Ferrari 250 GTO sells for $35M

Ettore Bugatti once opined that nothing is too beautiful, nothing is too expensive. But even he may have baulked at the price of Sir Stirling Moss's apple-green 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO. It just sold for $35 million. THIRTY FIVE MILLION BUCKS.

That's 22 Bugatti Veyrons. Or 79 Rolls-Royce Phantoms. Or 2834 VW Ups. Or entire towns in the North of England.

So, what do you get in exchange for £22,661,065? A one-of-39 GTO - y'know, the one Jeremy Clarkson really, really likes - built for racing driver, Sir Stirling Moss.

But he didn't actually race it. Chassis number 3505, painted in the pale-green color of Stirling Moss's UDT-Laystall race team, was sculpted for him just before he suffered career-ending injuries in crash on April 23, 1962, at Goodwood.

It has raced, though. British driver Innes Ireland pedaled it at the 1962 24 Hours of Le Mans, but it didn't finish. Its main victory came when Ireland ran the GTO at Goodwood to win the 100-lap Tourist Trophy.

So what sort of a person buys a $35 million car? According to the car-dealer website Anamera.com, accessed by Bloomberg U.S, car collector Craig McCaw swapped his millions with Dutch-born businessman Eric Heerema.

The green GTO had been acquired by Heerema ten years ago for around $8.5 million from the Japanese collector Yoshiho Matsuda. He also owned the 250 belonging to Chris Evans, which James drove last season.

Before the GTO, the world's most expensive ever car was a 1936 Type 57SC Bugatti Atlantic, which sold for between $30 million and $34 million to Peter Mullin, owner of the Mullin Automotive Museum in Los Angeles.

If you had $35 million to spend on a car, what would you buy, TopGear.commers?