Feature
The Biggest Results from RM Sotheby's Monterey Auction
Join us for a rundown of over $100 million worth of results from RM Sotheby's Monterey auction.
August 18, 2026
Five generations of Ferrari halo cars, five remarkable results, over $50 million. Here's what made Ferrari's F Cars so valuable at Monterey.
Five cars, five generations and four decades of Ferrari at its most extreme. From the Group B-bred 288 GTO to the cutting-edge hybrid LaFerrari, each represents a different interpretation of what the ultimate road-going Ferrari should be, and together they form arguably the most desirable bloodline in automotive history.
At RM Sotheby’s Monterey auction last week, exceptional examples of all five crossed the block — and with every one exceeding its estimate, the results offered a fascinating insight into just how far values have moved in recent years. Without further ado, let’s take a look at each in chronological order.
Estimate: $9,000,000 - $11,000,000 USD
Sold for $11,555,000 USD
The 288 GTO is where Ferrari’s modern halo-car lineage really begins. Developed with the intention of going racing in Group B, it took the basic silhouette of the 308 and turned it into something altogether more serious, with lightweight composite bodywork, a longitudinally mounted 2.8-litre twin-turbo V8 producing 400 bhp and a top speed approaching 190 mph. Group B disappeared before Ferrari could put the GTO to work, but the road car had already made its point. Just 272 were produced, making it comfortably rarer than any of the four halo cars that followed.
That scarcity has increasingly been reflected in values. A 2,900-mile example sold for $3.4 million in 2019, while RM Sotheby’s achieved $4.4 million for another in Monterey in 2022. This particular car was in another league again: the 99th production GTO, Classiche certified, with just 1,541 km from new and believed to be one of perhaps six remaining examples with fewer than 1,000 miles.
Against that background, even RM’s $9–11 million estimate represented an enormous leap, but the eventual $11.5 million result pushed it further still — more than two and a half times the price of RM’s Monterey example just four years earlier.
Estimate: $4,000,000 - $5,000,000 USD
Sold for $8,265,000 USD
If the 288 GTO established the formula, the F40 turned it into a poster-car phenomenon. Developed from the stillborn 288 GTO Evoluzione programme and created to celebrate Ferrari’s 40th anniversary, it was the last road car developed under Enzo Ferrari himself. Its 2.9-litre twin-turbo V8 produced 471 bhp, while carbon fibre and Kevlar bodywork, minimal interior trim and an obsessive approach to weight made the F40 feel much closer to a racing car than almost anything that has followed. Ferrari originally envisaged building only 400, but extraordinary demand eventually resulted in 1,315 examples — far more than its siblings, but hardly enough to dilute its status.
F40 values have been rising constantly rather than exploding overnight. They could be had for less than £1 million 10 years ago, but not anymore. In Monterey in 2025, a single-owner car showing just 360 km reached $3.9 million.
This car, however, was exceptional even by F40 standards: one of 213 US-market cars, just 320 miles from new and originally purchased by legendary Ford and Chrysler executive Lee Iacocca. RM estimated it at $4–5 million, but that provenance and extraordinary preservation sent it to $8.265 million — more than double the price achieved by the 224-mile car at the same auction only a year earlier.
Estimate: $7,000,000 - $9,000,000 USD
Sold for $12,105,000 USD
The F50 took a completely different approach. Where the F40 was turbocharged, aggressive and deliberately crude, its successor was conceived as something approaching a Formula One car for the road. Its naturally aspirated 4.7-litre V12 had its roots in Ferrari’s Formula One programme and was bolted directly to the carbon-fibre tub as a structural component, while a six-speed manual gearbox and removable roof made the F50 one of the most exciting flagship Ferraris ever built. Ferrari produced only 349 numbered examples, including just 55 for the US market.
For years the F50 lived somewhat in the F40’s shadow, but that relationship has changed dramatically. One example reached $5.5 million at Monterey in 2024, then came a major step upwards in 2025, when Ralph Lauren’s Giallo Modena F50 sold for $9.245 million.
This car, which went under the hammer at Monterey in 2026, is a US-market example, number 079/349, Classiche certified with 6,196 miles and the added provenance of having been owned by Mike Tyson. Estimated at $7–9 million, it eventually brought $12.1 million. In other words, an F50 that would have been a circa-$5 million car only three years earlier has become an eight-figure Ferrari, proof that the F50 is very much out of the F40’s shadow and in its own limelight.
Estimate: $6,750,000 - $7,500,000 USD
Sold for $9,410,000 USD
Named after the company’s legendary founder, the Enzo represented Ferrari’s interpretation of a Formula One-inspired road car for the new millennium. Its carbon-fibre construction, carbon-ceramic brakes, paddle-shift transmission and active aerodynamics were cutting-edge at the time, while the new 6.0-litre F140 V12 produced 651 bhp and established an engine family that would underpin Ferrari’s flagship V12s for years. Ferrari originally intended to build 399 examples, although RM Sotheby’s records total production at 498, including 111 US-market cars.
The Enzo's trajectory has been substantial. RM sold a 2,687-mile example for $4.1 million at Monterey in 2023, followed by another at $4.3 million in 2024. This car in 2026 is one of those 111 US examples and has covered 9,834 miles, but compensates for its comparatively usable mileage with just two owners from new, 19 years with its current custodian and Classiche certification.
Its $9.4 million sale price smashed through the $6.75–7.5 million estimate and represents more than twice what comparable Enzos were achieving only two or three years ago — strong evidence that the Enzo is now being pulled upwards as collectors increasingly value the entire Ferrari halo-car lineage.
Estimate: $5,000,000 - $6,000,000 USD
Sold for $8,695,000 USD
LaFerrari brought that lineage into the hybrid era. Revealed in 2013, it paired a naturally aspirated 6.3-litre V12 with Ferrari's HY-KERS hybrid system for a combined 950 bhp. Despite the electrification, its philosophy remained unmistakably Ferrari: the electric motor existed to make the car faster rather than to turn it into an economy-minded hybrid.
Just 499 coupés were originally slated for production, all allocated before production had even begun, making LaFerrari an instant collectable as well as the technological flagship of its generation. Values have taken longer to accelerate than those of its older siblings. A 2015 example sold for $4.7 million in 2024, while RM achieved $5.2 million for a coupé at Monterey in 2025.
This car had everything collectors increasingly want: one owner from new, just 711 miles, Classiche certification and, importantly for a hybrid hypercar now more than a decade old, a replacement and upgraded high-voltage battery fitted in 2025 as part of a remarkable $349,000 service. Against a $5–6 million estimate, it sold for $8.695 million, comfortably beyond recent coupé results and another indication that LaFerrari is beginning to make the transition from used hypercar to established collector car.
Taken together, the five results tell quite a story. These cars haven't simply appreciated at roughly the same rate as the wider collector market. The 288 GTO has gone from around $4 million to more than $11 million in four years; the F50 from around $5 million to more than $12 million in three; and even the relatively young LaFerrari has jumped from the mid-$4 millions to almost $9 million.
Provenance and mileage played a major role in several of these results, so they shouldn't automatically be treated as the new going rate for every example. But with all five cars beating their estimates — and four exceeding the top estimate by more than $1 million — Monterey 2026 offered pretty compelling evidence of just how aggressively collectors are chasing the very best examples of Ferrari's flagship bloodline.
