Meet the man who bought a Ferrari Luce for $40m
An electric Ferrari upstaged California's big car event. We look at the man who bought it
“We were discussing it amongst ourselves,” Ferrari CEO Benedetto Vigna tells us. “And there were different opinions. Personally, I thought this car might achieve $5m, but in the end it exceeded our expectations.”
To put it mildly. TG.com was present for RM Sotheby’s keenly anticipated Saturday evening Monterey auction, and it was genuinely standing room only as the ex-Nick Mason McLaren F1 GTR hammered down for a record-breaking $34.65m. We wandered by the white Ferrari Luce as we left the venue, confident that we’d witnessed the evening’s big showbiz moment.
Oops. Luce 'Chassis 0' was sold a few hours later for $40m, a sum of money that sent the internet – as we know, no fan of the electric Ferrari – into a form of rage yet to be formally identified by psychologists. Even the non-enraged wondered if Ferrari was guilty of trying to ‘save face’ by engineering an elaborate publicity stunt, underpinned by the fact that every cent of the sum raised would be going to charity. Others assumed that the buyer was engaged in a very public tax write-off.
I didn’t get to verify that with Herbie Wertheim when I met him briefly in the foyer of Pebble Beach’s main lodge 12 hours later. But I was happy to shake the man’s hand, and he certainly seemed to be in full possession of his faculties. And a rather nice red hat. Mere yards away on this most gilded of fairways were some of the finest Ferraris in the world, including a handful of 250 GTOs, a 275 GTB/4 NART Spider, and my personal favourite, a 250 GT Sperimentale Coupe.
