Now here’s a garage restoration for you. It’s a Ferrari 275 GTB4 coupe that some charlatan decided to hack into to create a convertible. But now its new owner has taken it to Ferrari to bring it back to its former hardtop glory. Oh, and did we mention that it used to belong to Steve McQueen?
Yes, this is the ‘Rari that McQueen took delivery of while making legendary film Bullitt in the late 60s. But a later owner opted to make it a Spider in the 1980s. Trouble is Ferrari’s restoration and maintenance wing, Ferrari Classiche, has a policy that cars taken to it for the ultimate Ferrari restoration job have to be 100 percent authentic in order to be officially authenticated. So now the 275 is being brought back to its former glory, to the spec it was in when it left the factory.
The job being undertaken at Maranello then involves the reproduction of the roof and buttresses with hand-beaten steel panels. No small task, but one that’ll bring a great car, owned by a screen icon, back to the way it should be.