Missing Ferraris in Westwood?

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The allegation is grand theft auto, but rarely are the autos grander than this. According to a post on Ferrarichat.com, four vintage Ferrari chassis were stolen from noted Ferrari enthusiast Tom Meade’s house in Westwood at some point prior to Sept. 14. The list:

1961 250 GT Pininfarina Coupe (#1847GT)
1961 250 GTE (#2911GT)
1965 275 GTS
1969 365GT (similar model pictured at right)

Details are sketchy and attempts to contact Meade -- who according to the post was in the hospital with a broken leg at the time -- were unsuccessful.

However, according to Det. Lynet Popper of the LAPD, no such theft has been reported to police, which is very strange because the chassis are worth serious bucks. What’s going on here?

The murkiness calls to mind the various intrigues in the collector Ferrari market. Note that the posting on Ferrarichat refers to ‘chassis.’ Well, how much of a 1960s-era Ferrari constitutes a ‘chassis’? Could these chassis -- let’s assume they are un-bodied frames, with or without engines -- be used to build up whole cars to be sold, perhaps overseas? Vintage Ferraris are very valuable and fabrication techniques so sophisticated that you can make a vintage Ferrari starting with just the chassis number plate. Such counterfeiting operations have been uncovered before.

Meade, 69, is an interesting story by himself. As a car-obsessed young man in his early 20s, he traveled to Italy and bought a retired Maserati 350S race car that he then dragged over to Medardo Fantuzzi’s workshop, where he slept on the floor as he restored and re-bodied the monster Mazzer. Meade then became something of a self-taught coachbuilder, re-bodying Italian sports cars with some outrageous shapes, cars known as Thomassinas. For more on Meade, go here.

More, undoubtedly, to come.

-- Dan Neil