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Meet the man who sold his Ferrari 250 GTO for a record $48 million

We all took notice back in August when a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO sold at RM Sotheby's in Monterey, bringing a record price for a car at auction: $48.4 million. The man who benefited — both from the proceeds and from his 18 years owning one of the rarest, most desirable cars in the world, chatted recently with Seattle Times columnist Nicole Brodeur about what it was like to say goodbye to such a beautiful machine — and how he's able to console himself with a serious collection of other fine cars. Despite the car, the third of 36, being "one of the most significant Ferraris ever built, bar none," in Sotheby's words, Brodeur says Whitten regularly toodled around in it in Redmond, Wash. — to lunch, on errands, to car shows — Redmond being a place where you do see an awful lot of incredible daily drivers streaming into the Microsoft campus. Whitten, now chairman of Numerix, a financial software company, was one of Microsoft's earliest employees, hired in 1979 by the late Paul Allen himself. He describes what it was like to be sitting on the front row at Monterey when the gavel came down. Even for a multimillionaire, multimillions being thrown around by three bidders for a single car is "very hard to fathom," he told CNBC. "But you're in a space where you have car collectors, and Ferraris are the most collectible car, and the GTO is the pinnacle Ferrari." "I miss it a little bit," Whitten says. But the world is full of wonderful cars, and an awful lot of them are tucked away in his warehouse. Plus, Whitten spent more than $2 million on the same night the GTO sold, picking up another Ferrari and three vintage Jaguars, including a 1967 E-Type as a birthday present for his wife, Michelle. In the column, he reflects on his beginnings as a driver — as an 11-year-old wheelman helping his brother deliver newspapers in their parents' station wagon. And on being a broke mathematics doctorate whose first car was a Dodge Dart. And on the beginnings of his collection when the Microsoft millions kicked in; on purchasing a 1935 ERA 1.5L Grand Prix racer from a Thai princess; and that time he hit 174 mph on an airport runway. Here's the column, if you'd like to learn more about a guy who sounds like he's had a pretty great life. And below are two videos put out by Sotheby's ahead of the auction. In the first, Whitten drives the Ferrari, talks about his love of cars — and you get a glimpse of his collection. The second video describes the car's considerable provenance.

Ugar Sahin Design's F is a radical Ferrari 458 in disguise

Look, Ferrari, your latest line of cars is arguably the best looking group of prancing stallions since the early 1970s. Even the rather dull California has gotten some attention, thanks to the new California T. But this, the Ferrari F from Ugur Sahin Design, is just better.
Believe it or not, that is based on a 458 Italia. It's like the designer has taken the very best aspects of the Pagani Huayra, Jim Glickenhaus' P4/5 and the Ferrari LaFerrari and combined them into one amazing package. We think it's positively stunning.
Now, obviously, there are some aspects that wouldn't work for a production car. For example, those rear blind spots are probably huge. But when a car looks this good, who really cares? In fact, we'd be willing to designate this Ferrari as the best looking car Ugur Sahin has penned, which is high praise indeed.

Why Italians are no longer buying supercars

Italy is the wound that continues to drain blood from the body financial of Italian supercar and sports car makers. The wound was opened by the country's various financial police who decided to get serious about superyacht-owning and supercar-driving tax cheats a few years ago, by noting their registrations and checking their incomes. When it was found that a rather high percentage of exotic toy owners had claimed a rather low annual income - certain business owners were found to be declaring less income than their employees - the owners began dumping their cars and prospective buyers declined to buy.
Car and Driver has a piece on how the initiative is hitting the home market the hardest. Lamborghini sold 1,302 cars worldwide in 2010, 1,602 cars in 2011 and 2,083 cars in 2012 - an excellent surge in just two years. In Italy, however, it's all about the ebb: in 2010, the year that Italian police began scouring harbors, Lamborghini sold 96 cars in Italy, the next year it sold 72, last year it sold just 60. The declines for Maserati and Ferrari are even more pronounced.
Head over to CD for the full story and the numbers. What might be most incredible isn't the cause and effect, but where the blame is being placed. A year ago the chairman of Italy's Federauto accused the government of "terrorizing potential clients," this year Luca di Montezemolo says what's happening has created "a hostile environment for ­luxury goods." Life at the top, it ain't easy.