Confessions of a Car Fanatic

It was June—high summer—and hot the day the vintage sports cars participating in the 2021 Mille Miglia swept into the Italian city of Modena. Inside Dr. Eric Oberlander’s 1956 Ferrari 250GT “Boano” Coupe it was even hotter. After three days and more than seven hundred miles behind the wheel, the heat of the V-12 Colombo engine flooding through the firewall into the un-airconditioned cockpit seemed on the verge of setting the Baton Rouge neurosurgeon’s feet on fire. 

Despite the discomfort, Oberlander was thrilled. Here he was, thousands of miles from home, fulfilling his childhood dream by driving a rare and gorgeous classic along serpentine Italian roads—a participant in the world’s most famous car rally. Of the 450 pre-1957 cars entered in the 2021 Mille Miglia, just three were Ferraris, and throughout the race so far, wherever the Boano coupe went, a roar of appreciation followed as the jubilant crowd lining the roadsides recognized one of their own. Then, as Oberlander’s flame-red Ferrari entered Modena, he and his co-driver Scott Laroque found themselves surrounded by Italian motorcycle police, riding four in front and two behind, lights flashing, in perfect formation. For several miles as the escort wound its way through the Modena streets, cheering fans gave Oberlander and his car a welcome befitting the return of a favorite son. Why? Because Modena is the birthplace of Enzo Ferrari. 

Oberlander told me this story while we sat in his Ferrari 250GT in the driveway of his Baton Rouge home. We’d just been around the block, the glorious roar of that sixty-five-year-old V12 turning the heads of afternoon dog walkers as it snorted and burbled through the neighborhood. Against the tick of cooling metal, Oberlander described how lifelong passions for cars and collecting led a kid from the Washington, D.C. suburbs on a fifteen-year quest to own a vehicle worthy of the fabled Mille Miglia. “I’ve always been a car nut. And I’ve always been the type to collect things: coins, stamps, football cards … a few weeks ago I went out and bought a bunch of Joe Burrow rookie cards,” he admitted with a grin. 

When Oberlander was young, his parents divorced—his mother moving to suburban Virginia with a man who was mad for all things Volkswagen. When Oberlander would visit his mom on weekends, he would spend time turning wrenches on the collection of VW Things and Transporters in his stepdad’s yard. Fascinated by all things mechanical, Oberlander saved his allowance, and at the age of fourteen bought a clapped-out Porsche 914 for $600. When it turned out to be too far gone to be salvaged, he dismantled it, sold the parts, and made enough to buy a working 914 this time. He was hooked. By the time he was in college he was driving a 1971 Porsche 911T. 

But collecting cars is an expensive hobby, so until his career really got going, Oberlander had to find another way. For years Oberlander indulged his twin passions by collecting vintage Ford Broncos, which until recently could be found pretty cheaply. Today he owns about twenty, including some of the earliest to roll off the Ford assembly line. “Collecting Broncos was me scratching the itch in an affordable way,” he said. “They’re getting more valuable now, so I guess I timed it right.”

How does a lifelong Porsche fanatic with a thing for vintage Broncos come to own an impossibly-rare Ferrari? That’s where the Mille Miglia comes in. An open road endurance race covering a thousand miles of sinuous Italian roadway between Brescia and Rome and back again, the Mille Miglia originally ran from 1927 to 1957, when it was deemed too dangerous to continue due to the number of fatal crashes as the cars became faster and more powerful. The race was then revived in 1987, and has taken place annually since then. During its early years, the race became a proving ground for up-and-coming carmakers, and it was success at the Mille Miglia that made Alfa Romeo, BMW, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche into household names—and their creations the stuff of teenage fanaticism. Amongst those early carmakers was a scrappy little company founded by a racing driver from Modena named Enzo Ferrari. By the Mille Miglia’s heyday in the 1950s, cars built by Ferrari were carrying their drivers to the winner’s podium often, their gorgeous designs and racing pedigree translating into consumer demand as the marque’s fame spread. 

But despite success on the racetrack, by the mid-fifties Ferrari was in financial trouble and needed to sell more cars. So, in 1955 the company revered for its tiny, sexy race cars set out to build something that a regular driver—a family man—might buy. That “something” was a low-slung, long-hooded grand tourer badged as the 250GT Coupe, designed by the famous designer Pina Farina. The car  came to be known by the nickname “Boano,” for the coach builder Mario Boano, who assembled the cars in his factory. Sure, it was bigger and came with a trunk, but it still had the magnificent 3.0 liter V12 “Colombo” engine that won races, and it was fast. In 1955 and ’56 the factory built seventy-four Boanos—a huge production run for a company that typically built just four to ten of any given model to take racing. 

Knowing that the best way to ensure strong sales of his new car was for it to do well on the racetrack, Ferrari built three superlight, all-alloy bodied competition versions of the 250GT, then souped them up with bigger fuel tanks, carburetors, distributors, and other racing upgrades. In 1955 one of those alloy prototypes was sold, then returned to the Ferrari factory where it received still more racing upgrades, including larger carburetors, racing cam shafts, and a racing gearbox—making it truly a "one-off" Ferrari. The work was finished in time for the car to be entered into the 1956 Mille Miglia. In June of that year, with the number 459 painted on the side and a twenty-eight-year-old driver named Franco Marenghi at the wheel, it finished the thousand-mile race in thirty-third position out of more than four hundred entries. Enzo Ferrari had no trouble selling the other seventy-three Boanos.

Sixty-five years later, car number 459 is to be found in a quiet Baton Rouge neighborhood, though it’s made the journey back to Italy no fewer than four times since first being sold to another U.S. buyer in 1966. Oberlander bought the Boano sight-unseen in 2018 after realizing that this vehicle might be the “Mille car” he’d been searching for. “I’d wanted an original participant car (i.e. an actual Mille Miglia-raced car); a car that I wanted to own, but that wasn’t too nice to drive and rack up mileage,” he noted. “And I wanted a car that would hold its value over time.”

 It will come as no surprise to learn that a vintage race car with a history of participating in the world’s most famous road race is not cheap. Oberlander, now an award-winning neurosurgeon with a specialty in spine surgery and one of the largest practices in the country, admitted that buying it was a heavy lift for him. “I had to justify it; I have a family. How and why was I going to make this investment?” he said. “But if you look at this from a straight business perspective, vintage Ferraris have been a phenomenal performing asset. That’s how I was able to justify it. People invest in stocks, in real estate. No one would bat an eye at investing in the right kind of art. Well, a Ferrari like this is art. It’s like driving a piece of art around.”

In the four years he’s owned the car, Oberlander believes that his investment has grown in value—not only because of the direction of prices in the vintage car market, but also because, while doing research into the provenance of the vehicle, he discovered some photographic evidence that could only increase its value. Thumbing through a book about the 1956 Mille Miglia, Oberlander came across a photograph of his actual Ferrari—car number 459—taken at the start of the 1956 race. Who should be standing at the back of the car speaking to a couple of drivers? A stately looking gentleman in hat and suit by the name of Enzo Ferrari. 

After finally taking possession of the Boano four years ago, Oberlander started making plans to bring it back to Italy to race the Mille Miglia again. His first attempt to enter was derailed when his entry fee to join the 2019 race didn’t arrive in time. COVID-19 prevented him from making the trip to Italy in 2020. In 2021 he and the car were finally accepted, and they made the trip back to Brescia last June. For Oberlander, the experience was the fulfillment of a lifelong dream. “I love the passion that Italians have for the race,” he said, speaking in a video about the event that was made last year. “Car 459 is like a spiritual animal. It was born and raised in Italy. And it’s a historic Ferrari that raced in the 1956 Mille. That’s where it belongs. I know that car has a soul, and that it wants to be there. Because racing in the Mille Miglia is what that car was born to do.” 

This month, meet Dr. Eric Oberlander and his 1955-56 Ferrari 250GT “Boano” in Natchez, Mississippi during the annual Euro Fest Classic Car Show on April 23—read more about it in our calendar. euro-fest.net/natchez

See more about Oberlander's experience at the 2021 Mille Miglia in this video, here.