The most you can pay to be a member at AFL club Richmond is $5500. Just up the road at GG Classic Cars, the least you can pay is $1m. GG Classic is Australia’s only million-dollar car dealership and one of the few in the world.
Not that a mill will buy you much.
Australian racing pro and GG boss Fraser Ross says the business is international: it sources, buys and sells cars around the world.
A dazzlingly yellow Bugatti Chiron.
A dazzlingly yellow Bugatti Chiron.
So, while every respectable classic car dealer has a Ferrari F40 (“The name alone makes grown men weak in the knees,” says classic legend John Temerian Jr), on the floor, GG has Ferrari F1 driver Patrick Tambay’s very own F40.
Designed to celebrate Ferrari’s 40th anniversary, it was the last Ferrari automobile personally approved by Enzo himself.
The fastest, most powerful, most expensive Ferrari on launch, the orders were so high the price jumped 500 per cent. The fact Enzo died the next year didn’t hurt prices either. About $5m for you right now.
Walking past the rare Bugattis, rare Porsches, rare Aston Martins and rare Rollers, you get to the black on black (or if you’re from South Yarra, nero on nero) V12, 2000 Lamborghini Diablo GT.
A 1993 Porsche 911 Turbo 3.6 (964).
A track-only car, one of 80 and one of very few living outside Europe, this one comes with owner’s manual, the correct Clarion radio, driving gloves and an exhaust note that makes the angels cry. A steal at $2.5m.
Ross says while avid collectors are buying what they’ve always lusted after, and new money is just buying, there are individuals and fund managers buying classic cars as an investment. You can buy a collectable car through your SMSF like you can buy art, boats, watches and great wine. But the ATO won’t let you even drive it to the local servo.
The 2023 Knight Frank wealth report saw an average 5 per cent growth in the values of classic cars, but over 10 years cars have delivered an average 118 per cent return on investment, mainly driven by Ferraris and Porsches.
A Ferrari F40 in the marque’s classic colour.
GG has some serious classic race cars on the books. Like the 1984 Trust Racing Team Porsche 956-118 driven by Australia’s Vern Schuppan, Yoshimi Katayama and Hans-Joachim Stuck to wins in the 1984 All Japan Fuji 500 Miles, 1985 All Japan Fuji 1000km, 1986 All Japan Fuji 500 Miles, 1986 Fuji 500km and 1986 Suzuka 1000km. Schuppan bought the car and sold it in the 1990s. In 2015 it sold for $14m and returned to Australia.
Russell Kempnich, who founded minerals processor Sedgman in 1980, bought the car locally. In 2023 he turned 70 and thought it was time to move the 356km/h machine to a new home. You can have it for about $20m.
