Photography by William Edgar
Collections: Every One’s a Winner
August 1, 2006
As the chairman of the Seattle Art Museum’s board of trustees, Jon Shirley approaches automobile collecting like a curator looking for artworks. I like to find cars that need restoration," Shirley says. The challenge, he explains, is in making them perfect again.
For Shirley, the hobby started when he and his family were visiting the old Nivelles-Baulers Grand Prix circuit south of Brussels. Members of the Ferrari Club of Great Britain began arriving with new and vintage cars. Two giant transporters lumbered in from the factory in Maranello. "Boxer" Ferraris, their enthusiast owners at the wheel, took to the track in a private session beneath that Belgian sky. For Shirley, the spontaneous pageant brought nothing less than an epiphany. "I wandered around and talked to everybody that day at Nivelles," he says, "and then I said to myself, ‘I should be doing this.’ Now I am."; function voidFunc() { } voidFunc();)
A 1955 Porsche 550 Spyder. (Click image to enlarge)Shirley’s extensive private collection resides in the Pacific Northwest, in Medina, Wash. As I enter the nirvana that he and his collection manager, John Bennett, call the Warehouse, the stable’s scope and beauty strike me as no less than staggering. There are 23 cars here on this day and more in the shop, either for restoration or to prep for a vintage race and show.
In one dazzling row—returned to build-day precision by wizard Butch Dennison—is the 2.0-liter Ferrari 166MM Touring Superleggera I first photographed in April 1951 when it won the Palm Springs road race, thrilling West Coasters with our very first sight of a Ferrari in track action. Today, the vintage racecar is one of Shirley’s favorite rally rides. This V-12 "little boat" is the same barchetta in which Luigi Chinetti Sr. and Jean Lucas won the 24-hour endurance race at Spa-Franchorchamps in 1949—a triumph for Ferrari, along with Chinetti’s same-year Le Mans victory in a similar 166MM. It was Ferrari’s first production car and a Mille Miglia winner, and it made Enzo’s upstart marque world famous.
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This 1938 Alfa Romeo 8C2900 was the winner of the Watkins Glen Grand Prix in 1948. "Very responsive, very
quick," Shirley says of the car. (Click image to enlarge)Next to it is the 1938 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900—imparting the ultimate in grace and movement within design. An elegant boulevard automobile that is also a competition champion, it won the first Watkins Glen Grand Prix in 1948 in the hands of Frank Griswold. "Very responsive, very quick," Shirley says of the car. With 180 hp and rear hydraulic shocks adjustable from the cockpit, the twin-supercharged London Show car was far ahead of its time.
Another prized Alfa is Shirley’s 8C 2300, its still-original body also by Carrozzeria Touring of Milan. First owned by Andrea Piaggio of Italian airplane and scooter fame, this durable roadster sat idle for years in a museum in Germany, where Shirley found it. He has driven the Alfa Rally in it, and, with his wife, Mary, has done the Copperstate 1,000-mile loop through twisting Oak Creek Canyon and other Arizona back roads. "It was state of the art for 1932," says Shirley. Its supercharged inline-8 makes 142 hp at 4,900 rpm. Like all of Shirley’s cars, its cost is stratospheric, but the world speeding past is priceless.
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