Motoring Con Brio

The Dino for us, please.

“The Persuaders!” is a 1971 action/adventure series [starring] Tony Curtis as Danny Wilde, and Roger Moore as Brett Rupert George Robert Andrew Sinclair, 15th Earl of Marnock, referred to through most of the series by his courtesy title of Lord Brett Sinclair, two international playboys. Sinclair is an English aristocrat who attended Harrow and Oxford before serving as an officer in a Guards regiment and then becoming a Grand Prix driver and race horse owner. Wilde is an American who grew up in poverty in the Bronx before serving as an ordinary seaman in the US navy and then making (and losing) several fortunes on Wall Street, at least one of them in the oil industry. Both are jet-setting, London-based multi-millionaires at the time of the series…

The protagonists drive signature cars: Danny Wilde drives a Red left-hand-drive Ferrari Dino 246 GT, Brett Sinclair drives a UK-registered Bahama Yellow right-hand-drive Aston Martin DBS with V8 wheels and markings. As with Simon Templar (Roger Moore’s character from The Saint television series), Lord Brett Sinclair’s car has personalised number plates of his initials; Templar’s were “ST 1”, Sinclair’s are “BS 1” (Except for one scene in the episode “The Gold Napoleon” where the car had its original UK registration number PPP 6H instead). In fact, the true owner of the plates at the time, Billy Smart, Jr permitted their fictional use. The Aston Martin from the show was sold by the factory after filming ended, via HR Owen in London, to its first private owner. It was restored to a very high standard in recent years by the Aston Martin factory and is still in private ownership in the UK. Danny Wilde’s car bears Italian registration plates, 221400.MO (the ‘MO’ component represents the city of Modena, which happens to be the headquarters and manufacturing base of Ferrari). The exact whereabouts of the Dino today is unknown but it is reliably believed to be alive and well in Italy with a private owner (source).

~ by velofinds on June 8, 2012.

Posted in Film, Moving images
Tags: 246 gt, 246gt, aston martin, dbs, dino, dino gt, ferrari, persuaders, the persuaders