Provenance is coveted in collector car circles. In recent years, there have been numerous examples of cars that have sold well above their pre-sale estimates because of the stories they carry. The most recent example? A 1992 Mazda RX-7 FD from The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, which grabbed headlines at the Bonhams Goodwood Festival of Speed 2025 sale by reaching £911k – more than three times its already bullish estimate.
However, few cars have a more spectacular story to tell than Jack May’s 1973 Ferrari Dino 246 GTS, which is coming up for auction at Mecum’s Monterey Car Week sale on August 14-16, 2025. This diminutive Italian machine carried him and co-driver Rick Cline to victory in the 1975 Cannonball Baker Sea-to-Shining-Sea Memorial Trophy Dash – the infamous coast-to-coast race from New York City to Los Angeles that became the stuff of motoring legend, and later inspired a series of Hollywood films.
“When I heard about the film, I called [screenwriter] Brock Yates and said: ‘You’re paying Burt Reynolds a million dollars to play me? I’ll do it for free,’” Jack May says with a wry smile over Zoom. Now 89, the former SCCA champion and Cannonball Run record holder is dressed in a jacket and tie, and speaks in a warm Kentucky drawl. Age hasn’t dimmed his passion for fast cars. “About four years later, Reynolds called and offered me $250,000 for the Dino,” he reveals. “That was a lot in 1978. I didn’t sell.”
May and Cline’s record-breaking Cannonball exploits were certainly worthy of Hollywood’s attention. After leaving the Red Ball Garage in Manhattan, the duo arrived at the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach just 35 hours and 53 minutes later, beating the record set by Dan Gurney and Brock Yates by one minute, and averaging an impressive 83mph across the near-3000-mile journey. Their buccaneering run was fast and eventful in equal measure.
“I first saw a Dino when I was at Maranello in 1971, and I coveted it – but it wasn’t until ’73 that I actually ended up buying one. I’ve owned mine from new.”
The Dino wasn’t the only Prancing Horse in Jack’s stable. He also owned a Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona at the time – a car that, on paper at least, seems far better suited for a madcap blast across the continent.
“The Daytona is loud and flashy. The Dino is much easier to mistake for something else. It flew under the radar,” Jack explains. Although subtler than a bright red Daytona, however, the Dino was hardly a Q-car – and Jack and Rick’s efforts to avoid the attention of the law didn’t entirely go to plan.
After settling on using the Dino, they made a handful of subtle modifications to turn it into a Cannonball contender. Radar detectors and CB radio countermeasures were installed, alongside a discreet antenna. Small flaps were added to the windscreen wipers to keep them down at speed, and the rev-counter was rotated so Jack could more easily see when the 2.4-litre V6 was approaching its zingy 7600rpm red line. A fuel cell was fitted to increase the range to around 500 miles. These modifications remain on the car to this day.
The last step was to map out the 2800-mile route – an essential task in the days before satellite navigation. “Mapping the route took us an hour or two with some AAA maps and a yellow marker. We did that in the hotel room before we left,” Jack nonchalantly recalls.
He and Rick set off in their Dino just after 10:00pm on April 23, 1975. Heading into the darkness, their plan was simple: drive flat-out, stop as little as possible, and use the trusty radar detector and CB radio to avoid being snared by the police.
“My CB handle was Suwanee River Boy,” Jack chuckles. “Sometimes truckers helped us. Other times, they boxed us in when the cops were coming and they wanted to score points with the law.”
The Dino’s early progress was swift, but not without challenges. In Ohio, blue flashing lights ominously lit up the car’s mirrors. This would be the first of the duo’s unwanted encounters with the cops.
“We were averaging over 90mph in the rain,” Jack recalls. “They took me to jail, and that was definitely a low point. Luckily the lead officer was a car guy. He could have written me up for a number of violations, but he gave me a $250 fine and told me how to get back on the road. I sent him the Time magazine article about the race later on. I bet he pinned that on the station wall.”
By the time the duo reached Kansas, the Dino’s elegant Italian curves were caked in grime after six relentless hours of rain. Thanks to a larger auxiliary fuel cell, stops were few and far between. When they did pull in, every second counted. “We had this system where one of us would run to the toilet while the other guy filled one of the tanks,” Jack explains. “Then we’d switch.”
After more than 1000 miles of driving, he and Rick pulled into a diner where some police officers happened to be finishing their breakfast. After leaving, so too did a pair of police cruisers, tailing them for 50 frustrating miles at 55mph. “That fouled the spark plugs, because before that we’d been driving it so hard. Rick, who was a brilliant mechanic, said we needed new plugs, so we had to stop at a Western Auto. He just looked at the engine and said: ‘That one’s bad.’ Swapped it out in ten minutes.”
Miraculously, Jack later found the spark-plug receipt glued under the boot floor. “We only discovered it recently. I must’ve stuck it there when we got back and forgot all about it,” he says. The receipt remains taped in place, and can be seen in Mecum’s consignment photographs (below).
Back on the pace, Jack and Rick blazed through the vast expanse of the Midwest – unhindered by traffic or police, a flat, two-lane road stretching before them. “That’s where we made our best time. Just open roads and clear skies.”
However, their good fortune wasn’t to last. Having covered around 2000 miles, the Dino’s nose collided with several suicidal jack rabbits as Jack and Rick ventured through the night in New Mexico. This damaged the front light – but worse was yet to come.
Several hours later, still pushing westward, the duo were caught in a ferocious sandstorm in California. “Driving became incredibly difficult,” Jack recalls. “We were squinting just to see the road, and the car was surging around under the buffeting. We had to slow down to about 60mph, which was all that the visibility would allow. You could hear the sand hissing against the windscreen and the paint, and it got everywhere. It even came through the vents and formed little dunes on the black felt of the dash.”
Still entirely original and unrestored to this day, the Dino bears subtle battle scars from the sandstorm. “It’s never been resprayed, and the windscreen is original. There are so many little marks on it that it’s hard to see out if the sunshine hits it at the wrong angle,” Jack laughs. “But I just thought: ‘I’ll leave it the way it is.'”
Seemingly unable to catch a break, he and Rick suffered more misfortune as they neared the finish line in Los Angeles. “We were given wrong directions by another competitor,” Jack says, still clearly aggrieved. “I’m sure it was deliberate. We never spoke again after that. He’s done everything he can to bury my record – but I had the last laugh.”
Despite everything, the duo reached the Portofino Inn in Redondo Beach with just seconds to spare. “I was out of the car before it stopped, and I sprinted to the official to stamp our time card. That’s when I knew that we had the world record,” Jack says gleefully. “It’s the most famous thing I’ve done – more well known than my SCCA championships – and I still get free drinks because of it. I once had lunch with Stirling Moss during the Mille Miglia, and we both joked about having unbreakable records,” he beams.
Jack’s famous Ferrari is being offered by Mecum during Monterey Car Week 2025, with 50,819 miles on the clock. At the time of writing, no estimate has been given.
“I’d like it to go to someone who will keep showing it – I would hate for it to disappear into a private collection overseas. It’s completely unrestored, just properly maintained,” he says. “It deserves to be seen.”
Perhaps it will even set another world record…
To view Jack May’s 1973 Ferrari Dino 246 GTS at Mecum’s Monterey Car Week sale on August 14-16, 2025, please click here.
