Here’s How Much Someone Spent On A Ferrari Prototype They Can’t Even Legally Drive, And Why It’s Not As Dumb As It Sounds

Yesterday I witnessed something that, to me, seemed ridiculous. Someone spent a lot of money on a Ferrari 458 Italia (which you can buy for $250,000) that had been turned into a poorly-built, non-street-legal prototype vehicle for the Ferrari LaFerrari. Janky wires abound, the battery is in the passenger’s footwell, the nose has been covered in a hideous black bumper, there are mysterious access panels built into the rear quarter panels — it’s ugly, poorly built, and cannot be driven legal on public roads. And yet, here’s how much someone spent on it, and why I think it’s both a terrible deal and also a good one.

One thing I’ve learned watching auctions with Beau at Pebble Beach is: What goes into a car’s value is a complicated concoction that blends some engineering with a bit more styling with a bit more scarcity and then with absolutely enormous amount of history/pedigree. Two vehicles that are almost exactly identical can command totally different prices depending upon who owned it, what it was used for, whether it was ever made famous by some advertisement or movie appearance or by race wins, and on and on.

This helped me understand what was happening yesterday when I watched people bid on this prototype Ferrari — a 458 Italia modified with a V12, and known internally at Ferrari as “F150 Muletto M4”:

It’s interesting, but it’s also an undrivable prototype that, per RM Sotheby’s — where the vehicle was auctioned — “cannot be road registered.” It’s just a 458 with some jankily-grafted-in guts from a LaFerrari; look at that nose — it’s hideous! And yet, someone bought it for an absurd amount; here’s the auction taking place live:

 

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Though the video shows that the car sold for $1.1, after fees that ended up being$ 1,215,000 USD!

Why? How? Who’s buying this undrivable car? “What a waste of money! It’s basically a statue!” I said after the auction was done. Then Beau learned me a thing or two.

“Actually, that’s not abad buy,” he said. “It’s an incredibly unique vehicle, and in the Ferrari world, that’s a big deal.” That got me to think about some of the other cars that sold for big dollars at the RM Sotheby’s auction. Let’s pull a couple of those up:

This is a beautiful BMW M1 with only 3,887 miles on the clock. With a value of over $600,000, you can bet that the owner — lest they’re so rich they don’t care about preserving its value — likely won’t put very many miles on this thing. That certainly has been the case with this 1973 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona:

It has a few more miles, at 5,710, but look at its mileage history!:

By 1976 the car was in the ownership of Frederick Fitzgerald, who advertised it in both the New York Times and AutoWeek as having 3,100 miles and “never driven in rain.” It was sold in 1977 to the partnership of Dick Barbour and O. Edgar Rouhe of California, eventually passing to Mr. Rouhe alone; he retained ownership of the car for nine years. It then passed to Bruno Broseghini and then to longtime Ferrari connoisseur and enthusiast, Charles T. Wegner, returning to Illinois with 3,980 miles.

Mr. Wegner sold the car in 1995 to Arthur E. Coia II of Providence, Rhode Island, who the following year had it refinished to the original color by Shelton Ferrari in Fort Lauderdale, Florida—still the most major work that the Ferrari has received in its low-mileage life. Mr. Coia occasionally exhibited the car, including winning its Platinum Award at the Cavallino Classic in Palm Beach in 1999.

In 2004, chassis number 16943 passed to Marc Fisher of Greenwich, Connecticut, who repeated its Platinum at the Cavallino Classic five years later. After keeping the car for nine years, he sold it to another East Coast enthusiast, beginning a series of short-term ownerships, eventually culminating with its arrival in the present significant collection in the summer of 2014. It has remained in good company there for the last decade. It is in beautiful condition for its age, with satisfying originality of components (including the numbers-matching engine and gearbox) throughout, as noted in the accompanying Ferrari Classiche Red Book issued in 2024.

Displaying only 5,710 miles at the time of cataloguing, believed to be its original mileage since new, this Daytona remains original and unrestored aside from the aforementioned refinish to its correct color. In addition to its Ferrari Classiche Red Book, it is accompanied by its original warranty card.

As you can see, 3,100 of those 5,710 miles — that’s 54 percent — were put on in the first three years of the car’s ownership. Since 1976, the car has only driven 2,610 miles!

That’s the case with many rare cars that pop up at these Pebble Beach auctions. Initially, the owners drive them, as the cars are less scarce, replacement parts are plentiful, and hey, it’s a new car — why the heck not drive the wheels off it. But once the cars get old and rare, many of them become, essentially, statues, sitting in garages for years, only driven a couple of miles annually, if at all.

Speaking of statues, a literal statue sold at the auction for $66,000:

So in that context, I guess this prototype LaFerrari selling for $1.2 million isn’t so bad. Like, many of the other vehicles sold — vehicles that are street legal — it’ll sit around, maybe be driven up and down a driveway, maybe trailed to a car show, but otherwise it’s basically a piece of art.

All Images: The Autopian unless otherwise stated