This Ferrari Auction Just Broke 19 Sales Records — Carmudgeon w/ Cammisa & Derek Tam-Scott — Ep. 223

You look like you're going to cry.

Hello and welcome.

You're going to finish that sentence.

You're just going to leave me there.

Hello and welcome.

To this episode of The Car Mudgeon Show,

my name is Jason Camisa.

That is Derek Tam.

Hi, Ben Scott.

I'm now Yiddish.

A little bit.

Oika vault.

This week's episode of The Car Mudgeon Show,

we will discuss a recent auction

in which some totally unreal, outrageous,

incomprehensible sale results were achieved

for some equally adjective laden cars

that were specced in really remarkable ways.

I'm going to translate that to English

for those of you listening who speak actual English

and not Derek.

Shit went crazy at an auction

and a bunch of Ferrari sold for prices

that are so outrageous they're upsetting.

Yeah, so we'll talk about how upset we got

and just how outrageous the numbers were

and also how ugly some of the cars were as well.

In your opinion.

In my opinion.

This is The Car Mudgeon Show, which is driven by Hagerty.

Hagerty is an insurance company that is driven

by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts.

Hold on.

That exists by drivers for drivers?

I think it exists by drivers for drivers.

I'm driving.

We like to save drivers.

Boom.

We do the never stop driving thing.

Boom, boom, boom.

Is this driving?

Yeah.

I'm driving right now.

Can you clap three times in the cadence

of the never stop driving?

No, but I can do one miserable clap here.

Boom, boom, boom.

Good job.

I want a THX sound.

Sound.

Now.

With the robot, the flying robot.

No.

You want to put it away?

Oh, I want you to eat it.

You're the thin one.

You should get fat like the rest of us.

I'm working on it.

Trying your hardest.

Yeah, what they don't know is that you eat

5,800 calories a day.

I've never counted.

Oh, I can't count.

Can't count that high.

You probably also spent six hours a day in the gym.

Hello and welcome to another episode of The Car Mudgeon

Show post bumper.

Derek, that is Derek, Tim, dark chocolate hyphen.

Didn't we do this already?

Yeah, we did.

But they're also going to see that this car is here next week.

So, you know, everything's discombobulated.

We'll talk about the car next week.

Behind us, we have a yellow Ferrari.

Or similar.

It's like when you rent a car.

Or similar.

Nissan Versa or similar.

Or similar.

And you wind up with a, you know,

Chiron.

One can only hope.

Yeah, you rent a Chiron and you actually wind up with a.

Chevy Aveo.

I was thinking Mitsubishi Mirage, but you know.

Which would you rather have this week's episode of The Car Mudgeon

Show?

We talk about the comparison between Chevy Aveo and.

No, I'm just kidding.

I'm never.

I would say a Mirage is more fun than anything else.

Hmm.

We have the video clip to prove it.

Yeah.

Giggles screaming giggles.

Hmm.

Yikes.

Right.

So this week we're talking about yellow Ferraris mostly.

You're talking about that.

I'm talking mostly about yellow Ferraris.

So I always wonder like whether this type of topic is interesting to.

Car Mudgeon show listeners so we can find out from the view count.

Or the comment section, whether this is interesting or not.

But some crazy shit.

Some crazy shit happened.

I would say that.

So the, for backstory here,

there was an auction of a collection of Ferraris.

That belonged to a guy named Phil Bachman.

And his wife, Martha,

they were active Ferrari collectors for 40 years.

And he passed away in 2025.

And so a bunch of his cars were auctioned in Kissimmee, Florida by Meekum.

And those cars all were pretty extraordinary and special.

You might want to wear sunglasses.

Have you seen them?

What they look like?

Yellow.

Yes.

Everything was yellow.

A lot of yellow cars.

Not exclusively yellow, but a lot of yellow cars.

They were all Ferraris, except for,

I think there was a pair of alpha eight C's, one open and one closed.

Cluneras makes no difference a Ferrari.

Maserati, right?

It's a Maserati engine, the crossplane engine.

In what?

Oh, hold on.

This is the modern.

Yes.

Modern AT.

Okay.

Yes.

Technically was a, I mean, it's a Ferrari 47.

Yeah.

Which is a Ferrari 43 with a crossplane crank and a stroker.

Anyway.

So he bought, many of these cars knew, he was such an important Ferrari client

that he often got the last example built of various cars.

And they would always be placarded and labeled and certified as such.

And so they're, they were all really pretty eye opening.

There were a few sort of standard specification cars,

but everything he had built was basically totally outrageous looking in,

you know, I would say not in a good way.

And there was a lot of noise going on about what the cars were going to do.

A lot of people anxiously anticipating the sale.

And the question was, you know, how much are they all going to sell for?

Of course.

And would the specs harm them?

It seemed like the answer to that question was no.

I sent you a screenshot that had a neat summary,

but basically just world record after world record after world record,

probably almost 20 world records and some by huge margins.

I mean, on the screenshot you sent me almost everything was not 10,

nothing was like 10% over the previous record.

It was like 50 to 200% of the previous world record.

Right.

And so they were ordered by increase.

There was one that was 14% over.

Actually, that was the LaFerrari Aperta record that was by $1.36 million.

So it sold for $1.36 million more than the last most expensive LaFerrari Aperta,

which was 14%.

So that was the small one set a record by $1.36 million.

Wait, $1.36 million over?

Over what the previous one had sold for.

And that accounted for a 14% increase.

Yeah.

So, you know, probably the most shocking result was the Ferrari Enzo.

All of these cars are not, certainly all the ones that,

just about our cars that he ordered knew it had, you know, he specced it.

Yellow was his favorite color.

Not only was it yellow, but it had a red interior.

We call that the Ronald McDonald spec.

And I think it had yellow seat inserts on the red leather.

Yeah, it's really pretty outrageous.

But almost all of them had under a thousand miles and that car sold for,

so for reference, when we were looking at trading an Enzo,

we were offered a car for $6.75 million or something like that the week before.

Our standard red car, yellow is a rare color with a red interiors makes it a one off, you know.

So that's $6.75 million is typical for one of those cars in today's market.

They were $2 million at 1.10 years ago.

Anyway, it sold for $17 million all in.

That's nearly McLaren F1 money.

Totally nonsensical result.

There was another Enzo that sold at the same auction that was Rosodino, which is orange.

And that was a one of one car and it made $11 million.

So just all of these, these result was unequivocally the most visible,

substantial seismic public shift that's ever been, that has ever occurred in a visible way.

And the market right now is doing this funny dynamic where especially special Ferrari's

are doing all of this crazy stuff that is, you know, it used to be historically,

you would see like a 50% increase in value over some number of years.

And the similar results have happened in like month or months this year.

And that to me is a cause for concern.

I think it's a warning sign about a potential bubble unfolding.

This maybe has happened once in 1989 before where numbers went up at like a really incredible rate.

And that was driven by a combination of things, but in large part speculation

and people who were not end users buying the cars and people who were leveraged buying the cars

because they could always resell it for more.

So they were borrowing as much as they could and buying as much as they could.

And so you ended up with a superheated market that subsequently collapsed in like a year in 1990, 1991.

And so I'm a little worried that this is happening right now.

And so of course, the fundamental question to ask is who's buying these cars and

I mean, Jesus Christ.

Yeah.

And so the answer is mixed.

There were some end users, but there were also some speculators in there.

I've also heard rumors about private equity money being leveraged for this,

which tells me that they're not end users.

They're certainly not traditional car enthusiasts.

I mean, are we of the same mindset that when private equity gets involved in anything, it ruins it?

Yeah.

I think that's a fair assumption.

I mean, what is private equity?

It is effectively you're like flipping houses, but you're flipping companies instead.

And the entity that is doing the flipping is a person or group that has a whole bunch of assets under management.

And the instruction is to turn it into turn this pile of money into a much bigger pile of money.

And I think key point is without any understanding of what the fuck you're doing.

I mean, the thing that they understand that they're doing is they are adding value.

I'm using air quotes for our listeners, which actually means reducing costs.

And it usually doesn't result in an improvement in the customer experience.

I'm not sure that I have witnessed or I can think of, can recall a single incident where quote private equity came in,

and the business survived long term.

Yes.

It's usually a form of gutting and printing cash in the short term, flipping it.

And then whatever happens after that happens.

So let me ask you a question.

The immediate reaction that I got from some people when I saw those prices.

Well, I was shocked when I saw some of the prices for these cars.

You should probably go through a list to just talk about just how many insane things happened for those who don't have that tax in front of you.

But is my understanding this was also a charity auction?

Yes.

The funds benefited the Phil and Martha Bachman Foundation, but it is not deductible.

There's no tax benefit for the person who bought these cars.

That message was being circulated because there was that $26.8 million SP3 Ferrari that sold at Car Week last year,

a car that should have been $8 million.

And there was a tax benefit for someone who has a substantial tax bill and they'd say,

well, I have to pay a huge amount of taxes and this is deductible.

It'll help my bottom line.

So it's worth paying a huge amount of money.

But the people who bought these cars did not get that benefit.

Jason is speechless.

Why don't you read the list?

Okay.

So these were arranged in order of increasing percentages.

So that one was a 14% increase, but still $1.4 million more, but it's just an expensive car.

So $1.4 million represents 14%.

And FXX, which FXX is the part of the Corsa Clienti program.

This is a Ferrari race car that you don't get to keep.

They keep it for you and you get to drive it on track because it's not road legal

and they have events all around the world and you just arrive and drive

and they bring the car for you and it's all set up on track.

And it's an Enzo that is track only.

Basically it's a track converted or it's not track converted, it's track built Enzo.

And for the record, so this is an Enzo that you don't get to have that sits in their garage

and they maintain and send you the bill every time you look at it, think about it,

look at it, talk at it or touch it, drive it, turn it on, all of that stuff.

And now as these cars are 20 years old, I think you can keep it,

but initially when you're running them early on, you can't have it.

Ferrari tells you.

It's okay, plenty of Ferraris at home as this list will demonstrate.

So that one sold for 25% over.

That was $1.2 million in the increase.

These are $6 million, $7 million.

$575 Super America sold for $294,000 over the previous record, that's 30%.

So that's, you know, seven-something.

F-50 sold for 2.965 million more than the previous record, 32% increase.

$3 million represents 30% above the previous record.

Yes, that's correct.

$550 Barquettis 35%, that's only $328,000 increase over the previous record.

An F-40 sold for $2.6 million over the previous record.

Over the previous record, that's $6 million for an F-40.

This is a car by the way.

I thought an F-40 hit $5 million last year at Pebble.

That was an F-50.

That was $5 million, $50,000, not an F-40.

Okay.

That's a 67% increase.

This was again, it was a 92 US spec car, which is for some reason the most desirable variant of the F-40.

We didn't, 92 was the last year, they're pretty rare, and this car had like four or five hundred miles on it.

And yellow.

No, that one was red.

Like all F-50s were originally.

Aren't there two blacks?

They were painted by Penian Farina black for the royal family of Brunei, but they had originally been red.

Oh, I thought there were two black F-50s.

I think they were repainted by Penian Farina, which is pretty legit.

Legit-ish, but it's still not original paint.

Knock off a couple million.

So $6 million for an F-40, which is kind of a big deal because most people are saying, and these are public records also.

A lot of these numbers that seem like large increases, they are large increases, but there have definitely been cars circulating or trading for numbers that were substantially high.

Higher than the public record.

And getting that information out into the public gives people license to pay big numbers for cars.

In the future, even more modern stuff.

So this is represented the 458 Spiccialli Apparatus sold for $1.4 million over the last highest one that sold historically.

I mean, those cars were like $900,000, and then they were $1.5 million, and that happened very quickly inside of 12 months.

And then approaching $2 million, and then this one just absolutely blew past that.

F-12 TDF went for $1.5 million over the previous record.

And these cars were, I remember we had a 400 mile one that was $900,000 in four or five years ago.

And now this one basically made $3 million.

$599 GTO, this one was really quite something too.

The spec on this car was, I mean, all of them were like horrible, in my opinion.

These cars, for reference also, I think are not, they were not tastefully specced.

They were interesting and unique, but they were all like yellow with yellow interiors or yellow with blue and green accents.

I mean, the 599 GTO and the Spiccialli Apparatus 599 were all just really outrageous.

Yellow with green leather and blue leather and all this stuff.

So funny because I drove a GTO, I went on the launch, press launch for that car, and they were just red.

Yes, most of them are red, usually with black interiors, with a black roof or a gray roof.

And if it has a stripe, then it'll have a black gloss roof.

And if it doesn't have a stripe, then it'll potentially have a gray roof.

So what is a GTO selling for now? What did that car go for?

What did that car go for or what do they normally go for?

Both.

They are now, so they were like $750,000 a few years ago.

So they're now doubled, basically a million and a half dollars, depending on mileage.

You could hit higher ones if it has very low mileage, like a thousand miles or less.

And if it has a lot of miles on it, then it would be low one millions.

Anyway, this one sold for $4 million.

Stupid.

Yes.

All of that is true.

$4 million.

I drove it when it was new.

It was great.

It made wonderful noises.

Yep.

We actually have one and we're about to list for sale, but it's not $4 million.

Or even $3 million or $2 million.

How do you know that?

Why?

Isn't that your comp formula?

There were a total, I think, of four 599 GTOs in the sale.

And this is the question that I'm going to, I'll give you all this data.

And then the fundamental question is, are all of these cars, like examples of other examples of this car,

these cars worth more or these outlier sales?

And how does this dynamic work?

Because of the Bachman collection and because of the provenance and the condition and the mileage

and the last one built, often being true of these cars.

The 288 GTO that he bought new, that had 2000 kilometers or new,

set a record by $4 million or the next highest.

Which had previously been $4 million.

So it doubled.

Yes.

Correct.

The SA Apperta, yeah.

So that was another yellow, there was yellow blue and yellow green for the GTO.

And the SA Apperta 599 set a record by $2.7 million.

The ENZA, which I mentioned, set a record by $11.6 million.

That's a 185% increase over the last most expensive ENZA that had been sold.

And then there were the cheaper cars.

It's easier to set huge number of percentages because they were cheaper historically.

So Scuderia, Scuderia Spider and 360 Challenge Stradale all set records by between two and 300%.

That is to say the cars sold for two to three times as much as the next most expensive example of them.

And these cars have all been, all the special Ferraris in the last six months have really been on the move.

And it's being driven, I think, by speculators in large part.

Some end users are paying these numbers.

But there are people who are trying to dominate the supply of cars in this market right now

by buying pretty much every single one that comes up for sale and then sitting on them

and being, you know, they'll list them on their website but say they're not for sale right now

when people inquire about them and they're trying to sort of control supply in a way that prints them money.

And there's a bunch of people, entities colluding to make this happen.

Does that work?

If the supply is low enough and the buyers want them badly enough, yeah, it works for a while.

I don't know for how long it'll work.

And how it depends on where their money is coming from and how quickly they need to get out of it

and whatever interest rate might be applied.

If it's borrowed money, if it's not borrowed money, then they could hold them indefinitely.

It could potentially work.

The volumes of these cars are low enough that it's potentially possible.

They are also, the process, the underlying theme here also is that F80 allocations are happening right now.

The new Ferrari hypercar, the replacement for the LaFerrari.

And Ferrari has now made a, it's well known that you can't get an allocation for these cars.

The open version of the car is what's happening right now, unless you have enough points or whatever with Ferrari.

And so there's an ongoing dialogue between the owners and collectors of these cars

and their dealers saying, look, if you want to get one of these slots, then you need to have more cool Ferraris.

And so they're going out there and you register on your profile when you buy a used Ferrari.

You say, well, what Ferraris do you own?

I have a 250 Lusso and I have a 275 and I have an F40 and I have an F50 and a 288.

And you tell Ferrari what cars you own.

And then they factor that into their decision about whether you get a slot for the new car or not.

So that I think is maybe the subtext here for some of these cars, some of these people who are, you know,

snapping up anything interesting and special.

And so special meaning like you wouldn't get credit for a 360, you know, Modena or a 430,

but for a Scuderia or a Challenge Strudale or a TDF or 599 GTO or an 812 Competizione or any of those cars.

You would get some credit, I guess.

So those cars all, you know, the increase on the 430 Scud 16M was a $1.3 million increase.

This is on a car that I remember selling, you know, nice low mileage, sub 10,000 mile examples of these cars for $375,000 in 2021 or 22.

So this was a $370,000 car.

4 years ago.

Yeah. And then this one set a record by $1.3 million, which is to say that, you know, the car sold for basically $2 million.

Same thing with the Scuderia and the Challenge Strudale.

There were actually two Challenge Strudales.

One was hideous.

It was yellow and then they had painted the inset part under the headlight cover red and the challenge grill was painted red also.

Yeah, really, really awful.

And then the other Challenge Strudale he had was actually very nearly tasteful.

It was dark green and it would have been okay had it not had yellow interior accents.

But the outside of the car was very nice, at least.

So you could, you know, in isolation, each part was nice, but taken together, it wasn't the most successful, but it was, I would have owned it.

I mean, so clearly with so what other people have given these prices.

And so that was, you know, I was surprised by these results because the specs of the cars are so eye watering.

And I think fundamentally these results are why Europeans think we have no taste.

I mean, I don't know, maybe it's not Europeans and it's not think.

Maybe it's just why Americans have no taste.

Look, I am not an arbiter of taste.

I think this whole thing is disgusting.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

I totally agree.

It's incomprehensible.

It's disgusting.

And, you know, the question is like are all other examples of these cars now worth considerably more money?

They package this sale, you know, there were probably 40 different cars and we haven't discussed.

You know, the other one that was totally mind blowing.

So the 348, did you ever use a Saria Spiccialli 348?

You did use a Saria Spiccialli.

We did that in the Corvette 01 icons video.

Okay.

What a sweetheart of a little car.

Beautiful.

And these were the early hot rod.

This was kind of the first time Ferrari did a hot rod version of a standard production car.

This is now their formula to make the Scuderia and the Challenger Dalle and the Spiccialli and the Pista,

which is to say you take the regular V8 Ferrari and you take weight out and you make it more sporting

and you give it a little bit more power and tweak the arrow and you do this.

It's just like making a GT3 or something out of a regular 911.

They're typically on the V8 lineup.

It's the car that drives the way you expect the first car to.

360 does not drive the way it looks.

The Challenger Dalle does.

So that was the origin of that program and they were sold in relatively small,

they were sold in absolutely small volumes, like a hundred cars.

And a lot of them were Targas, but some were coupes.

I think it was 35 and 65 cars between Targas and coupes.

Anyway, they had one of those that was very low mileage yellow, of course.

And you know, serious Spicciallis are worth 175 to 200, 225.

A regular 348 is certainly half that.

This one sold for $660,000 with low miles.

They had like 2000 miles on it or something like that.

But yeah, these were the kinds of orders of magnitude of records that were being set with this collection of cars.

The story is incredible.

He was the first owner of most of these cars, not all of them.

There were some older cars, but even the sort of older cars that were not like unusual specifications,

like he had a 250 Lusso that was gray.

It sold for $3 million.

If you'd asked me what that car was worth, I would have said $1.6 million.

So even on the 60s Ferraris, which are generally sleepy in the marketplace.

So what you get is you get a frenzy in the room about this collection, I think is what happened.

And there were other cars in the sale because they did like 73 trillion days of sales

because that's always how the Kissimmee auction is.

There's lots of 380 SLs and Chevelles and just hundreds.

It's like going to Arizona, Barrett Jackson, where there's just huge volumes of undifferentiated cars

that adds up to millions and millions of dollars of sales

because they're just literally 13 hours a day for five, six, seven days or however long it is of just moving metal.

But these cars were like the centerpiece of that very many-day sale.

But there were also some pretty heavy other cars in the sale.

There were four 599 GTOs in total, including the crazy yellow one.

And they made 599 of those cars.

And the regular like non-eye watering spec cars kind of sold more or less

where they should have meaning the number from last week before the auction

because they've been moving so much because they have doubled I think in the last year as have most of these cars.

So there's all kinds of crazy wizardry unfolding in the especially big Ferrari world,

but it's not limited to big Ferrari.

So there were some 918s that, there was a 918 that did a really crazy result.

It was a very low mileage orange car, the only one made.

And that car, you know, made $5 million.

And 918s, again, four or five years ago, we were selling 918s without the Visock pack

for like a million one, a million two.

And if you wanted the Visock pack, then you might pay high ones

or maybe $2 million for a really low mileage car.

So this one sold for $5 million. It was orange.

And then like,

And then later on a unremarkable spec car bid to two seven and didn't sell.

So like that result is consistent with what you suspect.

You say, oh, that car should be $3 million instead of $2 million.

Like it was five years ago, like a sensible amount of only a million dollars up in five years.

But then, you know, so unrepeatable specs for sure.

As I give this council often in the marketplace, which is to say if you want,

if the car is an unrepeatable spec and exceptionally high quality was really good provenance,

then it will sell for a lot more.

And the thing that drives that is a combination of things.

One is an owner who is like, I need the very best and I can afford it.

So whatever costs, I will pay it.

And so that happens.

And the other thing, and this is basically the other side of that same coin is you say,

look, if these cars are now to be treated as investments,

you buy the very highest quality example that you can find so that it performs the best that it possibly can as an investment.

And so a white car with, I don't know how many miles we're on it,

a few thousand miles instead of a few hundred miles.

So it doesn't make reserve because that's the people who want the very best,

who are going to be speculating on these cars or standing around talking with their buddies and say,

mine is this and that and it's the only one made and has no one's ever touched it.

Then, you know, it's worth huge piles more money and it gets people out of bed and gets the paddles in the air.

But if you say, I could find another white one with relative ease and sure.

So did this sale make these cars all be worth more money?

I don't think if it's an average car, it impacts things too, too much,

which is something slightly weird to say because these cars have all been going up so much already,

but it's not going to make.

I don't think any car is worth a million dollars more than it was a week ago.

Not a single one of them?

Well, all the ones that sold for that much are, right?

Because people would say, you know, what is, how much should that,

if you'd asked me how much that, in fact, I was offered that orange Enzo,

which sold for 11 million dollars together with the 918 for less than just one of those cars,

that just the Enzo sold for.

So, you know, I would say rationally, I'd said,

I don't think that that makes sense to pay more than X million dollars for those two cars together.

And they sold one of them.

So just the Enzo sold for more than that entire package was offered at.

So, yes, those particular cars are worth more than they were last week,

but a pedestrian car is not worth, is not worth any more than it was before.

So do you think, if we're looking at this as this is largely fueled by scarcity of the spec of these cars

and provenance of the owner of these particular ones,

but also then sort of turbocharged by investors who are not in Jews or consumers,

and potentially, is this a sign that investors are putting money in cars

rather than, for example, the stock market because of uncertainty in our political environment?

It's possible.

Yeah, I mean, I think that that has been a dynamic that has been ever on the rise.

I mean, it's now at least been 10 years since I've been talking about

like how companies out there are aggregating data and saying,

you know, the collector car market has outperformed assets such as gold

and whatever else in the last 12, 25, or four, whatever the number is, years.

And so people have been treating cars increasingly as investments in this period.

And that's no new thing.

So I think that people are continuing to do that for sure.

The effect of the collection, it definitely is impactful.

And so like that Luso selling for $3 million,

a car which I would be loath to say is doing anything remarkable.

Like if that car were resold in two years as an individual car,

I think it goes back to being worth $1.6 million.

So why the fuck did someone pay double that?

Because the mystique of the whole package and the whole auction

and all the cars being there together, it creates a sort of frenzy and energy in the room

and there's some social proofing that happens if the bidders in the room

where they want to be seen throwing their weight around.

It's not rational. It's totally not rational.

But the effect and it was evident everywhere.

I mean, a 308 GTSi, it's a two valve.

That's the worst engine. It's the worst 308.

It's the worst body style 308.

You couldn't choose a 308 that's less desirable.

And that's a car that's worth $65,000.

Sold for $175,000.

In yellow.

No, this one I think was red actually.

So the car sold for more than twice as much as it should have

because it was just part of this energy

and everyone wanted to get a piece of the action.

There were plenty of pedestrian cars that came out of that collection

that were not pedestrian but not like one owner unique spec cars.

Like more easily repeatable cars that sold for insane numbers

just because they were offered as part of this collection.

Well, the good thing is your evaluation of this

is that the market hasn't just gone up by 75% or whatever it is.

In general, that's a good thing.

The bad thing is...

It's only gone up by 50% and it's done in over six months.

Right. It already did that.

I mean, that's the sick part is that we've already had this crazy rise

and now there's this.

It just as someone who obviously is not buying,

even though we have a yellow Ferrari or similar

in the warehouse with us just belong to either one of us

and that's out of reach.

And so, okay, if that was part of the Bachman connection,

would that be fucking a million dollars for that NSX

or a Ferrari that's similar that's in the background?

I mean, that is an expensive car.

These numbers are...

I hesitate to use the word disgusting again,

but it's really not...

It's like looking at a telephone number.

Like the price is so high it may as well be a phone number.

What is going on in this world?

We are seeing evidence of wealth disparity.

Yeah. That's exactly what...

In the individual...

I recall consuming some statistics somewhere

where so in the Robert Barron era,

this would be like the Rockefellers and the Stanford

and steel and oil money in the early 20th century,

the peak oligarchy,

I think the top 1% of the nation's wealth was held by...

God, I wish I had these numbers in front of me.

Basically, it was like 4% of the nation's wealth was held by...

No, the top 50% was held by...

I don't know, now I'm just bodging this all up.

By like 4% of the population or something along this...

Yeah, now it's...

The number is 12% where it was once 4%

of whatever the thing that was being measured was,

which was probably the proportion of the nation's wealth

that is held by what proportion of the population.

And I wish that I had the data in front of me

because this is not intelligible currently.

But the point is that...

There's a lot of people who have...

Inequality is much higher than it was even in this period

that we look back on as peak of unregulation

before unionization and before workers' rights

and sort of like minimum wage and all of the tools

that were implemented as part of the depression,

for example, to try and make it the introduction

of social security.

All of these mechanisms that were invented

and are generally considered to be responsible

for like a living wage.

The idea of a living wage didn't exist

when oligarchs were...

Exist when they had steel and oil money

and railroad money in the early 20th century.

But the inequality is much greater now.

That was the point that I was trying to make

in that deeply inelegant fashion.

It's nice to see you struggle around.

Yeah.

Everyone struggles a little.

Yeah.

I struggle a lot.

So it's a good thing.

At least a little.

So we are seeing firsthand evidence

of wealth inequality, certainly.

And I would be...

Some of the buyers were savvy.

Some of them were end users.

And a lot of them were also dealers

who were speculating.

And I'm curious to know what happens.

And the answer to what happens in the future

depends on, you know, is there an event

that happens that causes everybody

to simultaneously need to get out?

Because if so, that leads to a collapse.

And it depends on where the money came

from, macroeconomic factors.

It's impossible to predict, for me,

at least, right now.

But it is a unique time.

The nice thing, I guess,

if you're looking for a silver lining,

is that the pedestrian parts of the market

are not meaningfully affected by any of this.

Meaning?

Like the values of...

There's no...

I would not say E36M3 values have gone up

by 217% this year.

What if they're ill with a red interior?

Then I think it's actually down 20%.

20% should be off of zero, or should be zero.

And that's the craziest part to me is

because I did look at some of the photos.

And there are a lot of cars that are of questionable taste

coming from someone with no taste, even I can tell.

The idea that these ugly tasteless cars

went for this kind of a premium

is just an insult to the injury of,

not only will you never be able

to afford one of these cars, it will.

It has to drag up the prices of everything else

and just makes life that much more difficult

for those of us who can't, say,

spend five million extra dollars on a car

just because it's come from a collection

or just because we want it

or just because we want it.

The last one may,

or it's the only one in that color or whatever.

And I don't know what I find more disgusting,

is that or the whole Ferrari points thing?

I mean, we've not really talked directly

about this over the years.

I don't like this.

I don't like that Porsche is playing this game with GT3s.

I've heard of people trying to get allocations of GT3s

and their dealer saying,

well, you got to buy a Macan first

and then a 911 Turbo.

And a Cayenne.

And this and that, I think it's disgusting.

I guess that's what happens when you're

in a money dominated society

or money run society

and other people have more of it than you do.

And do you have a product that has so much appeal

and this is also interesting

because this is so dynamic,

like it changes so quickly.

When the F80 came out,

I think a lot of people were disappointed by its looks

and there was some concern

that they wouldn't be able to,

that the end had come of this game thing

that Ferrari has been playing since the 90s.

The F50 was the first evidence of this

because a lot of F40s were bought on speculation

during the first exotic car bubble,

which was 1989.

And so when the F50 came out five years later,

they said we're going to discount speculators

from participating.

One of my favorite speculator stories

is Sterling Moss.

Sterling Moss went through a great deal of effort

and had to wait for a very long time to get his F40.

And there's a letter I think that he might have,

he did write it,

but not to Enzo because he had died already.

He wrote it to Ferrari saying I'm Sterling Moss

and I won Grand Prix driving for Ferrari

and I can't get this car.

And why haven't I gotten mine yet?

And it's because they were selling them to other people

and then of course Sterling Moss sold his

within like a year or something.

So for all that effort he went through

to get an F40 which he was just buying on spec.

Did he sell it because he didn't like it

or did he sell it just because he was able

to make so much more money on it?

I don't know, I suspect.

Well, the subtext is that it was for the latter reason.

I don't actually know the reason why he sold his F40.

So when the F50 came out in 1995,

it was available by lease only

and then you could convert that into ownership

after some period of time of leasing it.

And the same thing has happened with the 911 ST

when they came out

because they didn't want people buying them

and then flipping them because the MSRP,

I mean this happened with 911Rs, 911Rs had MSRPs

in the sort of low mid twos.

With options, you were paying like a 227 sticker

for 911R and then they were five, six, seven, eight, 100.

I heard they touched a million briefly

and then when the GT3 touring came out

they went down to like 250 again

and now they're 600 once again.

So when the ST came out, it was again lease only

and you could buy it at the one year mark

if you wanted.

And so some effort to curb speculation.

Meanwhile Ferrari is now sort of turning this

into a cash printing operation.

And the same thing is driving Porsche GT cars.

I mean the volume of GT cars has gone up since 991

because everybody needs to have a GT3 RS

because it is like I was driving my SC

the other night, 45 year old car almost

and some literal child,

he was probably nine or 10 years old

and he said, is that a Porsche?

Actually he probably said Porsche.

And I said yes.

And then he said, my dream car is a GT3 RS

and I was like, how do you know this?

How does this happen and why?

And like my understanding is that the youths,

there's a lot of social clout associated with GT3R.

It's like the Instagram car of choice.

And so there's all these people who are,

I'll say it before I'll say it again,

buying cars for the wrong reasons

and it's driving these peculiar market dynamics around.

It's very, GT3 is a problem

because GT3 is the best sports car you can buy.

But right now it's being,

it's all about your paint to sample color

and what spec and what this and what that

and never about the...

Does it have a leather fuse box cover?

Yeah.

And but that's...

It's been over revved.

You use the rev limiter?

Oh, over, using the rev limiter means over revved?

Yeah.

Well, you missed a shift or yes.

You want to, why did you go over 7,000 RPM?

I mean, I've heard,

I've certainly heard of people

who are afraid to drive these cars.

But what I'm really worried about,

right now I'm not worried about Porsche.

Porsche can't make enough GT cars

and can't charge enough for them.

And so that's all fine.

I am genuinely worried about Ferrari.

And so I'm surprised to hear

that there's that much demand for F80.

Although I guess I shouldn't be

because it's not a regular Ferrari.

It's the top, anything at this point,

the top of the top of the top of the top

is just exponentially more saleable,

more valuable, more desirable, whatever.

But I mean, do you know anyone interested in Testerosa?

Do you know anyone...

Testerosa market has gone wacko.

Oh, I mean the new one.

Oh.

The forthcoming one.

There's a new one?

Yeah, see, that's exactly my point.

No, I remember seeing pictures of it.

I don't know anyone interested,

anyone who gives a fuck about any modern Ferrari.

I mean, do you, or do your clients, are they...

Yeah, I mean SF 90s are boat anchors

certainly right now.

But yeah, new Ferraris I would say

they are shifting them using...

The mafia technique almost.

It's like a coercion, right?

You have to buy this car

if you want to guy that other car.

And so that's like a big pipeline for them

is this almost coercive sales model.

That's how they moved the FFs that no one wanted

and GTC for Lusos that no one wanted.

Porosangues.

Porosangues same thing?

Yeah.

Really?

Yeah, a lot of people I've talked to say

oh, I had to buy the Porosangue.

They made me buy it.

Right, they made me buy it,

which of course is them for I will turn around

and say look at our most successful sales model ever.

I wonder if Lamborghini is doing the same thing with Urus.

I kind of doubt it, to be honest with you.

If you look at the people who are buying Urus,

although every time I see a Urus

and admittedly it's not that often

but it is a housewife driving it.

And I often wonder, wife and kids

and I often wonder if the husband wanted

some sort of special Lamborghini sports car

and said fine, I'll buy a Urus for my wife

if you'll put me on a list.

I don't know if that to be the case in Lamborghini world

but I do know that no one is paying attention

to the main market for it.

I've not seen a single one outside of the Emilia Concorde

where Ferrari had a display

but have you seen, does anyone own one?

Do you know?

Yeah, I have a client who has one.

Does he like it?

I don't think he's driven it yet.

So he bought it because he's got to buy something else?

He's got a lot of cars.

Yeah, I mean look, when we both worked at Isami,

we had, this was my little,

having my toes into this world, you're still in that world

but I was mortified at the number of people

who bought cars because they had to

and then stored it at Isami

and there was one client in particular,

I think we've mentioned this experience once in the past

where he had an 812, it was,

the sticker was $505,000 for an 812

and he bought that plus a row Portofino,

some other Ferrari that I will never be able to afford

which was, I think a light blue

but the 812 was gray with a brown leather

and gray pinstripe like suit material,

I don't even know what the fuck it was into,

it was one of the most stunning specs I've ever seen

and he walked in and walked right by them

and went and had a meeting about something else

and then left and then after he left,

somebody said, oh, well that's the guy

who owns those two cars,

he didn't even go look at them,

he didn't even know he owned them.

He bought them both because he needed to buy

both of those cars and hold onto them

for X amount of months before he could buy whatever it was

that he wanted next.

And I thought this person spent half a million dollars

on the one car and two something on the other.

Sticker says half a million.

Okay, so he probably spent six or 700,000 dollars

on this car.

I find this gross, I find the whole thing really gross.

Yeah, I mean, this is the nature of wealth

and it's very peculiar to have a front row seat

in this world and then return to have that collide

with reality on a regular basis

which is what I do in my own life.

Order door dash, you're like, oh, it's $23

for that salad.

No, I can't court door dash.

Or when I'm, you know, messing around with my $700

wiring harness on my R129, that was $12,000

because it had 40,000 miles on it or something like that.

But it's like, it's a very, there's a huge gulf

between the haves and have nots

or the very, very wealthy and the everyone else

or whatever you want to characterize, you know,

the B club, whether you're a billionaire or not.

It's certainly remarkable to see,

to get a glimpse into how that world functions.

Yeah, I don't want to see it.

I'm sorry.

I mean, you know, maybe it's sour grapes,

but I just think the whole thing is so gross

that I don't really want to be associated

with any part of it.

And it makes me really feel good about my stupid decisions

on shitty old Volkswagen's.

It's something that I can enjoy

and it's not about the money.

It's about the experience and it's about the smiles.

And I just hope that all the people

who are putting all this money into speculation

don't enjoy any of it

because the whole point of owning cars should be enjoying them.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think many of these cars

saw enjoyment, but they get different,

I mean, enjoyment comes from different places, I guess.

I don't know, maybe they like printing money.

Yeah, sure.

Some people are motivated by money,

but you know, what it's unfortunately

in this particular case,

what you're doing is taking these cars out of the hands

of the potential hands of people who do enjoy them

for what they are.

And that to me is the tragedy.

Saying now this, you know, even a 348.

Okay, that 348, especially,

Sergio Spiccialli.

S.S., right?

Sergio Spiccialli was not a big, huge change

over a regular 348, right?

I drove it and I think at the time

it had 8,000 miles on it or something.

I drifted it around the track.

What a sweetheart of a car.

It's so pretty that I thought I could really have a 348

and then I found out it was worth six figures

and I was like, no way.

Like I'm not spending.

There's no way I could or would spend

a hundred or $200,000 on this experience.

Just totally not worth it.

To find out that that car could now

potentially be worth 3, 4, 5, 600,000.

It's just now taking that experience,

ripping it out of the hands of someone

who really may have spent their whole life

pining for it and then finally just be at the precipice

of being able to afford that

and saying, no, fuck you

because there's someone who will never drive it,

who will never love it, who will never appreciate it,

who stashes it in the back of their garage.

It is fundamentally.

For a point on the Ferrari bullshit scale

so they can drive a fucking F80.

Not drive.

F80.

Sorry, they could have a chance of applying

for the ability to spend a million dollars,

two or three or whatever it is on this car.

I just think that is so not why we should be.

Yeah, it's tragic.

I mean, I think fundamentally it would be really swell

if there was meritocracy,

that your level of enthusiasm and capability

and understanding and knowledge and appreciation

for the car as a piece of engineering

was mapped in some way to your right to own one.

But that's just not the way the world works.

That is the way the world works when you are,

when you live in Trashville.

I don't know how to say this.

I'm just complete trash and I love trashy cars

and I'm trash.

And so like I have no problem.

You don't find this in the VW world.

You don't find it in the Honda world.

You don't find it in the Volkswagen.

How much is a really beautiful Scirocco now though?

Attainable.

40 grand?

Nah, yeah, maybe.

But, but when, you know, when I have a base Dodge Ram

pickup truck that I'm driving as a press car,

it's 51,000 bucks,

which is roughly the average sale price of a car.

You could have the world's nicest perfect condition

Concor Scirocco.

And let me tell you, somebody spends $50,000

or $40,000 on a VW.

They're going to appreciate it.

This is going to be the car that's the apple of their eye.

And to me, it doesn't matter whether it's 50 or 30 or 40

or 70 or whatever it's somewhere in that range.

This is some, the apple of someone's eyes.

Mortal type money.

Right.

It's the apple of someone's eyes.

Or it's some rich guy who had one in college

and then sees one and it's beautiful and buys it.

Sure.

It makes it too expensive for.

Right.

But as long as it, they,

as long as the car is loved and the car is appreciated,

I'm totally fine with values going through the roof.

Right.

It's the same way with, you know, my stupid Rover,

my stupid BMWs,

my stupid.

I mean, I have one BMW that's really expensive.

That CSI.

It was produced in incredibly limited numbers.

Great.

It's a rare car with a V12 and a manual and it's beautiful

and it's all well built and they're reliable

and it's all these things.

I can see spending real money on it,

but real money is like, you know, 70 to $150,000 for that car.

If that car was suddenly $5,000,000,000 trading or trading

at two or $300,000 above what it was before

by some dick bag behind a computer screen in Manhattan

who's day trading on it,

you've pulled it out of the hands of someone like me

who really wants to enjoy it.

Yeah.

I 100% agree.

I don't see any upside from it,

but the reality is they can and they should

and it's legal.

They think because they can, they should and it's legal.

Yeah.

There's plenty of illegal ways to,

they're more unsavory, but yeah, it's tragic.

Fundamentally, it is a tragic event.

Which is why there's so much appeal to me for brands

that don't have any prestige.

Yeah.

None.

Well, and my interest in these cars has always been,

I would be as interested as I am now,

regardless of what they cost.

Yeah.

Like as a child when I was a teenager and whatever car was,

you know, Ferrari 330 GTs were $125,000,

but it has no more interest or less interest to me

than it does now that it's $600,000.

To be honest, it's usually an inverse for me, right?

The more expensive, the less interesting they are,

because I think what else could I be doing with that money?

I decouple it and I'm just like,

what is the experience and how much do I like it?

Fair point.

But I mean, I'm that way when I'm evaluating.

Of course I wouldn't.

I haven't bought any of those cars.

When you're evaluating owning it,

then it becomes a negative thing.

The more expensive it is,

the higher my expectations are for that.

And I wonder why that's just not the case

when you're buying things as an investment.

If you're looking at churning.

Because it matters more what other people think

than what you think,

because that's the nature of a market.

Yeah, I know.

But cars are different things, different people.

I know, it's really tragic.

The shower would be yellow and the red interior.

Yeah, there was the eight C was yellow

with a red convertible top.

You know, it's one thing if like,

you can decouple the interior and exterior

because like in some sense,

you're like, I can't see them both at once.

The windows talking off, no one will ever know.

But when it's like visible on the exterior,

like the CS that was yellow

with the red headlights and grill and the eight C,

it's particularly difficult.

So yeah, I don't know what to do.

Go on him for having a theme and sticking to it.

Yeah, I guess.

And he was self-made and he was very passionate

and everything that he ever bought,

he never sold it.

And he owned it for all the right reasons.

And he did the Corsa Clienti thing

and drove the car on track.

One of the highest mileage cars in the collection

was the Corsa Clienti car.

That's crazy.

Because, you know, every time you use it,

you have to put miles on it.

And so he went and did the thing with it.

And so the X had more miles than the Enzo did.

That's wild.

Like he was out there, you know, using that car.

All the props to that.

Yeah.

I mean, definitely all the props.

We all have a...

He made his money owning car dealerships, right?

He was passionate about cars, had a car dealership

and another one started selling Toyotas and Hondas

in the 70s before it was cool.

He was investing sensibly and building a fortune

and he bought his first Ferrari in 1984.

And then, you know, he bought a new GTO in 1985

and then just kept buying and would always buy, you know,

and he became like, I think one of the most important

Ferrari clients to the company Ferrari

it's such that he was able to get the last example built

and they would build him whatever outrageous,

crazy spec he wanted.

That's really cool.

It would have been really, really cool if his passion

and love for cars had been able to be transferred

to the next generation of owners for those cars

who were buying it for the same reason.

And he kept them notably until his death.

He didn't cash out.

He never turned the cars into money.

It only happened after he passed away.

So, you know, he said,

I'd rather have the cars than the money.

So it's a very different philosophical place to be

than the people who ended up buying them.

Which is fascinating though.

Those prices are unbelievable.

Unbelievable.

I mean, all of us who,

even those of us who are pretty close to this

and have been following and I've been hearing all the buzz

and the hype within the industry heading up to the auction

or just completely a gawk at the results as they were happening

or just like, what is this?

How is this real life?

How just these numbers are incomprehensible.

This is not money.

These are numbers on a screen.

Well, that's the way I feel about when I go to any auction.

Yeah.

But there there's like a market and you understand,

you're like, oh, that one was a shitter.

So it didn't do this or it did do that.

Or like, yeah, everyone knew that was so-and-so's car

and then it was done by such and such.

And it won these things.

Like it's the best one in the world.

So I'm not surprised even though the headlines are all like,

so in those cases, you're like, oh yeah, that like makes sense.

And then in this case,

it's just like that was totally incomprehensible

to even those of us who are supposed to know the market well.

Listen, when I go to any auction, it's just a C,

one after the night, like, you know,

of car that I couldn't dream to afford

at the bottom of those auctions.

It's one after the next, after the next.

And then actually thinking like each time one of those cars

goes across the stage and a hammer comes down,

some amount of money has traded place that I will never see.

And I'd like to think I'm successful.

I can buy a tank of gas and not worry about it.

And I can get, I'm gonna sign a fries

and not worry about that financial, right?

I can get like extra like guacamole on a burrito.

So I feel like I've made it.

I can do that.

But in every single car that goes through

is an incomprehensible amount of numbers,

numbers of money that are going by.

I feel that way always at auctions.

But when I see this, this is a different league.

This is just, I don't, doesn't compute, doesn't comprehend.

And I don't, doesn't give me the warm fuzzies.

No, far from it.

And I'm curious to see what happens in the future,

whether this is, proves to be a bubble

or whether this is a new reality.

And again, these are exceptional cars.

Time and time again, other similar models

that were not as remarkable,

that didn't come from the same collection,

kind of traded for rationalizable numbers,

even if they are much larger

than they were even a few months ago.

And so I don't, it's not totally repeatable.

I think people may be bought into the Bachman Mystique,

which is deserved for, because a collection like that

doesn't come up super often.

And it was well marketed and everyone was talking about it.

And they packaged a whole bunch of other really heavy cars,

like 918s and the 599 GTOs

and a whole bunch of other stuff in with them.

So yeah, I, it was a historic moment for worse.

I was going to say for better or for worse,

but I'm just going to leave it at worse.

So yeah, that's what happens at the top end of the market.

Insanity, crazy.

Yeah.

I look forward to seeing what it does to the rest of us.

And hopefully it doesn't do anything.

Yeah.

All happily root for, you know, a record price on a prelude.

Like that makes me really happy.

It periodically does happen now.

And it's a completely separate market dynamic,

which is to say we talk about this formerly ubiquitous car

that a lot of people had positive associations with

that has very low survival rate, especially in nice shape,

leads to results that are like $50,000 for preludes

and $50,000 for Characots and cars that were historically valueless

that now are worth, like you say,

actually what is still a sensible amount of money,

given how expensive new cars are.

Like it's, it does make sense.

It's Volkswagen buses, you know.

All the buses got crazy too.

Yeah, one, two, $300,000 20 years ago, for sure,

for the large numbers of Windows buses.

I just love the idea that someone bought something worthless

and just loved it to the point where they took such great care of it

that they are then financially rewarded by someone who appreciates that.

Like so I'm happy to root for.

Especially because it's pedestrian.

And there's something distinctly democratic about that,

about taking something that you love just because you liked that object

independent of its perception as a collectible object.

And independent of its value.

Yes, yes, which is a proxy for what I just said in more, in fewer words.

Yeah, I'm going to go cash in my 401k and go buy Ferraris.

No, you're not. You're going to do no such thing.

Never.

I do, I will say that I'm very delighted to still get a lot of value out of cheap shitboxes.

I really enjoy some expensive cars.

Most car, you know, the majority of the fundamental car margin premise

is that I don't like most cars, but there are some things correct.

All of that is true.

But there are some really expensive cars that I adore.

And then that pains me to see those ones slip out of reach.

And then the other ones, it's like, I don't care.

I didn't even, I don't even like that experience that much.

But it's nice to know that I can still get like a ton of value out of like

my Fiat 124 spider that has very little paint on it.

Like that's very gratifying to know that it's still possible.

Right. Detached from, from value.

Then you know that you like it as opposed to everyone else.

You're not doing it for other people, right?

Yeah.

I think we should get the yellow Ferrari out of here and I'll just go get Beatrice,

my paintless E30.

You go get your paintless 124.

And we'll just sit here and we made a bitch about cars that we'll never be able to afford.

Certainly not now.

Yeah.

Interesting, interesting times.

Different side of the world.

I mean, I, you know, I'm a little bit harsh on, in my opinions on this.

Yes.

I mean, it is my livelihood.

In some sense, it's valuable or useful to do this,

but it's just very difficult to comprehend and I do worry.

And it's, it's, it's looking for common ground in the process of selling a car is always helpful.

And some, it becomes difficult in some circumstances, shall we say.

Yeah.

But what I think ultimately doesn't matter to a lot of buyers.

They just know what they want and I have to give them the information they need to make

a decision.

So yeah, that's what's happening in my world.

I have no idea how interesting this is or isn't to the mainstream public of car consumers,

but it certainly is a dynamic that's at play and those of us who trade cars for a living.

Nuts.

Yeah.

I find it fascinating because it's just so incomprehensible.

Yeah.

Definitely.

All right.

Thanks for joining us for this week of the car month.

Next week we're going to, we're going to talk about two yellow things, funny enough.

Ferrari or similar.

Ferrari versus similar.

So next week tune in, we have this yellow NSX, which if I predict, if I look into my crystal

ball will be turned around the opposite directions where we're looking at the front of it.

Yellow NSX and a yellow F 355 in a exclusive car margin.

This versus that comparison test.

Speaking of cars that are kind of unobtainable for most people, but still within the realm.

But in order of magnitude, one to two orders of magnitude less expensive than some of the

big hitters from the Bachman collection.

And so we'll bitch about things that are expensive things next week that we hate and find which

one we hate less.

Shocking.

Yes.

Perfect.

So tune in next week and let's hope there are no other big collections that sell because

my stomach can't deal with this.

I can't handle it.

This Ferrari Auction Just Broke 19 Sales Records — Carmudgeon w/ Cammisa & Derek Tam-Scott — Ep. 223

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