They will try to sell a rare Ferrari F512 M for $700,000. Sotheby’s will be auctioning one of 75 US-spec supercars.
Sotheby’s auction house will offer one of the Ferrari F512 M copies – the evolution of the Testarossa and the last model from Maranello with an opposed twelve-cylinder engine – at the January auction in Arizona. The supercar is painted in a rare smoky gray shade and is estimated at 625-700 thousand dollars.
Today, Ferrari Testarossas are sold at auctions for 300-400 thousand dollars, and rare specimens, such as the Testarossa Pininfarina Spider Special Production, go for four times more. But the supercar in the photos turned out to be somewhere in the middle: at the Sotheby’s auction at the end of January, they plan to get 625-700 thousand dollars for it. It’s all about the low mileage (23,000 km) and non-standard body color, which very few Ferrari dealers and customers could afford in the 90s.
However, the car itself is not the Testarossa known, for example, from the series ‘Miami Police’. It is a version of the F512 M with fixed headlights like the racing 512 S or 312PB, upgraded chassis and engine. The coupe differs from the regular Ferrari 512 with lights, Speedline alloy wheels, adjustable pedals, more powerful air conditioning and improved interior trim. Twelve-cylinder engine 4.9 l. here fitted with titanium connecting rods and producing 441 horsepower versus 428 in the previous 512 TR.
And although there was a huge demand for the F512 M, only 501 Berlinettes were produced, of which 75 were intended for American customers. Most cars were painted in the standard Rosso Corsa, black or metallic yellow, but ten 512s received a unique color – a prerogative that only large dealerships could use. For example, this supercar was delivered to the distributor Ferrari of Denver in August 1996. It is painted in a smoky gray shade of Canna di Fucile Metallizzato and the interior is trimmed with beige leather.
Since the F512 M was the last Ferrari model with a twelve-cylinder engine, it could be quite a battle.
