Down & Dirty with a Dino
Written by Jack Passey | 27th September 2024 | Car Tales
As children we often dreamed of going on adventures and finding the buried treasures. Aztec gold, cursed pirate treasures, ineffable wealth.
But if like me as a boy you were into cars, what's the best treasure to ever be found? A 1974 Ferrari Dino.
For the boys playing in the back garden of a West Athens, Los Angeles home in 1978. Digging in their garden, they did indeed find this treasure. A boy's dream, am I right? But unlike myself the boys flagged down a sheriff’s cruiser to assist them.
Concealed by the loamy earth, Detective Dennis Carroll was one of the first officers on the scene. He recalled how it took two detectives playing at the soil to reveal the medium-metallic-green Dino 246 GTS, later to be confirmed as serial number 07862.
A slight rewind is required. The car was purchased by the original owner Rosendo Cruz of Alhambra, California in 1974, from Hollywood sports car. He bought the car as a birthday present for his wife (not jealous at all). Now what I would like to tell you is that on December 7th, just a week after purchasing the car. The couple were out dining for their anniversary at the Brown Derby restaurant when the car was stolen. I would like to tell you that, however, we will have to come back to that later.
The car was then driven to the address of its resting place, to find its already dug grave. The foundations of a swimming pool, ramped to allow the car to be driven down roughly the 5ft mark.
Despite whoever had planned this sadistic act, they did indeed take precautions to preserve the car (See even these criminals are not complete sadists).
Towels pushed into the air vents in an attempt to collect moisture, rugs upon the targa roof and finally wrapped in plastic sheeting. The intention was clearly to come and retrieve the car, but for now it would lay here for the next four years. Just a quick side note, they went through all this trouble to preserve the car, yet left a window up, sealing all moisture... in a hurry much?
“Sensing he had made a terrific financial mistake, Rosendo Cruz had hired a group to steal the car and dump it into the vast Pacific Ocean”
And here we are back in 1978 with a Dino being towed up the muddy slope. The condition of the car you could argue was really quite good, I mean an Italian sports car stored in an underground terrarium would 9 times out of 10 dissolve. However the Dino had certainly seen better days. All 21 layers of paint had corroded and become infested with white pox, rust had taken hold of much of the body. The Campagnolo wheels were toast, cam covers eroded away and the exhaust had completely clogged front to back. Good daily in my mind.
As I said earlier I would like to tell you that's what happened but as it transpired, years later, that was certainly not the case. Sensing he had made a terrific financial mistake, Rosendo Cruz had hired a group to steal the car and dump it into the vast Pacific Ocean – where discovery and indeed the recovery of the Ferrari would have been impossible. However, the group never managed to get that far with the plan. Cruz had a plan. Insurance fraud. As a result created an elaborate story for his beloved Ferrari – blaming the restaurant parking valet’s greed and opportunistic criminal mind when he saw the chance to make a quick buck. The hired crew were instructed with breaking the car into parts and discarding everything into the Pacific, however this sounded like an awful lot of effort. So thanks to bone idle laziness (you get what you pay for), the fraud didn’t quite go to plan and the car was buried instead of submerged. However Cruz was still paid out by Insurance Group and the car was returned to their ownership.
So what have we learnt from this tale of automotive abuse? Insurance fraud is not worth keeping the wife happy.
