LaFerrari Aperta Sale Raises Over £7.5 Million For Charity - And Sets New Record

The weekend’s LaFerrari Aperta charity auction has set a new record for a 21st century car price. We did tell you to expect big numbers…

Matt Kimberley

11 Sep 2017

LaFerrari Aperta Sale Raises Over £7.5 Million For Charity - And Sets New Record

Ferrari’s LaFerrari Aperta charity auction went off with a sizeable bang thanks to a final sale price of over £7.5 million, which includes the auction house’s premium.

Around £7.18 million of that will go to Save the Children, which plans to use the money to fund childhood education schemes in Asia and Africa.

As many of you noticed when we posted the news last week that Ferrari was to auction a ‘unique’ LaFerrari Aperta for charity, technically the only things separating the ultra-exclusive open-top hypercar from the others Ferrari built were the exact final trim spec and the white metallic body stripes.

That doesn’t seem to have put bidders off, though, with the sale price reflecting a new record for a car built after the Millennium. Incidentally, it beat another LaFerrari, which was also sold for charity.

The car that was auctioned was an extra car on top of the 209 that were scheduled as part of the ordinary production run, perhaps giving this one some extra provenance in the eyes of the ultra-rich.

Several other Ferraris, all classics, sold at the RM Sotheby’s auction at Maranello, including a California 250 GT SWB for almost £7.2 million, a 250 GT Cabriolet Series I for almost £4.3 million and a 365 GTB/4 barn find that fetched over £1.6 million.

Comments

Dear santa…

This is great, that much money should do something!

ferraris are really a good investment as long as you pick the right model (ehm…. mondial ehm.)

And that’s honestly a shame. Cars should NOT be “good investments”. They are made to be driven. If they would be made to decay there, they wouldn’t have an engine.

If you want to make money on investments, you should go in the real-estate market, not in the car world. The time where Ferrari made me envious with reveals of supercars/ultracars/limited edition of the above are gone.

When I see a new supercar/ultracar from Ferrari, I don’t feel envy, but some kind of bitterness, as I know they took care of selling every copy before releasing the car. It doesn’t feel to me like “Ferrari releases a new car, that’s cool” but rather “Ferrari releases a car but it’s useless as they are already all stored in some billionnaire’s garage, and they don’t even need to reveal the price because there’s no need to: they’re all sold”. And then you just watch prices going through the roof as time pass. It really removes from you the taste of any low-production supercar.

And even if you are a car guy and by some miracle manage to buy one (especially old ones), you’re not going to get any fun as you’ll be scared to crash it or scratch the paint each time you’ll get in it.