1963 Ferrari 250 GTO – The $50,000,000 Question

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– Posted on April 16, 2025

Although they are objectively beautiful, rare and very fast, I’m totally out of my depth when it comes to older Ferraris. Especially the 250 – there were just too many of those to keep track. This looked like one, and a pretty exclusive one at that. The big question being: real or replica?

I’ll answer that straight away: it’s a genuine GTO. A very well-known and thoroughly documented one, too. Ferrari 250 GTOs were more meant for the track than the street, though they are road-legal.

This one must have had a special dispensation to be able to putter about Tokyo with its British plates on. But then, if you’re able to afford care like these, I’m sure you can come to some sort of an arrangement, no matter where you are.

This particular car is known, like all GTOs, by its engine number. Let’s meet and greet 4219, then. Said engine is a race-spec 2953cc all-alloy V12 fed by six Weber carbs, producing 296hp. The chassis is (of course) tubular and the back end is still a live axle setup – this was perhaps the last truly competitive racing car that featured the traditional front-engined / non-IRS layout.

And it certainly was a highly competitive racing car in its day. Here’s what our priceless prancing horse looked like originally, finished in Cina Rosso red with a blue interior. It was ordered by tobacco heiress and NART racing driver Mamie Reynolds, who took delivery of it in Florida in February 1963. It won at Daytona a few days later, driven by Pedro Rodriguez.

A couple of months later, 4219 was purchased by Californian Buick and Ferrari dealer Bev Spencer, repainted white and raced at Laguna Seca, where it finished second. Spencer’s financial means were not infinite though, so it was re-sold later that same year for $14,000 – just $4000 less than it had cost new.

Here’s the ad, as published in Road & Track in December 1963. The car was sold a few weeks later, staying in California but switching to the dark blue paint that it still wears now. In 1993, 4219 was sold to present owner and UK-based Ferrari collector Brandon Wang, who has managed to keep in intact and unrestored ever since.

Mr Wang bought this rare machine for $3.2 million back in 1993 – a tidy sum, to be sure. But given that one 1993 dollar is roughly worth two present-day ones, it was still a bargain. If the last couple of GTO sales are anything to go by, should 4219 go back on the market, it would presently fetch between $50-70 million, especially since it was raced, never restored and 100% legit.

Short of finding something that won Le Mans or the Indy 500, I doubt I’ll be able to score anything more exclusive than this. And those racers probably won’t have as nice an interior as this Ferrari, nor will they be worth anywhere near as much.

Putting aside its astronomical price, which I was unaware of when I took the pictures, it’s undeniable that the GTO’s muscular, yet sensuous curves are a work of art. It’s all in the name of aerodynamics, as worked out by Bizzarrini and the coachbuilder Scaglietti, but the shape of this thing was amazing to see in the metal.

And I must say the dark blue paint really compliments it very well – much better than the white it briefly wore. I can’t say that it really stirs anything in me, though. Now that I realize how much it’s worth and all that, so sure, it’s like I met a major film star, but not one whose movies ever made my top 100. So long then, 4219. You’ll always remain a 4-digit number worth an eight-digit sum. A car for math nerds or for dyed-in-the-wool Ferrari tifosi.