Ferrari 250 GTO sells for record $48m at Pebble Beach auction

A Ferrari 250 GTO once owned by jewellery designer Gianni Bulgari has taken the record for the most expensive car ever sold at auction.

The buyer, who remains anonymous, paid $48.4m (£37.6m) for a 1962 example of the grand tourer at RM Sotheby’s Monterey auction at California’s Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance on Saturday.

The Series I racer, chassis number 3413 GT, is the third example built by the Italian carmaker and is just one of 36 in existence.

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Following a stint as a test car for the Targa Florio road rally in Sicily, the 250 GTO was sold to amateur racer Edoardo Lualdi-Gabardi, who drove it to victory in the 1962 Italian National GT championship. Bulgari then bought the car from Lualdi-Gabardi later that year.

In Bulgari’s hands, the 250 GTO won its class at the 1963 and 1964 Targa Florio. It competed in a further 20 races in 1964 and remained in use until the 1980s.

Despite its long history in motorsport, the car has never had a mechanical failure or been involved in a crash.

The bodywork was changed to the Series II silhouette by Italian design firm Scaglietti in 1964, but the rest of the sleek grand tourer has been left untouched.

The car features the same 296bhp 3.0-litre V12 engine, gearbox and rear-axle as it did when it left the factory 56 years ago.

RM Sotheby’s called the newly sold racer the “holy grail” for car collectors. But while the sale marks a new auction record, it is not the most expensive car ever sold.

That title goes to another Series 1 250 GTO, which was acquired in June by American businessman David MacNeil for $70m (£52m).

MacNeil bought the 1963-registered record breaker, which won the ten-day Tour de France road rally a year after rolling off the production line, in a private sale.