It’s one of five, it’s the 12th of 13 Pinin Farina Spiders built, let’s face it, it’s hardly bad-looking, and last weekend this 1954 Ferrari 500 Mondial Spider was the top seller at RM Sotheby’s fifth Villa Erba sale.
The gavel fell at €3,717,500 (£3,285,141) for this Ferrari Classiche certified car that still has its original engine, gearbox and bodywork, at the auction that’s part of the glamorous Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este on the shores of Italy’s Lake Como.
But despite that not inconsiderable sum, the Ferrari racer was still some way shy of its €4,250,000-4,750,000 pre-sale estimate.
And the same is true of the auction’s second-top lot, the unique 1957 Porsche 550A Spyder by Wendler that found a new home for €3,380,000 (£2,984,878), a shade under its guide price of €3.4m-3.8m.
These two were among five cars to fetch in excess of €1m at a sale which totalled €19,798,085 – and they were by quite some margin the biggest sellers.