Ex-Eric Clapton Ferrari 275 GTB/4 That Beat a Plane Hits Market for $4MThe headline writes itself, so let me spoil the fun first: the famous "race against a plane" wasn't a drag race. It was a 300-mile point-to-point dash across Kenya, car versus twin-engine Douglas DC-3, and it's arguably only the third or fourth most interesting thing about this particular Ferrari. That's how loaded chassis 09261 is. London dealer Fiskens has the silver 1966 275 GTB/4 up for grabs at £2.95 million, a hair under $4 million, and the Eric Clapton line on the ownership card is the part you'll see in every headline and the part that matters least.Start with what the car actually is, because the "/4" is doing real engineering work. The 275 GTB was already a landmark: Ferrari's first road car with all-independent suspension and a five-speed transaxle mounted at the rear axle for near-even weight distribution, as Fiskens itself notes on other 275s it has sold. The GTB/4, launched in 1966, was the first "production" Ferrari to get the four-cam engine—two overhead camshafts per cylinder bank instead of one, which is where the "four cam" nickname comes from. More cams meant tighter valve control at high rpm and a genuinely racier top end from the 3.3-liter Colombo V12. The four-cam also brought dry-sump lubrication borrowed from competition practice. And by this point in the run, Ferrari had bolted the engine to the transaxle via a rigid torque tube, specifically to kill the noise and vibration that plagued earlier cars whose separate driveshaft and gearbox could drift out of alignment. In other words, the GTB/4 is the sorted, fully-developed version of the shape—the one you actually want to drive across a continent.Related ArticleRefurbished 1965 Porsche 356C Coupe With Spares at Hemmings AuctionsDream Giveaway Offers Upgraded 2025 Porsche 911 Turbo S to One WinnerAdvertisementAdvertisementWhich brings us back to Kenya. Per the history Fiskens has assembled, the first owner, a businessman named Houry with interests in East Africa, tried a classic bit of tax engineering: take UK delivery, then re-export the car to Kenya as "used" to sidestep a punishing new-car import duty. The factory, apparently not briefed on the scheme, simply shipped it straight to Mombasa and blew the whole plan up. Houry kept it anyway and raced it with the East African Motor Sports Club—early enough, Fiskens reckons, that 09261 may be among the very first 275 GTB/4s ever raced anywhere. In 1968 it passed to his business partner Brian Lees, who bet a DC-3 pilot he could beat the aircraft from Nairobi to Mombasa by road and won, averaging north of 80 mph on barely-paved roads. Do that math and it's a genuinely unhinged thing to attempt in a brand-new V12 Ferrari.The car's middle years are a comedy of repaints. British illustrator James Allington bought it in the early 1970s, took the entire thing apart to produce one of his famous cutaway drawings, then reassembled it and painted it red to match the artwork. It failed to sell at a Christie's auction in December 2002, and a few months later Clapton bought it and handed it to marque specialist DK Engineering for a year-long restoration back to its original Grigio Argento silver. He sold it in 2005. By 2010 it had reached collector Niall Holden, who secured the one document that genuinely moves the needle—Ferrari Classiche certification confirming the chassis, engine and gearbox are the numbers-matching originals—and then, naturally, repainted it dark blue. Current owner Terence Disdale, the yacht designer behind Roman Abramovich's Eclipse, bought it in January 2022 and spent two years and roughly $250,000 taking it back to silver in a bare-metal respray, plus about $33,000 retrimming the interior. Disdale calls the 275 GTB "the most beautiful car ever designed," which explains the checkbook.Here's the part worth internalizing if you ever buy at this level: that paint merry-go-round isn't just trivia. Returning a car to its factory-original color and holding Classiche certification are what protect the value, because the collector market pays for originality and documentation above almost everything else. A gorgeous non-original-color car with a murky engine history is worth meaningfully less than a correct one, full stop.Related ArticlesMarket Movers: A Two-Speed Collector Car Market as the Top Sets Records and the Middle CoolsKoenigsegg Said to Build One-Off Manual Regera for FIA PresidentAdvertisementAdvertisementSo is the Clapton name the reason it's nearly $4 million? Not really, and any dealer being straight with you will say so. A right-hand-drive 275 GTB/4 is blue-chip on its own merits—only around 31 of the roughly 300 cars built left Maranello in right-hand drive, and this is a numbers-matching, freshly and expensively restored, factory-color example with a documented racing life and a Classiche book. Clapton owned it briefly, two decades ago, and to his credit paid for a proper restoration. But he's the garnish. The RHD rarity, the fresh money spent, and that thick history file are the actual value. The ask sits at the strong end of where clean four-cams trade, and the premium is the provenance stack, not the guitar.For a prospective buyer, a few practical notes. The four-cam engine is more complex and more expensive to service than the two-cam—more valve gear, dry-sump plumbing, and belts that need a specialist and a schedule tied to the calendar, not just the odometer. Budget accordingly, and use the established names who know these cars. Insure it on an agreed-value classic policy, because there's no book value on a $4 million one-off history. And whatever you do, don't repaint it. This one has finally, after five decades, ended up the right color.Images Via: James Brown, courtesy of FiskensJoin our Newsletter, follow our Instagram page, and follow us on Facebook.