I don't think it will sell above 50 million. They're just saying that since another sold above that amount. Unless this one has a more notable place in history than the other one, I doubt it'll reach those numbers.
They're saying that because the price of these cars has climbed over the last 10 years. This is also the first public auction for one in a long time; RM Auctions & others don't allow people like you & me in. It's expected to surpass $60 million easily if the right people are watching, even with no reserve on it.
This one was crashed right? Then fixed and repainted a different color or something? I would spend my 50mil somewhere else for sure.
The missing key here is it that Ferrari does all the restoration work themselves & certifies it. A restored Ferrari that gets certification by the manufacturer keeps the value.
This car in particular was crashed way back in the 60's & restored then. It's been hidden away for a long time, so it's a pretty pristine example by definition.
With that link, it proves that CNN (the one linked in the OP) is one of, if not THE worst news organizations in the world.
To this day, I still can't understand why a 250 GTO is worth so much money. For example, the Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe that beat it, Chassis #CSX-2601, had sold for $7.25 million, which is the car that won the championship in 1965, while any of the Ferraris are worth more than twice that.
Because all the 250 GTOs are literally different in some form or another, some miniscule, others as obvious as Series I & II.
The Cobra Daytona Coupe won the '65 World Championship. The 250 GTO stopped racing in 1964, the year it won its
3rd consecutive class title in the series since its introduction. Explain how the Shelby beat it when Ferrari had moved on to running 4 other models that year? And unlike the Daytona, the 250 GTO has a higher pedigree of Le Mans success; '62 saw it take 2nd, 3rd, & 6th. '63 resulted in 2nd, 4th, & 6th. And '64 saw it finished 5th & 6th, which is the only race the Cobra actually did beat it. But by that point, the car had already cemented its 3 short years of production as a successful race car whilst the Shelby was completely overshadowed after '65 by the GT40s.
There's literally nothing spectacular about the Cobra that $7.25 million doesn't reflect fairly. It has a championship title to its name, and that's about it. The GTO has the ability to lay claim that it dominated its class all 3 years it ran in the series, which means its technically undefeated. Add in multiple LeMans podiums that were only beaten by other Ferraris, & its racing pedigree is well beyond the Shelby. Add in the fact that the remaining 5 examples are rarely ever seen out in public, let alone at a race track, whilst multiple GTOs continue to be ran hard every year & maintained by Ferrari's in-house restoration & it shouldn't be a surprise why these 39 examples command so much more than the Shelby.
"Fun" fact: This is the only GTO someone has died in.
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