This car, Lot 268, sold for $445,000, including buyer’s premium, at RM Sotheby’s Monterey, CA, sale, on August 15, 2026.
Fiat bought 50% of Ferrari in 1969. The deal guaranteed Enzo Ferrari control over his racing department, with Fiat running the production-car side of the company. At the time, Ferrari sold about 900 cars a year from an impressive but uninspiring line of front-engine 12-cylinder models and the mid-engine 6-cylinder Dino. Fiat knew how to build and sell cars but needed cars to sell. It immediately plowed funding into research and development along with facilities expansion.
The high-performance mid-engine 365 Boxer was introduced in 1971, before Fiat’s involvement, along with the 365 GTC/4 luxury grand tourer. The V6 Dino 246 was replaced in 1973 by the V8-powered 308 GT4 (also sold with a Dino badge, initially), then augmented with the highly successful Ferrari-badged 308 GTB and GTS and upgraded evolutions. The 328 GTB/GTS updates of the 308 hit in 1986. The 348 tb and 348 ts replaced the 328 line in 1989. Influenced by the Fiat regime, the 348 was designed to be less costly to build than past models. It was an attractive borrower of the Testarossa’s signature side-strake styling, but it felt flimsy. Luca di Montezemolo took over leadership of Ferrari in 1991, dressing down the troops with a scathing review of his own 348.
Montezemolo’s charge was heard loud and clear. Ferrari’s R&D department reached deep in its bag of tricks and pulled out a new car that brought Ferrari into a new era of performance-car manufacturing. The subsequent F355 Berlinetta was introduced in 1994 and went well beyond updating a past model. Starting with a much stiffer monocoque, the F355 got a five-valve engine with nearly 20% more horsepower than the 348. A 6-speed conventional manual transmission was still available, but this model launched Ferrari’s new F1 paddle-shift automated manual transmission. The F355’s cosmetics were updated with higher-quality materials and advanced aerodynamics.
A big leap forward
The 360 Modena followed the F355. Introduced in 1999, the 360 continued to push the envelope. Born of a collaboration between Ferrari and aluminum producer Alcoa, the 360 was a clean-sheet design with every component open for reinterpretation. If the F355’s modus operandi was performance, the 360’s was refinement. Aluminum replaced steel in the chassis, body and suspension, creating a car that was both stronger and lighter than its predecessor.
Cosmetically, the 360 Modena was a fresh take on Pininfarina’s three-box, Coke-bottle silhouette, featuring notes of Ferrari’s 250 LM and 246 Dino. Pop-up headlights were discarded in favor of modern light assemblies. A see-through Plexiglass window over the engine added some talking points to the design. The body was 10% larger than the F355, allowing a more comfortable interior and room for golf clubs. Ferrari’s Carrozzeria Scaglietti program offered options to personalize a car to a client’s taste. Very importantly, Ferrari added a timing-belt access panel in the bulkhead so that the engine no longer needed to be removed to change the timing belt.
Going up
Over the past several years, the average price of a 360 Modena hovered around $110,000. About six months ago, some manual examples crept into the $200ks and then the $300ks. A couple of dealers offered cars in the $400k area. So this $445,000 sale in itself was not surprising, but for the car it was. This was not a delivery-mileage garage queen. It showed 27,407 miles, enough that most trophy-hunting collectors would not normally consider it. It did, however, feature several options that made it desirable.
The car was one of just 469 360 coupes built with the 6-speed manual gearbox. The mention of a manual transmission is enough to make normally frugal buyers reach for their billfold without asking the price. Next, it was well optioned, including rare factory “racing” seats. These are fairly impractical in a road car due to their high bolsters, so few customers ordered them. Finally, it was one of just 25 360 Modenas with the removable “sunroof” option. The elephant in the room is that only 25 were built because only 25 people in the world ordered one. The combination of those three options made the car a unicorn.
Cost is secondary
If your first response to an outlier sale is to list what else you could get for the money, don’t. Buyers have different resources and different priorities. Without any background, it would appear the buyer of the $40 million Ferrari Luce, sold for charity at this same auction, had lost his mind. The facts are far from that. The buyer was an optometrist and inventor who, through shrewd investing, has amassed an estimated $4.6 billion fortune. He is a serious philanthropist who has made major gifts to academic institutions, healthcare organizations and research centers. If you thought the $40 million would have been better spent building a wing on a hospital or two, he has already done that and more.
More to the point, why would someone pay well over the prevailing rate for RM Sotheby’s 360 when there are so many other options for nearly a half-million dollars? I do not know the buyer, but I suspect they already have a 911 GT3 and a Range Rover. They probably have at least one other Ferrari. What they didn’t have was one of 25 sunroof-equipped 360 Modenas. Now they do.
The seller has reason to celebrate. RM Sotheby’s brought together two buyers who appreciated the uniqueness of this car. The buyer paid a top-of-the-market price for a less-than-top-of-the-market example, but Ferrari may not have built another racing-seat, removable-top, manual 360 Modena. When there is only one, price becomes secondary to desire.
