Jerry Seinfeld’s Allegedly Fake Porsche Lawsuits Finally Settled
Jerry Seinfeld’s two lawsuits surrounding the sale of his Porsche 356 Speedster have been settled.
Three years ago, Jerry Seinfeld, famed comedian and Porsche collector, was sued for allegedly selling a fake Porsche at auction. Seinfeld then sued the company he bought the Porsche from, alleging he was sold a fake bag of goods. Three years later, both lawsuits have been settled.
In 2016, Jerry Seinfeld sold a 1958 Porsche 356 A 1500 GS/GT Carrera Speedster for $1.54 million at auction to Fica Frio Limited, a business registered in the Channel Islands, off the coast of the UK. A few years later, in 2019, Fica sued Seinfeld, claiming the car was a fake, however, Fica never produced any public evidence to suggest such fakery. Despite the lack of clarification, Seinfeld claimed he was unaware of the car's suspect nature and apologized.
At the time, Seinfeld's lawyer said he was "willing to do what's right and fair, and we are confident the court will support the need for an outside evaluator to examine the provenance of the car."
To rectify the issued Seinfeld reached out to European Collectibles, Inc. in Costa Mesa, California, from whom he bought the car in 2013, for $1.2 million. When European Collectibles refused to help cooperate, Seinfeld sued.
Seinfeld felt that he was intentionally sold a fake. When he bought the car, European Collectibles provided Seinfeld with a "Porsche Certificate of Authenticity" which had the car's VIN, model year, and type. The certificate was also signed by the president and CEO of Porsche North America. However, getting that certificate requires only matching the serial numbers of the engine and chassis, which was done by European Collectibles after restoring the Speedster. His lawyers also pointed out that Seinfeld is an incredible successful comedian (worth hundreds of millions of dollars) and didn't need to go through the effort of creating a fake Porsche in some sort of money-making scheme.
Now, because both suits were settled out of court, there aren't any public documents that say whether European Collectibles sold Seinfeld the car in bad faith, nor that Seinfeld sold the car to Fica in bad faith. It's also unclear how much money was exchanged and to whom. It's not even clear if the car was, in fact, a fake. All we know now is that the suits are finally over.
Without being able to see the sealed documents, it's impossible to understand what really went down. However, from the outside looking in, it seems as though Seinfeld is likely not at fault. Not only does Seinfeld hire someone to buy and sell cars for him, meaning he's quite hands-off in his car dealings, he's one of the wealthiest entertainers in the world and isn't likely to go through the trouble of buying a fake Speedster and falsifying documents, only to sell it for a few hundred thousand dollar profit. Until some public info is revealed, though, we'll never know.
