2023-11-14 01:26:37
A 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO was sold Monday evening in New York for $51.7 million, the second most expensive collector’s car ever sold at auction, Sotheby’s announced.
Owned by an American collector for 38 years, the example of this legendary Italian sports car beat another 250 GTO sold in 2018, at Sotheby’s, for $48 million. But the Ferrari made much less than the absolute record for a car at auction: a Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé sold for 135 million euros in 2022.
One of only two examples of this sports Mercedes — sold at a confidential auction in May 2022 at the German manufacturer’s museum in Stuttgart — “was the most expensive car ever sold” in the world, which it These are auctions or private sales, a spokesperson for RM Sotheby’s, the luxury automobile subsidiary of the auction house, told AFP.
The 250 GTO left Monday evening following a few minutes of bidding in the room, but at a price lower than the “more than 60 million dollars” that RM Sotheby’s was expecting.
Dating from 1962, this legendary Scuderia sports car — chassis numbered 3765, four-liter engine developing 390 horsepower — finished at the time 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, according to RM Sotheby’s.
Occasion unique
After a few years of competition in Italy and 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 1985. a collector from Ohio, who sold it on Monday.
The New York auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, are wrapping up this week their fall season of sales of works of art that have not experienced the crisis and raking in hundreds of millions of dollars. The market is driven by China and Asia and shows no sign of slowing down, according to Sotheby’s despite a tense international context.
“Whatever happens on the financial markets, a car of this caliber is a collector’s item, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for a collector,” Michael Caimano of RM Sotheby’s told AFP before the sale. comparing the Ferrari to a work of art that you “can touch, smell and hear”.
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