The first Ferrari Luce off the production line has been sold for a spectacular $40m (£30m) at an auction during Monterey car week in the US. 

The Californian event is an excuse for all of the most rich and famous car collectors in the world to come together and show off their well-polished one-offs and coachbuilt specials, with the odd launch of a limited run hypercar to liven up proceedings. 

Amid all of the highly collectible classics in the RM Sotheby’s auction that topped out the week was Ferrari Luce chassis number 0, explained at the beginning of the bidding as a US specification car – and not the one that was appearing at the auction. But this is just the sort of controversy that the new Ferrari EV is used to. 

The Luce at the stage was set to be taken back to Maranello after the event – the lucky winner of the $40m electric Ferrari will get their delivery when the first car rolls off the actual production line in the first quarter of 2027. 

The car was sold to the gentleman at the back with the oversized bank balance after a frenzied round of bidding and gasps in the room as the bid price kept climbing. 

The winning bidder turned out to be a billionaire philanthropist in bright red shoes called Herbie Wertheim from Florida, who invented a UV coating for glasses lenses back in the 1960s. 

He also broke the record for the most expensive new car sold at auction last year as well when he bought another Ferrari for $26m. 

Ginny Buckley recently had a look at the Luce at the Goodwood Festival of Speed – check out her video at the bottom. She liked it, but perhaps not £30m much.

Plus Wertheim could presumably have waited a few months and got a Luce with a less illustrious build number for the standard £475,000, but that wouldn’t have passed on tens of millions of dollars into the Ferrari Foundation charity. 

Nor presumably would it had catapulted Herbie to the front of whatever queue might be forming for the next fancy car from Maranello. 

The money will go to Ferrari’s charity that it started in 2003 to safeguard the history of the brand and promote the local area in Modena where the company is headquartered. It looks after the official Enzo Ferrari museum that was built on the site of Ferrari’s birthplace next to the workshop where his father worked.