Ferrari’s first electric car has spent the past year being argued over. Now the market has had its say.
Chassis number 0, the earliest Luce built, sold for $40 million at RM Sotheby’s Monterey Car Week auction, a result that puts it straight among the most expensive cars ever sold at public auction.
The number takes some digesting. Pre-sale guidance put the car at around $1.1 million, roughly €950,000, and the winning bid landed at close to 40 times that figure. It also dwarfed the week’s other headline Ferrari, a Daytona SP3 that changed hands for $17.8 million at the same event.
The Luce was offered without reserve, and the entire $40 million goes to The Ferrari Foundation to support educational initiatives.
A charitable cause attached to the first example of a historic model was never going to sell cheaply. Even so, this result blew every prediction apart.
It reads as a pointed riposte to the Luce’s critics. When the car made its debut with 1,036bhp and a £440,000 price tag, it divided Ferrari loyalists like nothing before it, and the design world had plenty to say about its styling too. The rows made no difference to demand. Ferrari shifted every allocated car almost immediately, and now the first one off the line has rewritten the auction record for the model before most customers have taken delivery.
What $40 million buys
Chassis 0 is no standard car. It carries a Tailor Made specification finished in Madreperla, a semi-gloss mother-of-pearl white with an iridescent shimmer, and the wheels and brake calipers are colour-matched to the bodywork.
Inside, the cabin is trimmed in Le Mans leather in Perla with Grigio Corvara accents, while a special plaque confirms its status as the first series-production electric Ferrari ever made. As reference examples go, they do not come more definitive.
Beneath the pearlescent paint sits the drivetrain that caused the uproar in the first place. Four electric motors, one at each wheel, give a combined 1,036bhp (772kW), enough for 0-62mph in 2.5 seconds, and the Luce does it all while carrying five people. A family Ferrari that out-drags the supercars, with not a cylinder in sight, was never going to arrive quietly.
Whatever you make of an electric Ferrari, the sale changes the terms of the debate. Collectors have judged chassis 0 to be a foundation stone of Ferrari history rather than a footnote, and they have paid accordingly. Being first, being unrepeatable and being in aid of a good cause counts for more than what spins the wheels.
Maranello wins twice over. The most divisive launch in its modern history now has a feel-good headline attached, and the very first Luce now ranks among the most valuable cars in the marque’s history. The tifosi will keep debating whether an electric car deserves the badge. The market, it seems, has already made up its mind.
