The Daily Vroom
Good morning Vroomers,
My entire feed is people absolutely killing the new Ferrari Luce and honestly… I’m struggling too.
Forget EV vs gas for a second, this just doesn’t feel like a $600k+ Ferrari to me. And maybe I’m old fashioned, but having actual car designers design the car feels like a good starting point.
What’s interesting though is Ferrari usually gets this stuff right. They understand emotion better than almost any car company on earth and people buy Ferraris emotionally first, logically second.
The challenge now is EVs completely change that conversation.
With a normal Ferrari, nobody cares if it’s rational. The noise, engine, drama and occasion are the whole point. But once you remove that, people suddenly start comparing charging, range, weight and tech against everything else on the market and that’s a much harder game to dominate at $600k.
Still, betting against Ferrari has historically been a terrible idea. I just can’t remember the last time I saw a new Ferrari get almost universally slammed this quickly.
The Ferrari 360 Market Just Broke
There are auction results that make sense immediately, and then there are the ones where everyone collectively stops and starts doing mental math in real time.
This 2000 Ferrari 360 Modena absolutely falls into the second category.
Because less than a year ago, this exact car sold for $89,000.
Now it’s a $172,000 Ferrari.
Not a concours example. Not a delivery-mile museum piece. Not some celebrity-owned halo car with a Classiche binder thicker than a phone book. This is a 32k-mile driver-quality gated 360 with some honest imperfections, a lifting dash, older tires, paint touch-ups, and the exact kinds of details buyers used to nitpick when these were still “affordable” Ferraris.
And yet by the end of this auction, none of that mattered.
The bidding story alone tells you everything about where the market psychology currently sits. At $140k it still felt ambitious. At $150k people started realizing something unusual was happening. Then two bidders completely detached from prior comps and just kept swinging. $155k. $160k. $165k. $168k. $169k. $172k.
That’s not “someone accidentally overpaid.”
That’s conviction. Or speculation. Or FOMO. Or all three at once.
And that’s what makes this result so fascinating because the car’s recent history almost reads like a case study in how quickly markets can reprice once sentiment changes.
First listed on Bring a Trailer in June 2025 where it stalled at a $97k high bid and failed to sell. Then it went almost immediately to Cars & Bids where it RNM’d again at $91k. A couple months later it finally sold back on BaT for $89k.
At that point the market had effectively spoken three separate times.
Or at least everyone thought it had. Now suddenly the same car nearly doubles in value in under a year and the comments section turns into a full blown debate about whether gated 360s are entering permanent blue-chip territory or whether everyone is watching a speculative frenzy happen in real time.
Honestly, both sides make compelling arguments. The bullish case is easy to understand. Factory gated 360s were already rare, but buyers suddenly seem to have collectively realized just how finite these cars actually are. Seller comments throughout the auction repeatedly referenced that only around 500 factory gated coupes came to the US market, with far fewer remaining in genuinely clean condition today.
Then you zoom out further.
Manual F430s are already out of reach for most enthusiasts.
Gated 355s exploded years ago.
Manual Lamborghinis are on another planet.
Analog Ferraris are disappearing.
Modern Ferrari interiors and interfaces increasingly feel more digital and isolated.
Meanwhile the 360 still offers exactly what buyers now romanticize: naturally aspirated V8, open gated shifter, hydraulic steering, mechanical feel, manageable size, and enough usability to actually drive the thing.
The market suddenly seems to have decided these were underpriced all along. But the skeptical side is fair too. Nothing fundamentally changed about the 360 in the last 12 months. The same arguments existed years ago when these were sitting comfortably around six figures or below. Suddenly the market wakes up and prices double almost overnight? That’s exactly why some commenters started comparing the run-up to everything from meme stocks to Ferrari bubbles of the past.
And honestly, when a car fails to hit reserve at $97k, then fails again at $91k, sells at $89k, and becomes a $172k car less than a year later, people are naturally going to ask questions.
But maybe the most important part of this story came from the winning bidder himself.
“I couldn’t be more excited about this car.”
That was the comment after spending $172,000 on a Ferrari the internet thinks was worth half that last year.
And honestly, maybe that’s all that really matters here.
Because markets are emotional before they are rational. Poster cars matter. Nostalgia matters. Generational buying power matters. The people who grew up with the Ferrari 360 on their bedroom walls are now entering peak earning years, and unlike previous generations, many of them don’t want touchscreen supercars filled with driver aids and software layers.
They want the click of the gate.
And right now, they seem willing to pay almost anything for it.
Auctions To Keep An Eye On
Coming off one of the strongest collection runs on Bring a Trailer this year, Mohr Imports already looks like it may have another six-figure hammer incoming.
The LeVett Collection was a huge win for them. The headline result was the 1969 Ferrari Dino 246 GT that sold for more than $305,000, but honestly the bigger takeaway was how professionally the entire collection was handled from start to finish.
Now they’re right back on the front page with this 7k-mile BMW Z8 already sitting at $200,000 with days still left in the auction.
And what’s interesting here is this exact car already sold on BaT in August 2024 for around the same number.
Normally that creates hesitation. Buyers start wondering why someone’s already moving on from it, whether the market has topped out, or if someone is trying to cash in too quickly.
Instead, this auction feels like buyers are lining up to justify the number before the auction has even finished.
Part of that is the spec. Titanium Silver over black is still the Z8 combo, 7k miles puts it in the upper tier immediately, and the whole formula just works. S62 V8 from the E39 M5, six-speed manual, factory hardtop, Henrik Fisker design, analog BMW halo car from an era the company probably can’t recreate anymore.
But honestly, the bigger story is the seller. Mohr Imports understands BaT better than most dealers because they understand that at this level buyers are not just bidding on the car. They’re bidding on confidence.
Look through the comments and they’re answering everything. Paint meter readings, soft top seams, radio issues, the Performance Package, prior ownership, why the owner is already selling it again. No dodging, no vague dealer answers, no disappearing for days while bidders speculate.
That stuff matters massively once cars cross into six-figure territory. And the timing here is also perfect because the market seems to have shifted toward analog halo cars from the late 1990s and early 2000s. Buyers want the stuff that still feels mechanical. Manual gearboxes, naturally aspirated engines, hydraulic steering, simple interiors, low production numbers, recognizable design.
The Z8 checks every single box. For years people argued these were overpriced at $150k. Then overpriced at $180k. Now one is already back at $200k before the final few days even starts and honestly it still doesn’t feel like the ceiling.
There’s something refreshing about opening Hagerty Marketplace right now and seeing not one but two proper Pontiac GTOs sitting there while the rest of the collector market continues losing its mind over gated Ferraris and low-mile analog European cars.
Because as great as those cars are, sometimes you just want a massive American V8, a four-speed, and absolutely zero subtlety.
And these two GTOs take completely different approaches to that formula.
The 1969 Pontiac GTO Judge is exactly what muscle cars were supposed to become by the end of the 1960s. Loud colors, giant decals, hood tach, Ram Air III, Hurst shifter, rear spoiler, and just enough visual aggression to make it feel like Pontiac designers were actively trying to annoy insurance companies.
What I actually like most about this Judge though is that it feels honest.
The seller openly talks about the family ownership going back more than two decades, the multi-year restoration effort between 2003 and 2005, the replacement crate motor, the imperfections, the bubbling paint, the dash repair, all the stuff many sellers would rather dance around.
And honestly, that makes the car more appealing to me because this feels like the exact kind of Judge you actually want to own instead of one you’re terrified to touch. You can picture yourself pulling into a local show, lifting the hood, talking nonsense with strangers for an hour, then actually driving the thing home instead of loading it straight back into an enclosed trailer.
Even the comments section understood the assignment. One bidder basically summed it up perfectly saying this wasn’t some gold-level concours restoration, just a “smiles for miles” boulevard cruiser, which honestly is probably the highest compliment a car like this can get.
Then sitting right alongside it is the 1967 Pontiac GTO Convertible, and the vibe completely changes.
Where the Judge feels like a guy screaming over a Lynyrd Skynyrd soundtrack, the ’67 convertible feels calmer, cleaner, and way more mature. First-generation GTO, documented 242 car, four-speed, parchment interior, body-off restoration, Rally II wheels, Gardner exhaust, and just enough tasteful upgrades to improve the ownership experience without ruining what made the car special in the first place.
Honestly, this is probably the one I’d want sitting in the garage long term.
The Judge is the attention seeker. The ’67 convertible is the one that quietly gets respect from everyone who knows what they’re looking at.
And I think that’s what makes these two listings so interesting together because they perfectly show the split personality of the muscle car market. One side still wants outrageous graphics, shaker scoops, bright colors, and maximum presence. The other wants clean, documented, well-restored cars they can actually enjoy without feeling like they’re reenacting a Barrett-Jackson commercial every weekend.
Either way, both are a nice reminder that before driving modes, giant touchscreens, and fake exhaust speakers, performance cars used to be wonderfully simple. Big engine, manual transmission, questionable fuel economy, and enough torque to make every stoplight feel important.
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