This 1957 Ferrari has officially been awarded the title of the world’s most expensive car, selling for €9 million
WHEN THE hammer finally came down at €8.2 million on this 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa, making it officially the world’s most expensive car, you might have been forgiven for thinking that the hard times were over.
There were at least three serious bidders able to pay that kind of money among the 1,000 people at the auction held on Sunday at Ferrari’s famous Fiorano test track, with another bidding by phone from the US.
Ferrari collector Ralph Lauren was rumoured to be interested, as was the consortium building the Ferrari World theme park in Abu Dhabi.
RM Auctions, the classic car specialist, which holds a sale of the best vintage Ferraris each year at the firm’s home, had saved the very best until last.
For the first time all day there was near silence in the vast, futuristic hall that usually houses the Ferrari F1 team’s transporters. English auctioneer Peter Bainbridge took the price up in increments of €1 million, with each new bid almost adding the price of a Bugatti Veyron, the world’s most expensive new car.
At €8 million the action slowed, and a final bid of “just” €25,000 more was enough to secure the car for the anonymous telephone bidder, and set a new world record. The crowd broke into applause, photographers mobbed the stage, and someone somewhere was wondering how to explain what he’d just bought to his wife.
The figure that will go in the record books is €9,020,000, including the 10 per cent buyer’s premium the lucky new owner has to pay, and he’ll also have to stump up for local import taxes, as the car was owned by a Japanese collector.
RM Auctions, run by Canadian Rob Myers, was confident of setting a new world record, despite the economic slump; it came into this year’s sale having already sold five of the 10 most valuable cars at auction, and set the previous world record at this sale last year when radio DJ and former media mogul Chris Evans paid €7 million for a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spyder once owned by actor James Coburn.
In very different times, that car made twice its estimate. Nobody expected such exuberance this time around; instead the high expectations for the Testa Rossa were based on that fact that an example of this extremely rare and achingly pretty racing car hasn’t been offered at auction for at least a decade.
“Sure, values of normal collector’s Ferraris are down maybe 20 per cent,” says Myers. “But when did you last see one of these for sale? Buyers know they might never get another opportunity to own one. Yes, some of our clients have been hit by the downturn. But for a car like this, they’ll find the funds.”
It was quickly apparent just how hard they have been hit; a California almost identical to the car Evans bought was bid up to €4 million but failed to reach the reserve set by the owner. A string of others went unsold, and there was a nervous moment as a 1967 Ferrari P4 race car, one of only three made and which some predicted would go for more than the Testa Rossa, got stuck at €7,250,000 and failed to sell.
But even at these prices, buyers are interested in cars they can actually drive, and the appeal of the extreme, 480bhp, track-only P4 is more limited than the street-legal Testa Rossa, with its sensational-sounding three-litre, 300bhp V12 and simple four-speed manual gearbox. Ferrari fans around the world will be hoping the car won’t disappear into a climate-controlled private museum, and that they’ll see it – and its lucky owner – at a historic road rally or race meeting. And the owner will be hoping that if the classic car market really has bottomed out, he might even make a profit on his €9 million car.
– Irish Times reporter