Luce, the first fully electric car produced by Ferrari, sold for a record $40 million in a charity sale on Saturday, setting a record for the most expensive new vehicle sold at an auction.
The sale, conducted by the collector car auction company RM Sotheby’s took place at Monterey Car Week in California, CNN reported. It sold for 36 times the original estimate, according to the cable news outlet.
American billionaire Herbert A. Wertheim, a Ferrari collector who founded and runs optical lens manufacturer Brain Power Inc., bought the vehicle, Reuters reported.
RM Sotheby’s has not officially confirmed the winner of the auction.
The auction house said the proceeds from the sale would be donated to Ferrari’s foundation of educational programs, according to CNBC.
“The bids kept climbing. Then, history was made,” Ferrari USA wrote in an Instagram post on Sunday. The company added that the sale set “a new record for the highest-priced new car ever sold at auction.”
The final price for the “Chassis O” model, created by Ferrari’s Tailor Made division, topped the $26 million paid by Wertheim last year for a one-off Ferrari Daytona SP3, Reuters reported.
The vehicle was unveiled in May, and deliveries for publicly available Luce vehicles are expected to begin during the fourth quarter of 2026, according to CNN. The price tag for the vehicle is $650,000.
The cable news outlet reported that the “Chassis O” model has an exclusive pearl-like, semi-gloss finish. According to RM Sotheby’s, the vehicle’s personalized pigment allows the car’s exterior to produce “shifting colorful reflections” that change from green to violet when exposed to light.
When the Luce was unveiled, analysts panned it, citing a mixture of “design hate” and “travel and arrive,” CNBC reported. Critics noted that Ferrari’s stock price rose significantly before the launch of the vehicle.
Ferrari countered the criticism earlier this year, stating that the Luce “really is a different sort of Ferrari for a different sort of Ferrari client,” CNN reported.