a private man of modest habits and considerable means. He had lived alone for the last two decades of his life, tending a small herd of Limousin cattle and, apparently, keeping a secret.
The barn was a traditional stone structure, probably eighteenth century, with a slate roof that sagged in the middle and walls thick enough to keep secrets. Henri's nephew, a schoolteacher from Toulouse named Philippe, met me at the door with an expression that mixed bewilderment with cautious excitement. He had discovered the car three weeks earlier while clearing the property for sale. It had been hidden behind a false wall of hay bales, invisible to anyone who wasn't specifically looking for it.
"When I moved the last bale and saw the shape under the tarp, I knew it was something important. But I had no idea how important. Uncle Henri never mentioned a car. Not once in thirty years."
Philippe pulled back the tarp with the reverence of an archaeologist uncovering a tomb, and there it was. A 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4, in Grigio Argento over black leather, wearing a thick coat of dust and draped with cobwebs but otherwise appearing remarkably complete and original. The tires were flat, the battery long dead, but the body was straight, the glass intact, and the leather seats showed the kind of gentle patina that comes from age rather than abuse.
The 275 GTB/4 is widely regarded as one of the finest road cars Ferrari ever produced. Built between 1966 and 1968, it was the first production Ferrari to feature a four-cam V12 engine, displacing 3.3 liters and producing 300 horsepower. Only 330 examples were built, and those in good condition regularly sell for between $3 million and $4 million at auction.
Working with Ferrari historian Marcel Massini, we traced the car's history from the factory in Maranello. Chassis number 10571 was originally delivered to the Ferrari dealer in Paris in the spring of 1967. Its first owner was a textile manufacturer named Georges Beaumont, who kept the car for twelve years before selling it in 1979 to Henri Laroche.
What happened next is where the story becomes extraordinary. Laroche drove the Ferrari regularly throughout the early 1980s, accumulating approximately 42,000 kilometers. Then, sometime around 1986, he simply stopped. The car was parked in the barn, covered with a tarp, and hidden behind hay bales. For thirty-five years, the car sat in darkness, its existence known to no one.
Why did Laroche hide the car? Philippe has a theory. In the mid-1980s, Laroche went through a difficult divorce. His ex-wife's lawyers were aggressive about asset discovery, and Laroche, a proud and stubborn man, apparently decided that hiding the Ferrari was preferable to surrendering it. By the time the divorce was finalized, hiding the car had become a habit, and then a secret, and then simply a fact of his existence.
The car's condition, given its decades of dormancy, is remarkable. The engine appears to be in excellent mechanical condition, with no visible signs of corrosion. The clutch and transmission feel free when manually rotated. The body shows no evidence of accident damage, and the original paint, while dulled by dust, is complete and unbroken. Even the original tool roll sits in the trunk where the factory placed it in 1967.
The question of whether to restore or preserve the car has generated considerable debate among the collector community. There is a strong argument for preservation: the car represents a perfect time capsule. On the other hand, there is something almost cruel about leaving a 275 GTB/4 in a state where it cannot be driven.
Philippe has not yet decided what to do with the car. Estimates for its value range from $3.5 million to over $5 million, depending on whether it is sold unrestored or after a sympathetic recommissioning. For the moment, the Ferrari sits in a climate-controlled storage facility outside Bordeaux.
There is a postscript worth sharing. When Philippe was clearing his uncle's desk, he found a small notebook. Inside, in Henri Laroche's careful handwriting, was a single entry dated March 15, 1986: "Put the Ferrari to sleep today. She deserves better than lawyers." Beneath it, separated by thirty-five years of blank pages, was a final entry, undated but written in a shakier hand: "I should have driven her more."
