By Tara Feeney
There have been some pretty high sale records for public automotive auctions. But yet, a Ferrari 250 GTO series one just shattered them all. It was being auctioned by the auction house RM Sotheby’s, the world’s leading auction house for collector cars. Its final sale price was $51,705,000. The car holding the previous record also happened to be a 250 GTO, which set the record back in 2018 by selling for roughly $48 million.
The GTO possessed the only 4.0-liter version of the standard V-12 engines in those cars. It raced the 24 hours of Le Mans in 1962, driven by Lorenzo Bandini and Mike Parkes. Unfortunately, the race ended in an early retirement for Ferrari due to engine problems. The car has been in the hands of a collector in Ohio since 1985, only appearing for the occasional Concours event.
While it is not the highest-ever auction sale price, it is a record for this specific car model. It’s rumored that another GTO sold for upwards of $70 million in a private sale several years ago. It is important to note that this car sold for $8.3 million under its initial auction estimate of $60 million.
