A Ferrari that is completely illegal to drive on public roads and strictly banned from actual motorsport competition has just outsold plenty of genuine, battle-tested race cars. At Gooding Christie’s inaugural Swiss auction in Geneva, a virtually delivery-mileage 2024 Ferrari 499P Modificata hammered for an astonishing 8,217,500 Swiss francs, roughly $9.9 million including buyer’s fees.
Marking the first time one of these ultra-exclusive machines has ever changed hands on the open auction block, the sale proves that when Maranello pedigree is on the table, practicality goes straight out the window.
Born for ultra-wealthy clientele who crave the visceral thrill of a Le Mans-winning prototype without pesky FIA rulebooks getting in the way, the 499P Modificata shares its core DNA with Ferrari’s victorious 24 Hours of Le Mans hypercar.
However, it features a bespoke setup engineered exclusively for private track days rather than sanctioned racing. It cannot be homologated for competition, nor can you slap a license plate on it for a Sunday coffee run. Essentially, someone just dropped nearly ten million dollars on the world’s most expensive fenced-in playground toy.
This flagship hypercar carried the entire evening on its carbon-fiber shoulders. Gooding Christie’s debut Swiss sale closed at a massive 21,073,825 CHF (around €23 million) with an impressive 96 percent sell-through rate, signaling deep, hungry market demand rather than a single outlier surrounded by unsold duds. While the average lot fetched a respectable 916,253 CHF (roughly €1 million), the 499P casually commanded nine times that figure.
Plenty of high-dollar Maranello stablemates joined the Geneva spending spree. A 2025 Ferrari SF90 XX Spider set a new model world record at 1,580,000 CHF (€1.7 million), while a 2016 F12tdf reached 1,805,000 CHF (€2 million). The V12 madness continued with a 2023 812 Competizione A hitting 1,748,750 CHF (€1.9 million) and a standard 812 Competizione bringing 1,326,875 CHF (€1.4 million).
As Oliver Camelin, Gooding Christie’s Managing Director EMEA, noted, hosting the sale during Christie’s Luxury Week marked a triumphant return of high-stakes collector cars to Geneva’s historic stage. Coming off a banner year for Ferrari values, highlighted by an F50 record and two Daytona SP3s fetching wildly different sums on the very same day, it’s not necessary a valid registration to make automotive history.