Ferrari has a habit of turning the first or last car off a production line into something closer to a museum piece. When the automaker built one extra LaFerrari beyond the planned 499, entirely from spare parts, to raise money for earthquake relief in central Italy, it sold for $7 million at a Sotheby’s charity auction in 2016. A year later, the final LaFerrari Aperta ever made, again a charity build, fetched nearly $10 million at Fiorano. Neither of those cars was faster or rarer in the mechanical sense than any other example. What made them valuable was the story stamped into the metal: first or last, one of one, all tied to a good cause and a number nobody else will ever have.
That’s the play Ferrari is running again, this time with its most divisive model yet. RM Sotheby’s has entered “Chassis 0,” the very first production Luce ever built, into its Monterey sale this August, with an estimate north of $1.1 million. Considering the Luce’s roughly $640,000 US starting price, that’s nearly double sticker for a car that, shortly after its Rome debut, remains the most argued-about Ferrari of the decade.
The Luce is Ferrari’s first electric car, styled with help from Apple-designer Jony Ive’s LoveFrom studio, and the reaction has ranged from lukewarm to openly hostile. Ferrari’s stock dropped more than 6 percent the day after the reveal.
Enthusiasts can’t wrap their heads around, and the most diplomatic collectors say it should’ve been anything but a Ferrari. Even Pope Leo XIV, shown one during a visit to Castel Gandolfo, hilariously joked (jury is still out on whether it was a joke) when he asked whether it was Ferrari’s first sedan.
Underneath the polarising sheet metal sits genuine hardware. Four motors produce 1,035 hp, split front and rear, for a claimed 2.5 second sprint to 60 mph and a top speed nudging 193 mph. The 122 kWh battery is structural, and Ferrari even engineered a synthetic soundtrack pulled from the drivetrain itself rather than faking a V12 wail. Inside, LoveFrom’s restraint actually works, with real crafted switchgear instead of one glowing slab of touchscreen.
This particular Luce, finished in a bespoke pearlescent shade that shifts from green to violet in the light, carries proceeds going entirely to the Ferrari Foundation’s education work. Whether collectors want to own the first of something this contested is the real question this auction will answer soon enough.
