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Way back in 2016 famed comedian and Porsche fanatic Jerry Seinfeld sold sixteen special cars from his massive collection through the Gooding & Co. auction at Amelia Island. Among that grouping of cars was the gorgeous green Porsche you see above. It was represented and sold as one of the sixty original aluminum body Furhmann four-cam 1958 Porsche 356 Speedster GS/GT models, and it hammered at an impressive $1.54 million. Three years after the auction concluded, in 2019, the buyer, Fica Frio, LTD. issued a lawsuit claiming not only that the car was an elaborate fake, but that Seinfeld himself engaged in fraud to misrepresent the car as such.
The allegations came with no such proof that the car was a falsehood, though with old cars there are always questions hanging over them. Seinfeld, to his credit, told Fica Frio that he was willing to do what was right and fair, and asked for a third party evaluator to examine the car to determine its provenance. Apparently much of the lawsuit revolves around the fact that once Seinfeld was told the car was fake, despite lack of clarification, he claimed he was unaware of the car’s suspect history and apologized. That apology may have cost him dearly.
In order to rectify the lawsuit, Seinfeld reached out to European Collectibles in Costa Mesa, California, from whom he’d purchased the Speedster in 2013. The comedian was anxious to get this ordeal behind him and requested that European Collectibles provide the documentation to prove the car was what it was claimed to be. European Collectibles allegedly refused to cooperate with Seinfeld’s request, so Seinfeld in turn sued European Collectibles.
Apparently, three years after that ordeal, it’s all over. Both lawsuits have been settled out of court, so of course there are no public records of any money having changed hands, or who might have ended up the aggrieved party. There isn’t even any public acknowledgement as to whether 356 Speedster chassis #84908 might have been falsified in any way. The whole situation just raises so many more questions than it answers. Who was wrong and who was right? What’s the deal with the car? Can it be purchased at a significant discount today?
All these years later, I still find it quite difficult to believe that Seinfeld would misrepresent a car he has for sale. The guy made his millions in television, and has no reason to falsify his Porsches. This is a guy that values authenticity, and records show that he paid some $1.2 million for the car in 2013, so it seems unlikely that he would have paid that knowing it was a falsehood all along. Who knows, maybe he just ended up paying Fica Frio to get the whole problem to go away. Maybe the whole thing was just an elaborate ruse to drag Jerry’s name through a lawsuit. The world may never know. Either way, the matter no longer belongs to the courts.
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