Editorial

You had to be there, you really did. The Ferrari-collecting world had descended on Maranello last weekend for the second all-Ferrari auction, this time held by the Ontario-based company RM, in association with Sotheby’s.

As befits the location, and the handy forthcoming 60th birthday celebrations, the event was awash with the great and the good, including Michael Schumacher making an impromptu motorcycle stunt display on Saturday afternoon, and a visit from both Jean Todt and Ferrari President Luca di Montezemolo on the Sunday, while Edsel Ford was in the saleroom to see his yellow Daytona Spider sell for EURO 1,045,000.

The prices achieved were, by anyone’s standards, ‘significant’. While one would expect the big-ticket items to throw a stunning result up every now and again, this time all the multi-million-dollar lots sold well (very well indeed for the 1962 LM-winner) and the other entries followed in the slipstream, producing record-breaking figures for just about every model in the catalogue.

The result is that it’s difficult now to find a classic sporting 12-cylinder Ferrari for less than $200,000. Perhaps that’s right and proper, and befits the marque’s position as the most desirable and exclusive in the world, and the days of $100,000 Daytonas was pure happenstance, a temporary blip in the natural order of things.

Let’s see what happens over the rest of the year.

There’s no ClassicInside next week – normal service will be resumed on the 8^th June.

Steve Wakefield Managing Editor sw@classicdriver.com