A red 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO has been bought by an anonymous bidder for $48.4 million, the most ever paid for a classic car at auction.
The vehicle was offered by RM Sotheby’s in Monterey, a US city in California, and was estimated to fetch between $45 million and $60 million, the highest valuation ever for a vintage automobile at auction. It smashed the previous record of $38.1 million paid for a 1963 model of the same car in 2014.
The seller was Greg Whitten, chairman of Numerix Software and an early Microsoft employee, who purchased it in 2000.
It has an impressive racing pedigree, with a national championship and several major wins under its seatbelts during its competitive career in the 1960s and has been a fixture on the historic racing circuit. Incredibly, unlike most racing cars, it has never been wrecked and repaired.
Sotheby’s declined to say how much he bought it for, but said the market price for such Ferraris at the time was around $10 million.
Ferrari built just 36 examples of the model from 1953 to 1964, and these elegant race cars have generated the highest prices among all vintage cars in recent years.
The record price included the buyer’s premium based on the hammer price of $44 million, calculated at 12 per cent on the first $250,000 and 10 per cent on the remainder.
