Ferrari sold for $51.7 million becomes second most expensive car at auction

2023-11-14 11:32:24

$51.7 million. This is the pharaonic price at which a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO was sold in New York on Monday. A price which makes it the second most expensive car ever sold at auction, welcomed Sotheby’s, on an art market in insolent health.

The behemoths of the auction sector, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, are wrapping up their fall season this week, which is expected to represent several billion dollars thanks to Picassos, Monets, Cézannes and Rothkos sold during ultra-chic New York evenings attended by collectors. wealthy people and anonymous buyers on the phone.

The highlight of the season was the Ferrari 250 GTO, which Sotheby’s called “the holy grail of the sports car pantheon.” Owned by an American collector for 38 years, the example of the legendary Italian sports car beat another Ferrari 250 GTO sold in 2018, at Sotheby’s, for $48 million.

If the price of the Italian is exorbitant, it remains far from the absolute record for a car at auction, a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé sold in 2022 for 135 million euros.

A four-liter, 390-horsepower engine

One of only two examples of this sports Mercedes, sold during confidential auctions in May 2022 at the German manufacturer’s museum in Stuttgart, therefore remains “the most expensive car ever sold” in the world, which it are auctions or private sales, a spokesperson for RM Sotheby’s, the luxury automobile subsidiary, told AFP.

It only took a few minutes, between a few hand-picked potential buyers gathered in a closed room, for the 250 GTO to sell for $51.7 million, well below the “more than $60 million” figure. expected.

Dating from 1962, this legendary Scuderia sports car, equipped with a four-liter engine developing 390 horsepower, finished in second place during a 1,000 km endurance race on the German Nürburgring circuit as well as the legendary 24 hours of Le Mans, where the team had to withdraw due to engine failure.

After a few years of competition in Italy, Sicily, the car was sold and exported to the United States at the end of the 1960s. Restored and modified, this 250 GTO changed American owners several times before ending up in the hands of a collector from Ohio in 1985, who had kept it until today.