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Trump's old Ferrari F430 sells for $270,000

You may remember that Auctions America was going to sell a 2007 Ferrari F430 owned by the current president of the United States. It was estimated at between $250,000 and $350,000. It went for auction this weekend and just barely fell into that range. According to Bloomberg, Donald Trump's old Ferrari failed to meet the reserve, set at $250,000, with a final bid of $240,000. However, Auctions America said the car sold after the auction at $270,000. So the auction company did get its estimate right, but just barely. As for what the new owner purchased, he or she got an F430 with celebrity and presidential heritage, the F1 automatic gearbox, low miles, a service history, and a classic Ferrari red paint job. Of course we still stand by our preference for a manual one in our choice of color and without any celebrity history (or baggage depending on your opinion). Check out our original piece for more details on the car. Related Video:

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.

Ferrari's 986-hp mid-engine hybrid supercar stays bundled up in spy shots

With less than a week to go until its debut for VIP clients, Ferrari remains engaged in testing its hybrid V8 supercar. As these spy shots show, the Italian carmaker still insists on giving nothing away. The photographer wasn't able to figure out any more details, noting only that the camo panels were decorated with yellow triangles warning of electric shocks. The last intel we got came from Auto, Motor und Sport, the German magazine predicting 1,000 PS (metric horsepower), which is 986 of our ponies. That grunt would come from the 3.9-liter twin-turbo V8 borrowed from the F8 Tributo, and three electric motors — two on the front axles, one in the gearbox. All-wheel drive and instant torque would get the coupe from zero to 62 miles per hour in no more than 2 seconds, and cornering prowess will increase thanks to e-motor torque vectoring. Another stroll through the FerrariChat forum says power might be more than the 1,000 CV (cheveaux — metric horsepower again, but in French) indicated even on Ferrari's invitation to the launch event. A member wrote, "The current numbers doing the rounds are 1,050 — 1,100," bettors guessing 720 hp from the V8, roughly 200 combined horses from the front axle motors, and anywhere from 150 to 180 hp from the gearbox unit. That would be 1,080 hp at most, which is 1,095 CV. The looks are inscrutable. It's clear the door handles are in a different place, above the shoulder line, the front brakes calipers are mighty, and the headlights reveal some severe lines. The motorcycle rider who chased the coupe through the hills above Maranello said he saw squared taillights, but allowed that it could have been the shape of the camouflage openings. A Ferrari owners group from France visited the factory and apparently saw the complete bodywork for the hybrid coupe codenamed F173, describing the car as "wide and flat" with "huge rounded intakes" like half circles, a red body and a black glasshouse. On a side note, they also saw the 812 Spider bodywork, and said it's beautiful. Finally, another FC poster wrote that "the name has been already decided and there are very few chances that it will be changed. It will remind us of a Ferrari model launched years ago and also an actual car, a fast one." Depending on when Ferrari plans a public debut, we have anywhere from six days to three weeks left to play with this puzzle.