The Nation - News from Nov. 19, 1987

Federal marshals sold a confiscated Ferrari 250 GTO racing car for $1.6 million to a Providence, R.I., partnership that outlasted bidders from throughout the nation and abroad. It is the highest price on record for one of the sleek, red two-seat hardtops. The Italian auto company produced only 36 of the cars in 1963 and 1964; 32 survive. U.S. Marshal Pasquale A. Mangini said in New Haven, Conn., where the car was being kept, that the partnership is known both as Douglas Auto Sales and as GTO Partners and is headed by Leon H. Cornell Jr. The government seized the car from an accused drug dealer’s estate after he was found murdered in Spain last June.