RM Sotheby's holds its London Auction on Saturday 31 October, and two of the Ferraris in it make a useful lesson in how this market prices specification. Neither is the most expensive car in the sale. Both are estimated well above what an ordinary example of the model fetches, for reasons that have nothing to do with the badge and everything to do with how each car was built and kept.
One is a 550 Barchetta Pininfarina with almost no miles. The other is a 575M Maranello with an option pack few buyers ticked. Between them they show the two kinds of premium collectors pay: for a car that has barely been used, and for a car built to a rare factory specification.
The 550 Barchetta: 571 kilometres from new
Ferrari built 448 Barchettas in 2000 and 2001, the roofless run-out of the 550 Maranello, every one a gated manual. Lot 157 is number 138, finished in Rosso Corsa over black leather, and one of only 48 built in right-hand drive. It was delivered new to Hong Kong in June 2001, certified by Ferrari Classiche in 2012, came to the UK in 2022, and shows 571 kilometres on its odometer. It comes with its tools, fabric roof and the pair of Barchetta helmets.
RM's estimate is £725,000 to £825,000. To see how ambitious that is, look at what ordinary Barchettas have made. The Classic Valuer puts the median sale since 2020 at £355,218. In the UK this year, Barchettas sold for £335,500 at Broad Arrow in January, £300,700 through Collecting Cars in April and £438,125 at RM Sotheby's in July.
So the estimate is roughly double the going rate for a good car. That is not as wild as it sounds. The highest Barchetta prices this year have come in the United States, where one sold for £938,630 at Mecum in August and another for £1,207,605 at Broad Arrow the same month. The very best cars, with the lowest use, have already shown they can double the median. What London will test is whether that money exists for a right-hand-drive car on this side of the Atlantic.
Two cautions. A car with 571 km has been stored for a quarter of a century, and storage is not the same as use: seals, fuel systems and tyres age whether or not the car moves, so the new owner should budget for recommissioning before driving it far. And it is offered on a temporary import bond, which a buyer keeping it in the UK will need to factor in.
Mileage is the one specification you can never add back.
The 575M HGTC: the option pack that was rare from the start
The 575M replaced the 550 in 2002. Most were built with Ferrari's F1 paddle-shift gearbox, and a standard car is £80,000 on AutoIndex. Lot 140 is one of those F1 cars, left-hand drive, delivered new in Belgium in 2005 and in the UK since 2012, with 39,321 km and service records from a string of marque specialists. What sets it apart is the HGTC pack: carbon-ceramic brakes, 19-inch split-rim wheels, a titanium exhaust, lowered and retuned suspension and a quicker steering rack. RM reports that as few as 98 cars were built with it.
RM estimates £120,000 to £140,000, and the car is offered without reserve, so it will sell for whatever the room decides. Recent results suggest the estimate is about right. Another left-hand-drive HGTC car with the F1 gearbox sold for £116,132 at Broad Arrow on 14 October, and a third failed to sell at RM Sotheby's in September against an estimate of roughly £139,000 to £185,000.
Read together, those results put the HGTC pack at something like £35,000 to £60,000 over a standard 575M. It is the same pattern we found with the gearbox: the market pays for the specification that makes a car rarer and better to drive, and it pays most when that specification was a minority choice at the time.
What to watch on Saturday
For the Barchetta, the question is whether a near-new right-hand-drive car can reach American money in London. A result inside the estimate would confirm that the top of the Barchetta market has moved, and that delivery-mileage cars are now priced as a separate thing from good ones. A result near £500,000 would say the US sales were exceptional.
For the 575M, with no reserve, the hammer price is the market's honest view of what HGTC adds. If it lands near £116,000, the pack is worth about £35,000 over a standard car; much above the estimate and it is worth more than that.
Update, 1 November: the Barchetta did not sell and the 575M HGTC made £103,500. The full results and what they mean for values. In the meantime, the 575M Maranello page and the 550 Maranello page show our current values and a free check for any asking price, and the Ferrari Nineties guide covers the 550 and the Barchetta in depth.
