Recently, car collector Greg Whitten's 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO went under the hammer for $44 million
Image: Patrick Ernzen/Courtesy of RM Sotheby's
1962
The final iteration of Ferrari’s 250 model, the 250 GTO was built to race but was also a road car—GTO stands for Gran Turismo Omologato, or Grand Touring Homologated. The body was essentially a 250 Testa Rossa and had a 3-litre V12 engine capable of 300 hp. The price for such a beauty was $18,000 (about $150,000 today), and each owner was personally approved by Enzo Ferrari himself
1969
Long before it was considered a classic, a 1962 250 GTO sold privately for a steal: $5,400
1986
A year after Ralph Lauren bought chassis 3987 for $650,000, and with Ferrari fever raging, collector Frank Gallogly bought a 1962 250 GTO—which had rusted in a field for 15 years before being restored—for a then-record $1 million. Two years later, he sold it for $4.2 million
MAY 2012
In a private sale reported to be worth $35 million, cellphone pioneer Craig McCaw bought a 1962 250 GTO originally owned by racing legend Stirling Moss
AUGUST 2014
At Bonhams’ annual Quail Lodge auction, a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO set an auction record, selling for $38.1 million to Carlos Monteverde, son of billionaire Brazilian philanthropist Lily Safra
JUNE 2018
A 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO sold privately to WeatherTech founder and CEO David MacNeil for a reported $70 million (the equivalent of about a million car mats)
AUGUST 2018
After an impressive racing career, chassis 3413—a 1962 250 GTO—was sold to jewellery heir Gianni Bulgari in 1963. Six years (and a few owners) later, billionaire Sir Anthony Bamford purchased it, and after changing hands a couple more times, the Ferrari was sold in 2000 to Greg Whitten, former chief software architect of Microsoft, for $7 million. Now he’s putting the car up for sale at RM Sotheby’s, where it is expected to shatter the auction record. “I’ve had the GTO a long time,” Whitten says of his decision to sell. “There are other cars I want to buy.”
(This story appears in the 14 September, 2018 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)