In one of the most shocking outcomes ever at a public auction, the first Ferrari Luce ‘Tailor Made’ with chassis #0 absolutely obliterated its $1.1 million estimate by capturing $40,000,000 at the RM Auction in Monterey, California just minutes ago. And this is all for a car that starts at $600,000 and was panned in the press. Everyone outside and inside the room is talking about and no one can quite believe it.
I’ve spent a large chunk of this week sitting in the room at the large conference hall, watching the auctions slowly proceed. While there’s been the usual and predictable rounds of spirited bidding all week, the action eventually settles into an almost metronomic rhythm. That’s not what happened when the Luce–Ferrari’s first fully electric car–came on stage.
Starting with a $1 million opening bid, the auctioneer could scarcely catch his breath before the price shot up to $5 million. And then $10 million. And then $25 million. All the way up to the $40 million, making it one of the highest selling Ferraris of all time.
What-in-the-ever-loving-cavallino-rampante is going on here?
A Special Ferrari For A Good Cause
Just as a reminder, last year a Ferrari 250 LM sold for about $40.3 million. That was a rare version of a historic car with an impeccable history. This is Ferrari’s attempt to make something a little more appliance-like. A four-door hatchback of sorts.
Not that it’s your normal electric car. The Luce features four electric motors producing a combined 1,035 horsepower. The front two motors combined are good for a relatively pedestrian 282 horsepower, whereas the two rear motors produce 835 ponies. That means 0-60 mph comes in a nauseatingly quick 2.5 seconds or better. Other stats are a little more pedestrian, as it gets 330 miles of range on the European WLTP test cycle.
This specific Luce isn’t all about numbers, as RM points out in its listing:
The exterior is defined by an exclusive Madreperla Semi-Gloss finish, developed specifically for this car. Its formulation incorporates a dedicated Ferrari Tailor Made pigment, capable of producing iridescent reflections that evolve from green to violet depending on the intensity and angle of the light. The semi-gloss finish preserves the depth and richness of the pearlescent effect while creating a sophisticated balance between gloss and matte surfaces, enhancing the sculptural quality of the car’s forms. The complexity of the application process ensures that each example is unique and inimitable in its chromatic nuances.
The interior introduces a new interpretation of luminosity through the use of Le Mans metallic leather in Perla, an exclusive material developed for the Ferrari Tailor Made program and derived from carefully selected Swiss hides. Its distinctive softness and reflective properties contribute to the diffusion of light within the cabin, enhancing the sense of space and refinement.
For the first time, the secondary interior elements are finished in Grigio Corvara instead of traditional black, creating a visual continuity that reinforces the luminous character of the entire project. The theme of white extends to numerous details developed specifically for this configuration, including dedicated wheels, bespoke brake calipers, and the Ferrari logo set against an optical white background—an exclusive solution created for this car.
Right, so it’s black and white.
This isn’t just any auction, though, as 100% of the money is going to charity. Specifically, it’s going to The Ferrari Foundation. What, exactly, is The Ferrari Foundation. It is, per ProPublica, a real 501 (c)(3). what it does, though, has been a little vague. Our friend Abigail Bassett tracked down some more info for this article in Observer:
A Ferrari spokesperson said that the Ferrari Foundation “is a collaboration with Save the Children, whereby Ferrari made a significant contribution to help rebuild the Aveson Charter School in Altadena, California, whose campus was tragically destroyed by the Eaton Wildfire earlier in 2025.”
Because it’s a charity donation, in theory, the buyer will be able to write off a significant chunk of the proceeds.
Is This Real?
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There’s been chatter all week about how this auction might go. Would someone hoping to ingratiate themselves to Ferrari bite the bullet and bid high? Would Ferrari tap a bidder to make sure that there was a good impression made?
I’m not sure anyone other than the bidder themselves was ready for the biggest auction so far this weekend to come on Saturday night and be for the one Ferrari no one was quite sure of. Again, a yellow and rare Ferrari Daytona SP3 sold for less than half this amount yesterday at RM.
Shortly after the auction I spoke with a friend who arrived shortly after and I asked “Could you believe the Ferrari Luce sold for $40?” and he replied “$40,000?” When I told him he was off by three zeroes his eyes nearly popped out of his head.
It’s always difficult to know what’s really going on in a situation like this, though much of the bidding was in the room (as opposed to the phones or online), which makes it seem a little less like some of the drama was artificially encouraged. I’m sure Ferrari had a contingency so as not to embarass themselves, but they didn’t seem to need it.
There was also a moment where the bidding seems to have stalled out at around $30 million. It then jumped to $32 million and, skipping a few steps, went to $35 million. Then $36 million. The unidentified buyer didn’t seem to want to wait to get outbid and went to $40 million, which scared everyone else off.
Cheers went up in the room when the auctioneer finally dropped the gavel.
“How do we top that ladies and gentleman?” he asked after taking a moment to collection himself.
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Whatever the motivation for the buyer, it’s unlikely he’s going to need to wait for his next allocation.
Bryant Kreaden, The Car Shrink and former manager of Ferrari of Beverly Hills, says it might be a lot more straightforward than it seems.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily that he loves a Luce, I think he’s a Ferrari enthusiast, he probably owns Formula One cars [and] is that level of a collector and probably needs a write-off,” said Kreaden.
Top photo: RM
It was a charity auction, the price doesn’t need to make sense.
I figured if you guys wrote about a crazy auction result, it’d be the Shelby Daytona.
If you were this much of a Ferrari bootlicker, then you could have spent $50m and gotten:
F50
288GTO
Enzo
LaFerrari
F40
Or scrap the LaFerrari and add in several 250GT variants.
Fuck me the amount of interesting cars this money could have bought. Just give me the money and I could retire and help so many of my friends and family.
The buyer probably already has those. Likely some duplicates.
But it’s $40m for an iFerrari.
FORTY
MILLION
DOLLARS
For some, $40M is just a number, not a fortune.
Yeah, but licking the boots only counts if you’re buying NEW boots.
Gods dammit, I’ve been doing it wrong this whole time. I thought it was licking old boots whilst pulling on the bootstraps.
Ferrari made a significant contribution to help rebuild the Aveson Charter School in Altadena, California, whose campus was tragically destroyed by the Eaton Wildfire earlier in 2025.”
Rebuild? They were leasing the buildings that burned from Pasadena Unified and already have moved into new ones:
“The Search for a New School and a New Sense of Normal
Perhaps the most puzzling part of the rebuilding process was the struggle to find a new school building that would allow our students to move forward and continue their learning. The Pasadena Unified School District, which leases space to charters like Aveson, offered little help. We were granted the right to turn our instruction online as we rebuilt, but that permission cut like a double-edged sword, as our computers were also lost in the fire. The pandemic taught us that forcing students to learn online would not support healthy grieving after this disaster.
In late January, our AGLA school community was offered a handful of classrooms on the beautiful Wilson campus in Pasadena. We immediately filled these spaces with our 6th-12th grade students and life began to slowly return to normal for those students. Challenges still abound, but for now, we are grateful to be in session.
A home for our ASL students was much harder to come by. So many times we thought we had secured a school, only to have our hopes crushed as we were told “no”. It became clear we weren’t a priority of PUSD. From insurance fights to bureaucratic red tape, the fight has left us weary, but not beaten.
In mid-February, our ASL students finally returned to full days of school thanks to a deal that split up our TK-5 students between the Cleveland and Washington Campuses in Pasadena. The schools are 20 minutes apart from each other, making morning drop-offs more rushed, but our families have expressed so much joy in the sense of normalcy that returning to school has brought. Our volunteers made move-in day and a piece of cake and we eagerly unpacked a generous donation of books and supplies from @ladreamcenter!”
https://www.aveson.org/blog/the-eaton-fire-avesons-story
I wonder why the “significant” contribution from the Ferrari foundation isn’t mentioned? Or how such a contribution is handled when the lost property is covered by insurance.
I’d pay membership for actual investigative reporting into scams by rich people.
And this, at least on the surface, seems like a scam by rich people and the Ferrari “foundation”.
Not likely to happen under this administration.
How did the Ferrari Foundation come to be the title holder of the car?
Assuming Ferrari S.p.A. was the builder, did they sell it to the foundation? If they gave it to them as a charitable donation, then Ferrari S.p.A. already took a tax credit on this car.
Then some gibroni ‘buys’ it at auction and they get a tax break, too?
Next step, Signore Gibroni donates the car itself to another charity for another tax break!
There were a few cars I remember from Barrett-Jackson back when I was watching those auctions that were like that. They’d show up annually like clockwork.
The Proposition 40 Wealth Tax ads write themselves.
https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_40,_One-Time_Wealth_Tax_for_State-Funded_Healthcare,_Education,_and_Food_Assistance_Programs_Initiative_(2026)
What’s sad/gross is this is the most significant attempt to reduce income inequality and it’s a 1-time 5% levy. And a gagillion dollars will be spent making sure it doesn’t pass. And, even if it does, they’ll just figure out a loophole.
Why the fuck aren’t we taxing these people
It’s “trickle down”.
See they spend $40m on a car in some kind of tax write-off scam, circling the money around through banks between other rich people.
That money “creates jobs”.
Yeah, I don’t get it either.
I keep telling myself I should only post nice comments about things I really enjoy and care about. And then this line hits my retina:
“The interior introduces a new interpretation of luminosity”
Deep breath in… deep breath out.
I for one think luminosity has been long overdue for disruption. Salute!
The Illuminati love the luminosity.
The problem isn’t the “thing”, it’s the toilet bowls full of regurgitated word salad spewed out by PR departments. WTF does “…the Ferrari logo set against an optical white background…” mean? As opposed to an acoustic white background?
Can anyone please break down the mentioned tax write-off to me in numbers? Like,if someone buys this thing for 40 million,is the write-off on like at least 50% or something? It would have to be surely,to justify that horrendous price?
Been about 25 years since I took my personal income tax class, but from what I recall the charitable deduction is any amount above the full market value of the item. So in this case $39.4 million. That said there may be other general limitations on charitable deductions… But that’s way above my pay grade.
I know this has been covered her from others as well,but that means that basically he is reimbursed the whole amount over 600.000 as he will then get 40 million less in taxes that year? Damn,I wish I was rich.
No, $39.4 million is deducted from the buyer’s income for that year (“written off”). The actual tax savings is their marginal rate, times that amount. So if he made $100 million and paid the top marginal rate of ~40% ($40 million tax bill), this would reduce his income to $60.6 million and the tax bill to 40% of that (~$24 million).
TLDR – The savings is $16 million, not $40 million.
What people have to realize it’s not dollars to dollars. Say the write off is $1 million dollars. You don’t decrease your tax bill by $1 million. You reduce your taxable income by $1 million. So say you made $10 million you reduced that to $9 million and pay taxes on that. So you lose $1 million but only save the amount of money you would pay in taxes on that $1 million. So charity gets $1 million and you don’t pay taxes on the $1 million you gave to charity.
What? I can’t even…I am w/o speech besides: Well, we finally found the STUPIDEST idiot in the world!!!
$40 MILLION?! For an ugly EV appliance. A Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic would have been only…a trillion times better!
A big tax write-off plus a possibly appreciating asset.
For the person who can use that much write-off, the car is a bonus. I’m also sure this puts the ‘donor’ in a favorable position if Ferrari ever again produces something desirable.
Yup, the usual rich reasons; for the stupidest idiot in the world.
Kramer : It’s just a write off for them.
Jerry : How is it a write off?
Kramer : They just write it off.
Jerry : Write it off what?
Kramer : Jerry, all these big companies they write off everything…
Jerry : You don’t even know what a write off is!
Kramer : Do you?
Jerry : No. I don’t .
Kramer : But they do, and they are the ones writing it off!
Jerry : I wish I just had the last twenty seconds of my life back…
Ok, I take it back about them being the stupidest idiot (if it was just someone buying the car just to buy then yes, I’d still think they’re a fool) but since it’s for charity for the fire, that is amazingly awesome!
(One of the extremely rare instances where I didn’t read the article til later and just saw the headline and jumped to comment, ha ha)
Ok, I take it back about them being the stupidest idiot (if it was just someone buying the car just to buy then yes, I’d still think they’re a fool) but since it’s for charity for the fire, that is amazingly awesome!
(One of the extremely rare instances where I didn’t read the article til later and just saw the headline and jumped to comment, ha ha)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
Neat, I learned something today
Would be awesome to put this into a Domino’s Pizza delivery fleet in Omaha.
Just think…
If this happened in 2021 instead of 2026, the purchase likely would’ve also included some NFTs, and a plot of land near Ferrari in the Meatver– *HEAD EXPLODES*
I’m laughing at the typo, because I know you’re referring to the Metaverse, but from now on I’m going to refer to the real, offline world as the “meatverse” since it’s inhabited by real, physical meatbags
I always refer to that company as Meat.
I will until I can get media personalities to say “Meat” in interviews with Meat employees, where I can see the immediate flinch and visceral reaction by the Meat employees as they try not to lose their cool during the interview.
Meat.
This car may depreciate faster than a cybertruck.
I’m not sure. Unlike the Cybertruck, the Luce isn’t actually a bad car, it’s just ugly AF.
And I don’t even think this #0 car will lose a lot of value (that word used in the widest sense), as it will be known as the $40m Ferrari. Famous for being famous, just like one of these “influencers”.
I was near a cybertruck for a while yesterday.
All I could think is how cool it would be if some guy built it in his garage. And then how uncool it was that it was a production vehicle from a major manufacturer.
Most of the cybertrucks around here are wrapped. This one wasn’t… and it looked like shyte. No two panels had matching color. Every single panel was discolored at the edges. I don’t know if this is because we’re in a road salt area, or because that’s just what cybertucks do.
SW Florida and they all look like that here too. Remember, Elon was trying to spin the “patina” as a good thing.
I’m pretty sure the Lunar Rover was still more expensive, especially if you include delivery fees.
I thought the same thing!
https://www.uniladtech.com/vehicles/car-news/nasa-lunar-rover-most-expensive-car-ever-920112-20260305
Made a donation gets tax relief, looks good in their little circles. Hit the same number as previous years so everyone involved can say it’s a success. Is good in Ferraris books for a very long time. I’m sure there will be some clueless people thinking it’s all an the car. The car was just the token what was bought was a financial and social product that comes with a relationship to get what they are really after.
Sounds exactly like the influence one can buy with certain political parties doesn’t it?
You mean all of them globally for at least the last century, probably longer? Yes…
I’m getting tired of the world where some dude can afford to spend 10x my expected lifetime earnings on some nebulous sense of getting into the good graces of certain people/companies.
I just want to spend less on food, man.
The idea is revolting but there are worst things especially coming out of Italy. They are experts at separating fools from money. Luxottica as an example is a very disturbing Italian company focused on extracting money from regular people mainly in the US. Likely and hopefully will be toppled by the Chinese in a decade or two.
This week on “Punk’d.”
What this person really bought is a front of line spot for his/her next 5 allocations.
Hell Broke Luce.
Here’s an entertaining mashup video of the iconic song,
which predated the Ferrari Luce by a decade or two.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbiioBFkD_Q
I was gonna bid $45 mil but I ran out of time.
What punishment did you dole out to your butler for making you late?
Fancy Kristen demanded Champagne of a different vintage, and was smashing a faberge egg per minute that her demands were not met.
All domestic staff was occupied and the bidding window was missed.
$40 mil for a damned ugly Prius.
Someone needed a favor.
This is Ferrari, so maybe the buyer is actually buying access to the thing they really want.
Maybe? It’s hard for me to fathom what $40 million gets you that $10 million doesn’t. But there were multiple bids, trying to be Ferrari’s favorite customer I guess.
Buying access to what they want with significant tax advantages.
I don’t know how, but this feels like money laundering.
I’m shocked. Shocked!
Why would you think getting a tax write off for buying a car so that the Ferrari Foundation can get a tax write off for helping an actual charity build a new facility using only the most qualified and economical construction companies; companies the U.S. Presidential Administration itself would be proud to grant no-bid contracts to?
I mean, it’s not like we need to cure cancer or end hunger or anything.
It’s like mirror trading… but with a shitty Italian EV + charity.
SHHHHH!
-BringATrailer.com
-CarsAndBids.com
-911 owners
-Ferrari Owners
Everything about this is stupid. They absolutely made that bid to suck up to daddy Ferrari, and pretend it’s for a good cause.
And reading RM’s description makes me want to throw up a little. I know it’s their job to make every auction sound incredible, to get people to make bets. But jfc it’s an ugly EV that isn’t even more powerful than plenty of others available without the prancing horse tax. And it’s white. Go on about the paint all you want, it’s the most boring fucking color available.
The most boring color ever adds value.
Might the purchaser of this vehicle be just a cutout for another entity that wants to push the narrative that this car is an incredibly desirable thing?