Sold! Burnt-out Ferrari fetches $1.9m at Monterey auction

Remember last month when this rusting, burnt-out, crashed-many-times heap that used to be a Ferrari 500 Mondial Spider was expected to fetch up to $1.6 million at auction? And how we all laughed? Well…

… it exceeded its estimate. Someone out there in the human sphere saw fit to spend $1,875,000 (about £1.47m) on the pile of scrap metal above, on the basis that in its previous, unmangled shape it was one of the rarest and most sought after race cars on the planet.

Reminder: this 1954 fossil of a 500 Mondial Spider Series 1 was one of just 13 ever built, designed by Pinin Farina and later rebodied by Scaglietti.

It was raced by factory driver Franco Cortese and once finished 14th at the Mille Miglia, before changing hands a few times and being crashed on multiple occasions.

After that it was purchased by a US collector in 1978, and kept in its current condition in a barn along with 19 other Ferraris until its rediscovery decades later.

The only logic we can see for the purchase is that a full restoration (which you’d think would easily cost more than the heap of metal itself) could mean a return of many millions of dollars if it can indeed be returned to its former glory.

So like Homes Under the Hammer, but for a classic Ferrari instead of a two-up-two-down in Bolton.