Ferrari's first electric car just sold for $40 million

On 16 August, at RM Sotheby’s Monterey sale during Car Week, the first production example of the Ferrari Luce — the marque’s first fully electric car — sold for US$40 million. The estimate was $1.1 million. It ran without reserve, the buyer’s premium was waived, and every dollar goes to the Ferrari Foundation. It is now the most expensive new car ever sold at auction, beating the $26 million a one-off Daytona SP3 made at the same venue a year earlier.

The car

Chassis 0 wears a one-off Madreperla semi-gloss finish that shifts from green to violet as the light moves across it, with a Perla leather interior picked out in Grigio Corvara. It goes back to Maranello for final assembly and delivers in the first quarter of 2027. The production Luce, launched in Rome in May at around €550,000, sold its entire 2026 allocation — fewer than 500 cars — in under two months, and it did so while Ferrari’s own former chairman was telling anyone who would listen that the badge did not belong on it.

Why we are writing about a car

Because the mechanics are identical to what we see in watches. The Luce is polarising, which is precisely what makes the first one valuable: a first-of-type with a documented chassis number, a unique finish, a charity provenance and a room full of people who all want to be the one who bought it. Strip the electric motor out of the story and you are describing the Cartier Cheich that sold in Hong Kong a month later, or the first Nautilus 5711 to leave the factory, or any “number one” that a manufacture has ever let go.

The money at the top of collecting is no longer paying for objects. It is paying for firsts, for uniques, and for stories that cannot be repeated. If you own a watch that fits that description — a prototype, a piece unique, a number 001 — its value is set by the rooms in Monterey and Hong Kong, not by any price list. We are happy to tell you what we think it is worth before an auction house does.