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Some Ferraris announce themselves from three blocks away. The 250 GT Lusso just quietly wins the room. Gooding Christie's has one of the loveliest of them lined up for its Retromobile New York Auctions this November, a 1963 example bodied by Scaglietti that still carries the V12 it left Maranello with.
The catalogue entry is short on words for the moment, but the numbers already do the talking: chassis 5073 GT, engine 5073 GT. In a corner of the market where originality settles the argument, a Lusso still wearing its factory-stamped block starts from a very strong position. Gooding Christie's says complete lot descriptions and additional photography will arrive closer to the sale, with the full online catalogue due in October.
The Last, And Loveliest, Of The 250 Road Cars
Ferrari built the 250 GT Lusso for barely two years, from 1962 to 1964, and only around 350 left the factory. Pininfarina drew it, Scaglietti built the bodies, and the result is still one of the most quietly perfect shapes anyone has ever wrapped around a race-bred engine. The long nose, the tapered Kamm tail, the thin pillars and that enormous rear glass all belong to a car designed by people who knew exactly when to stop.
Underneath sits the 3.0-liter Colombo V12 that made the 250 series famous, fed by three Weber carburetors and good for roughly 240 horsepower through a four-speed gearbox, with disc brakes at all four corners and a top speed close to 150 mph. The cabin is pure early-sixties Ferrari theater, with the big speedometer and tachometer sitting in the middle of the dash and the smaller gauges angled toward the driver.
It was the Ferrari the famous bought when they wanted to actually drive one. Steve McQueen had a Lusso. So did Eric Clapton. Six decades later the model's reputation as the most usable of the great 250s has only hardened, which is exactly why good ones almost never linger.
Where The Money Sits
No estimate has been published yet, but the comparables are not shy. Classic.com puts the Lusso market average at just over $1.5 million, with sales running from roughly $907,000 for a tired example to $3.3 million for the very best. Gooding Christie's itself sold a 1963 Lusso for $1,765,000 back in March, and the same house set a $25.3 million Ferrari record earlier this year, so it knows precisely what this audience will pay for the right car.
A Paris Institution Lands In Manhattan
Retromobile runs November 19 through 22 at the Javits Center, with Gooding Christie's taking the rostrum on Friday, November 20 and Saturday, November 21 and viewing opening Thursday for ticket holders. The buyer's premium is set at 12 percent up to $250,000 and 10 percent on anything above that. This is the first North American edition of the Paris institution, staged under a multi-year partnership that installs Gooding Christie's as its official auction house, and the consignment book is still open.
The 250 market has spent the year proving it still has room to run, from seven-figure California Spiders to Lussos carrying $1.8 million estimates. A matching-numbers, Scaglietti-bodied Lusso at the debut of a marquee event is exactly the sort of lot that sets the tone for a room, and if the rest of the file reads as cleanly as the stampings, 5073 GT is going to be very hard to buy.
