Could this Ferrari 330 2+2 shooting brake make £1 million at Pebble Beach?

Pretty? No. Interesting? You bet. It’s a one-off 1965 Ferrari 330 GT 2+2 Shooting Brake, the car that graced Vignale’s stand at the Turin Motor Show of 1968. It used to be owned by Jay Kay and now it’s for sale at Gooding & Co’s Pebble Beach auction in California on 18-19 August. 

If part of the appeal of a Ferrari is to get heads to swivel as you drive by then this 1960s vision of the future – all metallic brown with gold trim – is surely as successful as a GTO.

In what is possibly a first for a coachbuilt Ferrari it was actually designed by a Hollywood movie poster artist. The commercial designer Bob Peak penned its lines, working with Luigi ‘Coco’ Chinetti Jr. Coco’s idea was to reinvent the 330 GT that his father (US Ferrari importer and Le Mans winner) had bought in 1965 into something that could take four people and their luggage. A Ferrari FF of 50 years ago.

Out would go the Pininfarina coupe coachwork and in would come the elongated nose, grilles over the lights, generous C-pillars and that shooting brake rear with lift-up glass window. The result is a bit Lotus and a little Scimitar GTE, like an angular Ferrari 250 Breadvan. 

Vignale, famous for many sports and racing Ferraris in the 1950s, made the new body, carrying over from the 330 only the windscreen and doors. The finished car, believed to be the last-ever Vignale-bodied Ferrari, was shown at the Turin show before it was shipped back to Chinetti in the US.

As a concept, the car seemed to work. There is room in it for four and their luggage, as Coco Chinetti wanted, while the performance was guaranteed by the single overhead cam 4.0-litre V12 fed by three twin-choke Webers. With 300bhp, a five-speed ‘box and disc brakes all round, the 330 could hit 155mph and get from 0-60mph in under 7 seconds.

Coco enjoyed the car in the US for several years before it came to Europe where it was restored in the 1990s, subsequently starring at Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este in 2001 and other events including Goodwood. Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay bought it in 2011.

What price the weirdest looking Ferrari ever? Gooding & Co have estimated it will make between US$700-900,00 when it is auctioned in Pebble Beach on August 18^th.