1995 Ferrari 456 Gt Pininfarina-designed 2-door 5.5l 48v Manual Rwd Coupe on 2040-cars

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Second day of RM's Monterey auction continues the million dollar madness

RM Auctions' two-day event during the Monterey car week is pretty much a matter of appetizer and main course. Friday night's appetizer saw a trio of multi-million-dollar Ferraris, along with a pre-war Mercedes-Benz and a Jaguar D-Type. You can read all about those beauties right here. But as we said in that post, the action would really happen on Saturday night. The prices listed below include RM's ten-percent commission fee, and, as you'll see, the auction house did pretty well for itself.
We've already told you about the $27.5 million winning bid for the 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 NART Spyder, with all the profits headed to charity. While there were more seven-figure winners on night two, the overall prices weren't quit as high as we saw on Friday night. The Ferrari F50 (pictured above) shown during the car's Geneva debut back in the 1990s and with only 1,100 miles on the clock took $1,677,500 (on a $1.25 to $1.6 million estimate). Another winner was a 1935 Hispano-Suiza K6 Cabriolet, which brought in $2,255,000 on a $1.5 to $2 million estimate. A 1974 McLaren M16C Indianapolis, the race winner of the 1974 Indy 500, brought home $3.52 million, essentially doubling its expected price of $1.25 to $1.75 million.
The night wasn't a success for everybody, though. The 1928 Mercedes-Benz 680S Torpedo Roadster, which took Best In Show at the 2012 Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance failed to reach its $10-million expectations, selling for $8.25 million. That's not peanuts by any stretch, but a car that only goes for about 80 percent of its expected price isn't something to be enthusiastic about. A 1960 Maserati Tipo 61 Birdcage, which was expected to go for $3 to $4 million only took in $2,090,000.

Ferrari picks up ex-Sauber driver Esteban Gutierrez as test pilot

With McLaren's long-awaited confirmation of Fernando Alonso and Jenson Button, the grid for the 2015 Formula One World Championship is finally complete. (That is, at least, aside from the bankrupt Caterham and Marussia teams, whose fate for next season still remain open.) But with the big game of musical chairs now drawn to a close, not everyone who had a seat this year will have one the next. And that includes one Esteban Gutierrez, who lost his ride with Sauber but has landed a test driver role with Ferrari instead. Gutierrez climbed up through the formula racing ladder, winning the 2008 Formula BMW Europe and 2010 GP3 titles before getting his start as a test driver with the Sauber team – a role which he held for two seasons while simultaneously putting up a good fight and winning races in GP2. Sauber promoted him to the race seat in 2013 (when he placed a career-best seventh place at the Japanese Grand Prix) and kept him on board for another season. But after failing to finish in the points even once this past year, both he and veteran team-mate Adrian Sutil were both replaced for next season. Taking their place will be Marcus Ericsson (who drove for Caterham this year) and newcomer Felipe Nasr (who served this season as test driver at Williams). That's left Gutierrez without a race seat, but Scuderia Ferrari has snapped him up as its official test and reserve driver for next season. In that capacity he'll be offered the chance to drive top-flight machinery and hone his skills with a front-running team, and will be on standby should either Sebastian Vettel or Kimi Raikkonen be unable to drive at one grand prix or another. Most of the other teams have yet to confirm their third drivers, but Williams recently announced it was promoting Susie Wolff to the job and McLaren confirmed Kevin Magnussen was bumped down for next season to make way for Alonso. The move may strike some as odd since Gutierrez is not part of the Ferrari Driver Academy development program, but Sauber has long shared close ties with the Maranello-based team. Ferrari supplies engines to Sauber, which in turn sometimes graduates drivers to the Scuderia. Former Ferrari drivers Felipe Massa and Giancarlo Fisichella both drove for Sauber, and current drivers Vettel and Raikkonen both got their starts there as well. A Mexican driver is back to Maranello Maranello, 15 December 2014 – Ferrari announces that, as from next season, Esteban Gutierrez will become part of the Scuderia workforce.

Ferrari reports fewer sales, more profit to prove strategy is working

Ferrari's angle of emphasizing exclusivity by limiting deliveries is appearing to bear fruit. The company posted a 7.1-percent increase in revenues to 1.7 billion Euros ($2.2 billion at today's exchange rates) during the first half of 2013. Net profits, meanwhile, saw a jump of 20 percent to 116.2 million Euros ($153.5 million). The Prancing Horse delivered 3,767 cars, which, while an increase of 2.8 percent, represents a rate of growth that's slower than in the first quarter of 2013.
While Ferrari may be actively trying to slow its sales down to below 7,000 in 2013, it's seen increased numbers in the US, Great Britain and Germany, along with double-digit growth in the Middle East and Japan (39 percent and 28 percent, respectively).
The move to limit sales should have a greater impact on the numbers that come in later this year, which we told you about back in May. Ferrari's controversial move has already seen a drop in sales to China, which saw 50 fewer Prancing Horses than this time last year.