Ok - so most of you are thinking "What mystery? Isn't that Wyclef Jean's F1?" but I am beginning to believe that we are wrong on the chassis number of Wyclef's car, and have been all along.
I first began to question this when
I spoke to Thomas Bscher at the LA Auto Show. Mr Bscher mentioned to me that evening he had sold his car to a man named Miles Collier which was not a name that was immediately recognizable to me. I also mentioned Wyclef Jean's name to Mr Bscher and that wasn't one he seemed to recognize either. You will recall that Mr Bscher was certain that his road car had been #022 -
also confirmed in this scanned article - 3rd column of text - and informed me that he still owns GTR #22R, and finally that his Veyron will be chassis #022 as well, in keeping with the trend.
Had I been thinking
I would have looked the new name up the moment I got home that night, but I failed to do that and let it slip my mind. You'll also notice this wasn't something I bothered to mention in my post about meeting Mr Bscher. I recall thinking at the time that Mr Collier must have been a middleman involved in the sale of #022 between Bscher and Jean and really thought nothing of it since a lot of times there are two and three such middlemen involved in the transaction on a McLaren F1. Shame on me really...
So, months go by and on April 20th I happen to be at Borders (book store) with a friend who was talking to an old co-worker forever it seemed. I got bored and started picking up magazines that I don't normally read and flipping through the pages. One such magazine was the May issue of "Sports Car Market" - a monthly that covers the collector car market both here in the USA and around the world. Ten pages into the magazine I spot this photo which measures 3.25" x 2.5" on the center of the editor, Keith Martin's, monthly column. My eye was instantly drawn to a McLaren F1 I did not recognize :22yikes: and I don't think any of you will either. (
If you do, you've been keeping things from us 
)
Clickable
I read through the column (which had little if anything to say about the F1) and there was the same name I had discounted months before - Miles Collier - listed as the host of a 3-day event called "Connoisseurship 2006". Apparently it was a gathering of 50 very serious collectors and presentations were given by Collier and several others on the state of the collector car market. One other notable presenter mentioned in the article was Doug Nye. His name should be reconizable to most here, as it's his name on the cover of "Driving Ambition".
Anyway - there was very little in the article about where the event was held but it did list Mr Collier as the host and given that Mr Bscher was confident he had sold his car to him, I figured that the F1 in the photo was his. Of course that would mean the F1 in the photo is also #022.
When I got home that night I discovered that Miles Collier and the Collier family have quite a legacy in the motoring world. Miles runs the Collier Auto Museum which is dedicated to his father and uncles who were well known amatuer racers in the 1930's. The museum has been referred to as the finest collection of sports cars in America, possibly the world, containing "a sparkling collection of 75 classic sports cars from every decade of the 20th century" - this was where the Connoisseurship event referred to in the article was held. Most of the cars (approx 50) in the Collier Museum were purchased from the Briggs Cunningham collection in 1987. That in itself is a very interesting story, but at the moment I can't seem to find the article I read describing that transaction.
I have found differing information on the status of the museum unfortunately. Several places reference that the museum is closed to the public and used only for private events, while others seem to suggest its open. I haven't contacted the museum yet - still on my "things to do" list, but I plan to get that done soon and will update this thread with the info I find.
Back to the story of #022 here. Besides Mr Bscher's own words confirming who he sold his car to, there was also this snippet in the
Times Online F1 -vs- Veyron article that I had previously glazed over:
Quote:
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"Thomas Bscher, the suave former banker who is now Bugatti’s president, used to own an F1. He drove it to work every day for two years from his home in Cologne to his office in Frankfurt before selling it in 2003 to an American collector Miles Collier."
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So, taking that statement into account, if Bscher didn't sell his F1 to Collier until 2003, then I see no way possible that Wyclef could have displayed the car in the USA as early as August 2002 (Funkmaster Flex car show) if his car was really chassis #022. It would have to be another chassis number.
Now of course there's always conflicting information to take into account...
gerd mentions chassis #022 is Wyclef's without question in
this post, and regardless of his stubbornness on some topics, the information he provides here has almost always been spot on.
Also, our old friend XOTech states the same information in
this post as well, and he was almost never wrong himself.
It seems we are now left with a bit of a mystery in regards to chassis #022. We can be certain that it was Bscher's originally - that doesn't seem to be open to debate. What is unclear at this point is whether it's now the green F1 in the photo above or if it was truly Wyclef's as others claim. Anyone who can conclusively prove things one way or the other will be my hero, but for now I will be working from the assumption that #022 is in the Collier museum and that Wyclef must have owned another car instead.
Chris and I have been hashing this out for a while over PMs and he seems convinced of exactly the opposite of what I believe (so typical of him
). He seems certain Wyclef's car was indeed #022 and that the green F1 in the Collier Museum must wear a different chassis number. That's certainly possible I guess, but doesn't make a lot of sense given time line and the two statements sourced from Bscher himself on who he sold chassis #022 to and when.
I guess it should also be noted here that to the best of both our knowledge that Wyclef is no longer the owner of whichever F1 it was that he had. Neither of us seem to know where that car went, or whom it's new owner might be, but he seems to have sold the car within the past year or so.
>8^)
ER