Collecting Ferraris for Art’s Sake

Which would you rather have, a dead 14-ft shark in a tank of formaldehyde, or a real alloy-bodied 250 SWB with Le Mans history?

by Michael Sheehan

To the aficionado, Ferraris have always been industrial art, the pinnacle of technology and styling of their era. Many of my clients have described their Ferraris as user-friendly interactive art. In the last decade, auctioneers and collectors have created a new world of art buyers intertwined with Ferrari buyers.

Most auction houses sell art in the form of paintings or sculptures, so they know how the game is played, and many high-end Ferrari collectors are also art collectors. With the sale of the Steve McQueen Lusso at Christie’s Monterey auction, at about five times the cost of a “normal” Lusso, some significant Ferraris may have morphed into interactive modern art.

Ferraris recover, modern art booms

Relative to the modern art market, Ferraris have been losing the value wars since the crash of the ’90s. At that time, 250 GTOs sold...