A Gold Mine For Car Collectors — Why Is The Duemila Ruote So Special?

The Italian businessman, as the story goes, borrowed from an Italian financial institution claiming that he would invest the money in his business.

Instead, he chose to spend the money on his collection of cars, bikes and boats and other automotive stuff.

However, when the time came to pay up, he declared bankruptcy, and his entire collection was seized by the Italian government.

Now all 423 cars, 155 motorcycles, 55 boats and 184 bicycles and assorted automobile memorabilia are set to go up for auction at RM Sotheby's "Duemila Ruote" (2,000 Wheels) auction, the largest event of its kind ever hosted in Europe. The collection is expected to fetch around £30 million.

Among the cars set to be auctioned off is one Bugatti, four Lamborghinis, seven Rolls-Royces, eight Aston Martins, nine Bentleys, 23 Maseratis, 45 Ferraris, 62 Jaguars and 73 Porsches, including some 60 911s.

The car collection alone spans 85 years and has cars from 55 different carmakers from around the world.

It took 100 trucks to transport the the collection from Venice to Milan, the venue for the show. Before they were transported out, the cars, bikes and boats were stored in 11 warehouses and it took a team of nine people from four countries three weeks to photograph and catalogue the entire collection.

The auction itself is expected to run for 25 hours over three days from Friday, November 25 with bidders registering from 45 countries around the world.

There are some cars that are priced extremely cheaply and others on the other end of the spectrum, all cars will be on auction without any reserve, which means that whatever the final bid, be it low or high, is the price they are sold for.

While there are many cars set to go the auction block, the most valuable of the lot is the matching-numbers 1966 Ferrari 275 GTB/6C and is one of only nine originally built with an aluminium body and is expected to fetch £2.4million (Rs. 20.4 crores)

While that may seem to be a hefty price to pay, it isn't actually the most expensive car ever sold at auction.

That honour goes to another Ferrari, a 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO which fetched an astonishing $52 million (Rs. 356 crore)at a private auction in 2014.

Meanwhile stay tuned to DriveSpark.com to get the news first about how the cars fared at the auction.