Welcome to the Machine: Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason’s Ferraris
After making a fortune as Pink Floyd’s drummer, the financial freedom fueled this celebrated musician’s second love: fast cars.
Nick Mason is the only Pink Floyd member to have been involved with every album the group has made. As the band started morphing from its humble beginnings in London’s underground music scene to become one of the biggest bands in the world, the paychecks started growing. The release of Dark Side of the Moon in 1973 really set the ball rolling. To this day it’s one of the biggest-selling albums ever and put Mason in the position to follow his passion for car racing and, ultimately, build an incredible collection of cars.
Mason’s love of cars was inherited from his father, who was a club racer and also produced a documentary series on auto racing. As a result of the inherited passion for cool cars, the younger Mason was often seen in his Mini Cooper or one of his string of Lotus Elans in the 1960s. It wasn’t until the 1970s and his Dark Side of the Moon money that he landed his first Ferrari though, and it came in the form of a 275 GTB/4. Ultimately, he didn’t actually have a great experience with the the 275 GTB/4. It was a car he had so much trouble with that he’s on record saying, “It’s a wonder I kept buying Ferraris after that.”
His most famous Ferrari is the 250 GTO he paid $35,000 in 1977 and still owns to this day. When Mason bought it, he actually felt a bit silly spending so much on a car. In retrospect, it certainly wasn’t a silly purchase. Now, it’s worth a cool $36m, and an amazing investment by any standard. It’s also amazing to think that at one point Mason didn’t have a daily driver, but used his car collection as runabouts. One story he tells about that is how, one day, he actually had to take his kids to school in the 250 GTO because none of his other cars would start.
In the 1980’s both Mason and Pink Floyd’s vocalist/guitarist Dave Gilmour bought a Ferrari F40 each. They were in Modena during the “Momentary Lapse of Reason” tour and actually picked the cars up at the Fiorano test track where they took them for a spin before driving them back to England. That itself could have been a momentary lapse of reason as a new F40 was far from a Grand Touring car. No stereo, no trunk, no spare tire, and particularly obviously missing for a pair of musicians, it had no stereo.
Nick Mason still has his his F40, but Gilmour’s car has a new owner. It turned up recently at auction after an epic 15,000 man-hour restoration costing $415,000. It needed the restoration following a catastrophic engine bay fire in the late 2000s.
More recently, in 2004, Mason did car culture and the U.K. TV show Top Gear a solid by lending them his Enzo for review. At the time, Mason’s book about Pink Floyd was out and led to some classic Top Gear comedy. The BBC is a government-funded entity in the U.K. and not allowed to advertise, but Jeremy Clarkson manages to slip in some advertising with vintage Clarkson subtlety. Mason also shows up in the feature and drops a little comedy gold before flying off in his helicopter. It’s also worth noting that since then, Mason’s second book is called Passion for Speed.
