by Mike Gulett –
This Ferrari 250 LM could very well be the most valuable Ferrari that is not a 250 GTO. It sold in February 2025 at the RM Sotheby’s auction in Paris for €34,880,000 EUR (approximately $36,600,000 USD). It was offered from the collection of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum. The Museum is located in the middle of the US but they shipped this Ferrari to Paris for the auction. I wonder why they did not wait a few months for the Monterey auctions where RM Sotheby’s is a major player.
Either way I suspect both buyer and seller are happy with this transaction. I saw this special Ferrari in person at the Amelia Island Concours in 2013, below are my photos from that day.
While most of the attention at the 1965 24 Hours of Le Mans was focused on the factory team entries of Ferrari and Ford, it was a privately entered one-year-old mid-engine 3.3-liter V12 Ferrari 250 LM which caused a major upset by winning, when the favored entries ran into trouble.
Entered by the North American Racing Team (NART) of Luigi Chinetti American Masten Gregory partnered with future world champion Austrian Jochen Rindt for the unexpected win. The pair completed 347 laps of the 8.365 mile circuit, averaging 120.944 MPH for 24 hours.
This was the last time that a Ferrari would win the 24 Hours of Le Mans outright, until 2023. The Ford GT40 dominated the next few years as we saw in the movie Ford v Ferrari.
The Ferrari 250 LM (LM standing for Le Mans) was introduced at the Paris Auto Show in 1963. It was intended to replace the Ferrari 250 GTO as Ferrari’s lead GT race car. But because Ferrari only built 32 250 LM examples they were not able to get the 250 LM homologated and so the 250 LM ran in the prototype class until 1966 when it was homologated as a Group 4 Sports Car.
This Ferrari looks like it’s going to win doesn’t it? This is the view that the other race cars saw that day in 1965 at Le Mans.
Let us know what you think in the Comments.
Photos by Mike Gulett at the 2013 Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance.
Mike you should consider adding a bit more about Masten Gregory the “Kansas City Flash” ! One of the first Americans to race in Europe l F1 , Sports cars . Practically blind with a penchant for jumping out of perfectly good race cars.