By Stephen Mitchell
Photos by Jeanetta Dumouchel
Matthew Ettinger’s long time game of cat-and-mouse with Shell Oil memorabilia
I’ve known Matthew Ettinger since I was in my late teens. When I first met him, he was a nightclub owner and, like me, a Ferrari owner. As our friendship developed and we really got to know each other, we had both moved on to Ferraris that were even more exotic, choosing racing cars as our daily transportation. I had moved on to a GTO while Matthew had acquired the famous Ferrari Breadvan. Matthew was also a serious collector. He loved going through antique shops and knew many of the dealers in Los Angeles personally. His home was filled with original art and rare objects of one sort or another and it would take several visits to get a sense of all that he had.
Matthew Ettinger today.
By Shell obsessed
One of the more obvious pieces one saw upon entering Matthew’s house was an Art Deco Shell Oil gas pump. It was imposing, topped by its white globe with red letters (referred to as the lollipop) proclaiming Shell. This was not Matthew’s first gas pump. He previously had a 1947 Union 76 pump that he had put on display in his Sunshine Meat & Liquor Company, a restaurant/nightclub that he owned. However, Matthew fell in love with the Shell pump when he visited the home of the infamous Gas Pump Ronnie who, according to Matthew, could spray on paint that looked like porcelain. He wanted that Shell pump and traded his Union 76 pump to get it.
More fun than eBay
The Shell pump was significant because it set Matthew on a quest for Shell products, signs, promotional toys and memorabilia. No other brand interested him from that point forth. In those days, there was no Internet to facilitate networking or scavenging. One had to look in the back of magazines and attend flea markets–or jumbles as they are called in the UK.
Ferrari and Shell memorabilia together are a natural.