Two hours on a Saturday afternoon in January reset the modern Ferrari market. At Mecum’s Kissimmee sale, the 46-car collection of the late dealer Phil Bachman crossed the block at no reserve, and by the time it was finished every one of Ferrari’s five classic halo models had a new auction record. The 288 GTO, F40, F50, Enzo and LaFerrari, all rewritten in the same afternoon.
The Enzo was the one that made people put their coffee down. A Giallo Modena car showing 649 miles, ordered new by the Bachmans and customised through the factory, sold for $17,875,000, or roughly £13.2 million. The previous record for an Enzo stood at around $6 million, set in 2023.
Nine months on, that result no longer looks like an outlier. It looks like the starting gun.
All conversions in this piece use a rate of $1.35 to the pound, correct at the time of writing.
What actually changed in 2026
A standard Ferrari Enzo. The January record car had 649 miles, factory-custom paint and one owner from new, and made more than twice what an ordinary example brings.
The Enzo has climbed further and faster than almost anyone predicted. Results above $4.5 million were unusual before this year. Now they look modest.
- $17,875,000 at Mecum Kissimmee in January, the record, and still standing
- $15,185,000 at Broad Arrow’s Amelia sale in March, a 450-mile Nero D.S. car and one of a dozen US-delivery examples in that colour
- $13,018,950 with premium through duPont Registry in June, a one-off Rosso Dino car and now the most expensive vehicle ever sold in an online-only auction
- $12,100,000 at Mecum’s Monterey sale in August, a record for a red Enzo
Monterey in August was the clearest illustration of how wide the range has become. Three Enzos sold across the week at $9,410,000 through RM Sotheby’s, $10,675,000 through Broad Arrow and $12,100,000 through Mecum. Same model, same week, nearly $3 million between the top and bottom.
Europe has been more measured. RM Sotheby’s sold an Enzo in Monaco in April for €6,530,000, and its Paris result in January was €8,105,000. The spread between the best car in the world and a merely good one has widened enormously, and that matters more than the headline number.
Bachman’s F50 deserves its own mention. Bought from golfer Ian Poulter and showing 252 miles, it made $12,210,000 against a previous record of $9.245 million set the August before. For years the F50 was the awkward one in the family, overshadowed by the F40 and priced accordingly. It now carries a record close to double the F40’s.
The Carrera GT set three records in three months
A standard Porsche GT, one of 1,270 built. The $6.7 million record car was one of 19 Paint to Sample cars delivered in North America, and the only one in Gulf Blue over Ascot Brown.
Porsche’s V10 tells a cleaner version of the same story. The public auction record coming into the year was $2.2 million, set back in 2022.
January brought a Seal Grey car at $3,085,000 through RM Sotheby’s in Arizona. February produced a 602-mile GT Silver example at $3,305,000 in Miami. Three weeks after that, Broad Arrow sold a Paint to Sample Gulf Blue car over Ascot Brown at Amelia Island for $6,715,000, roughly £5 million and more than double the record that had stood a fortnight earlier.
Only one of those results can be explained by rarity alone. Porsche built 1,270 Carrera GTs, which by supercar standards is not a small number. What set the Gulf Blue car apart was that it was one of only 19 Paint to Sample cars delivered through Porsche Cars North America, and the only one in that combination. Standard cars now trade somewhere around $3 million to $3.5 million. Specification did the rest.
That premium has spread across Porsche’s halo models. A one-of-one Pure Orange 918 Spyder with 845 miles and the Weissach Package sold at the same Kissimmee auction for $6,050,000 including premium, well clear of the $3,937,500 Grand Prix White car that held the record before it. The paint was a $21,000 option in 2014. It turned out to be the best money that first owner ever spent.
Be clear about the limits, though. A rare colour will not double the value of a 992 Carrera. It moves the needle on cars that were already scarce, already sought after and already trading well above list.
The 458 Speciale Aperta caught the updraught
The Aperta was never a halo car. It was the open-top version of the last naturally aspirated V8 Ferrari, limited to 499 examples, and for years it sat in the sensible category of modern limited-run Ferraris that quietly held their money.
That has gone out of the window. Hagerty’s June valuation update put condition #2 Apertas at $1.65 million, up 91 per cent year on year, with the very best cars at $1.9 million. The public record now stands at $3,080,000, set in January.
The most useful test came at RM Sotheby’s Monaco sale on 24 and 25 April. A Giallo Modena Aperta from The Untouched Collection, showing 99 kilometres from new and carrying a €900,000 to €1,100,000 estimate, sold for €1,175,000. Above the top estimate, but nothing like the multiples being discussed in the forums beforehand.
That gap between expectation and result is worth sitting with. Even in a market this hot, European bidders drew a line where American ones did not.
Why now
The short answer is that the people writing the cheques changed.
Hagerty’s data has been pointing this way for some time. Its RADindex of 1980s and 1990s collectibles rose 3 per cent last quarter, while its index of 1950s American cars and its index of classic German cars from the 1950s to 1970s each fell 3 per cent. The German index is down around 5 per cent across the year, with the Mercedes 190SL alone dropping 12 per cent. Meanwhile 58 per cent of enquiry interest in the 2006–2010 BMW M5 comes from enthusiasts under 40.
Monterey made the split impossible to miss. Total sales across the five houses hit a record $755.6 million, up from $432.8 million in 2025 and comfortably past the $471 million posted in the pandemic-fuelled 2022 season. Modern supercars accounted for more than half of that. Seven of the top ten lots were Ferraris. And the 1950s and 1960s were the only decades to finish below book against Hagerty Price Guide values.
The generation that had an Enzo and a Carrera GT on the bedroom wall has reached the point in their careers where they can buy one. They are not competing for a 300SL Gullwing, because a 300SL was never their poster. Add the wealth transfer already under way, an estimated $100 trillion passing between generations by 2048, and a growing share of what reaches the market is arriving from estates rather than from owners choosing to sell. The Bachman collection was exactly that.
The pull is working its way down the ladder too. F430s, Gallardos and the E46 M3 CSL are all firmer than they were, for the same reason.
The part the headlines leave out
Here is where most coverage of this boom goes wrong.
A record price is not a market. Hagerty’s Collector Car Market Rating hit its lowest level in nearly 15 years in January, and its broader Market Index has been sitting at a four-year low, some 17 per cent below its December 2022 peak. At Monterey, in the largest week of collector car sales ever recorded, 241 lots still sold below estimate. Hagerty’s own summary described a market sorting itself into the irreplaceable and everything else.
Look again at the cars setting these records and the pattern is obvious. Delivery mileage or close to it. One owner, often from new. Factory-custom or Paint to Sample specification. Classiche or equivalent certification. Full history, original window sticker, luggage still in its bag. Offered at no reserve into a room of competing bidders with the whole thing broadcast live.
A 649-mile factory-custom Enzo from a famous single-owner collection is not the same asset as a well-kept 18,000-mile Enzo in Rosso Corsa, and the 2026 results should not be read as though it is. The €6.53 million Monaco car and the $1,652,500 paid for a troubled Carrera GT at RM Sotheby’s Tegernsee sale in July are the other half of the picture.
If you own one of these cars, the honest read is that the ceiling has moved a very long way and the floor has moved much less.
Where the money is looking next
The 2000s cars have largely made their move. Attention has shifted to the 2010s, and specifically to the last naturally aspirated engines built before turbocharging and hybrid assistance became universal. Three cars keep coming up.
Ferrari F12tdf
A standard Ferrari F12tdf, one of 799 built. The March record car had covered fewer than 100 miles and took close to three times what an ordinary example was bringing a year earlier.
The name honours the Tour de France Automobile and the 250 GT Berlinetta that dominated it in the late 1950s. Built between 2015 and 2017 and limited to 799 cars, it was the most powerful naturally aspirated Ferrari of its day at 769bhp, with the slots over its rear haunches a deliberate nod to the 250 GTO. Typical sales sat around $1.5 million until March, when a sub-100-mile example took $4,185,000 at Broad Arrow’s Amelia sale. That is a world record, and a fairly emphatic signal.
Lexus LFA
Lexus struggled to sell these at £375,000 in 2010. Cars sat unsold in showrooms for years. Only 500 were built, the Yamaha co-developed V10 is still cited as the finest-sounding road car engine ever made, and good examples now change hands between roughly $700,000 and $900,000, or £520,000 to £670,000. The exceptional ones have gone considerably further: a 748-mile car made $1,810,000 on Bring a Trailer in April, a public record for a standard LFA.
Selectivity applies here as much as anywhere. Another LFA went unsold at Mecum’s Monterey sale in August. As cabins have filled up with screens, the LFA’s carbon-shelled, analogue-dial interior has aged in the opposite direction to everything around it, but the market is still paying for the right car rather than any car.
Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series
One of 350 SLS AMG Black Series built, and the only Black Series given gullwing doors. The car that made $1.8 million in August sold in a year when two others failed to find a buyer at all.
The fifth Black Series and the only one with gullwing doors, limited to 350 cars worldwide with 132 of those delivered to the United States. Its 6.2-litre M159 V8 revs to 8,000rpm for 622bhp, and it remains the last naturally aspirated Black Series: the AMG GT Black Series that followed in 2020 is twin-turbocharged.
This one has moved fast. An example made $676,000 at RM Sotheby’s Monterey sale in August 2025. Twelve months later, on 14 August 2026, one sold for $1,815,000. That is not a gentle upward drift, and it happened while two other examples failed to find buyers in the intervening year.
A precedent worth remembering
None of this is unprecedented, and the precedent is not encouraging.
At the end of the 1980s, speculators piled into Ferrari’s limited-run cars. F40s changed hands unregistered at multiples of list, bought by people who never intended to drive them. When credit tightened in 1990, the market fell away sharply and values took years to recover.
The difference this time is who is buying. The Kissimmee and Amelia results were driven by collectors buying cars they wanted to own, not by traders buying paper. That is a meaningfully healthier foundation. It is not a guarantee, and anyone treating a supercar as an appreciating asset should size the position accordingly. We sell these cars for a living, and we would still rather you bought one because you want to drive it.
Where this leaves things
Predicting the ceiling on any of this is guesswork. The honest version of that sentence is that nobody at any auction house called a $17.9 million Enzo in January.
What the year has established is narrower and more useful. Exceptional examples of a specific generation of car have re-rated permanently, while the wider market has stayed roughly flat. The next major sales are not until January, which gives everyone a few months to work out which of those two facts matters more.
The interesting question is not whether the top keeps climbing. It is whether the ordinary cars follow, or whether the gap simply keeps widening.
If you are weighing up a modern classic and want a straight answer on condition, history and what a car is actually worth rather than what the headlines say, get in touch with the team at Redline Specialist Cars. We would rather talk you out of the wrong car than into it.
Image Credits: Featured image: Ferrari Enzo by Alexander Migl, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Ferrari Enzo: Brian Snelson from Hockley, Essex, England, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Porsche Carrera GT: Calreyn88, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Ferrari F12tdf: Mr.choppers, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Mercedes-Benz SLS AMG Black Series: Carfanatic2019, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
