KING of the PRANCING HORSES

The extremely sought-after Ferrari 250 series-including the sales record-setting 250 GTO-are the most valuable cars that money can buy

- BRANDON FRIEDERICH

In late 2023, RM Sotheby's presented a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the right deep-pocketed buyer to purchase a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO. The specific vehicle, chassis No. 3765, fetched a staggering $51.7 million at auction and generated an avalanche of international headlines many of which featured the words "most expensive Ferrari ever." Unusually, the clickbait actually undersold the news.

Yes, this was the most expensive Ferrari ever sold at public auction-in fact, it took the record from another Ferrari 250 GTO that RM Sotheby's auctioned for $48.4 million in 2018. But even more significantly, the 2023 sale made chassis No. 3765 the most valuable production car sold at auction, full stop. The only other automobile on earth that's achieved a more numerable confirmed hammer price is the $142 million 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR "Uhlenhaut Coupé a nonhomologated, one-of-two prototype.

The 250 GTO is, of course, homologated (i.e. road legal); the "GTO" acronym stands for Gran Turismo Omologato, or Grand Touring Homologated in Italian. Powered by Ferrari's famed 3.0-liter Colombo V12, it was purpose-built to "win on Sunday, sell on Monday" and thereby play into Enzo Ferrari's entrepreneurial ethos of dealing road cars to fund race car development. And win it did achieving a hat trick of victorious seasons for Scuderia Ferrari from 1962 to 1964 in the FIA's International Championship for GT Manufacturers. Its wins occurred at elite endurance races like the Tour de France (in 1963 and 1964), 24 Hours of Le Mans (in 1962 and 1963) and the Nürburgring 1,000 km (in 1963 and 1964).