First Ferrari Luce EV sells for $40 million, 36x its estimate — SkimNews
Get the Energy newsletter
Daily energy & climate — solar, EVs, oil, the policy fights and tech bets shaping the transition. Free.
- Ferrari Luce (Chassis 0, chassis ZFF21BUA8T0338000) sold for $40 million at RM Sotheby's Monterey auction Saturday night, with proceeds going entirely to The Ferrari Foundation
- The $40M result was 36x the $1.1M pre-sale estimate and roughly 62x the car's €550,000 (~$640,000) list price
- RM Sotheby's ran the lot without reserve and waived the buyer's premium, making the $40M both the hammer price and the donation in a single figure
- The result beat Ferrari's own $26M one-off Daytona SP3 record—set at the same Monterey sale last August, also for the Ferrari Foundation—by 54%, retaining the title of most expensive new car ever sold at auction
- The Luce hasn't been delivered: the winning bidder waits for final assembly at Maranello, with delivery scheduled for Q1 2027
- Despite a hostile Rome launch in May that saw RACE stock drop, former chairman Luca di Montezemolo publicly criticize the badge, and Ferrari replace its marketing chief a month later, the entire ~500-car 2026 allocation sold out in under two months before a single delivery
Why it matters: For Ferrari, the $40M result answers the hostile May Rome reception: collectors paid a record sum for the first chassis of an undelivered EV program, and the brand beat its own auction record by 54%. The charity framing helped drive bidding, but the market still treated the first Luce as a generational artifact.
Ask SkimNews
