In life, car enthusiast Kerry Manolas bought John Laws’s Bentley and sold a 1957 Maserati to the lead singer of Dire Straits. In death, his unit just sold $1.7m over price expectations.
TRG founder Gavin Rubinstein had a $5.5m guide for the two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment with double parking in Bennelong — nicknamed “The Toaster”.
But this afternoon, after a week on the market and a month before the scheduled auction, he and his co-agent, Etienne West of Morton, had it sold for a whopping $7.2m.
“We had a couple of people interested,” Rubinstein said.
“It was the right buyer at the right time and a unique apartment.”
The sale topped off a great week for Rubinstein, who sold another two properties above $8m over 24 hours.
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Manolas had bought the third-floor pad with glorious harbour and iconic views for $3.4m in 2005, a year after he’d sold his Point Piper trophy home Mandalay for $20m. [in 2015 it sold for $40m]. He and wife Patricia had bought it for $440k in 1978.
“He moved from Mandalay to there and loved it,” Rubinstein said.
Manolas died at the age of 84 last October and he’d been 81 and wheelchair-bound when he spent $600,000 on two new Ferraris.
On his shopping list was a new Ferrari 812 Superfast, one of a handful in the country, to accompany his long-held 1965 275 GTB/4 coupe, one of two in the country.
Although he was unable to drive, he told Unique Cars magazine at the time: “I just loved this car’s styling.”
And despite being ill and at times needing oxygen, Manolas would ask his nurse to take him downstairs to the garage of his apartment to sit and look at his beloved cars.
He’d owned and restored a range of exotic cars over 40 years, including a rare 1937 Mercedes 540K Speciale Roadster, one of only 25 built in 1937, a Bentley previously owned by John Laws; a 1956 Aston Martin and a 1931 Alfa Romeo that won at Le Mans in 1931.
Another notable purchase was a 1957 Maserati in 1984, which he sold to Dire Straits lead singer Mark Knopfler.
Manolas had owned nine pharmacies in the Northern Territory before moving to Sydney in 1976 and becoming a property developer. His savvy purchase of Mandalay came two years later.
The non-waterfront mansion with an 80m frontage was built in 1954 for General Motors dealer Bill Stack. It was Manolas who commissioned its 1994 redesign by the prominent architect Michael Suttor with Michael Love doing the interiors.
Originally published as Late Ferrari fan Kerry Manolas’s prized Bennelong apartment sells $1.7m over price guide
