Impounded Ferrari Enzo up for auction (Update)

Dubai’s abandoned supercars to go on auction

By Shahzad Sheikh

Thanks to Mohamed Ali Humaid for the picture

According to 7Days newspaper, the Ferrari Enzo that has been famously left abandoned in a police impound in Dubai for nearly two years, is due to go on sale at an auction on Wednesday.

[Update – 26 April 2012] Enzo withdrawn, will be offered at a later date.

UPDATE – The Ferrari Enzo was withdrawn from sale at the last minute due to pending investigations by Interpol, as it turns out the car was originally stolen in Russia.

However it is expected to go back on sale in next month’s auction, once there’s a resolution as to what to do with the car – it seems unlikely the original owner will want it back in this condition, and the insurance company that would have paid out for it, will want to auction it off anyway.

Meanwhile, whilst 50 people attended yesterday’s auction, according to 7Days newspaper, only one person bought all remaining 127 cars, which were sold as a job lot for AED1.35m. And they included an Aston Martin. Not sure which, but at an average of AED10,630 per car, it seems that Essan Mohammed of Dubai’s RPM Workshop in Al Qusais might have bagged himself a few bargains.

Original story:

The 651bhp Enzo with its highly-strung 6.0-litre V12 (one of only 400 made) can’t be in the best of health after having idle and uncared for under a layers of dust for over 20 months. But at auction Enzos normally trade for over $1m.

The newspaper report is predicting it could fetch as much as $1.5million (AED5.6m) at an auction in Al Qusais on Wednesday, although considering the state it’s in and the dodgy provenance, plus the low-profile nature of the auction, I’d hazard a guess closer to less than half that amount.

Wanted by Interpol the British owner of the car fled the UAE, but the car had been seized by CID after hundreds of thousands of dirhams worth of fines had been built up against the vehicle – this is clearly not a carefully driven, well looked-after Ferrari.

The Enzo will be one of 23 high-end cars that will be offered in the auction including three other Ferrari and seven Porsches, all confiscated for debt repayment defaults, traffic fines or simply because they were abandoned. Ten of the cars belonged to Emiratis, seven to Europeans, one to a Russian and the rest were owned by companies, according to the newspaper report.

Confiscated cars and bikes can be auctioned off after six months if they remained unclaimed, and apparently Dubai police have raised AED10m from five recent auctions of such vehicles.

To take part in the bidding for this very exclusive auction, buyers have to put down a deposit of AED50,000 ahead of the sale – even to watch the auction there’s a AED110 entry fee!

Click here for more information about the auction

Source: 7Days

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