Mecum Auctions has consigned the Phil & Martha Bachman collection, inclusive of 46 Ferraris, for their annual Kissimmee sale. Near the top of the list are two F40 examples. It’s quite atypical for two F40s to appear at the same auction, but the Bachmans owned two, and this atypical auction will offer around 4,500 cars.
The record for a Ferrari F40 at public auction is $3.97m USD in 2022, which inflates to $4.35m in today’s dollars. So why is that record’s time likely nearly up? First, a bit of context…
Ferrari launched the F40 in 1987 to celebrate its 40th anniversary, claiming it would build 400 units. Due to massive demand, the manufacturer built around 1,315. By the time the car reached US shores for model year 1990, the MSRP was $399k, or $1.02m today. The F40 is the second member of the ‘Big Six’ flagship supercars from Ferrari.
Today, the market for F40s is hotter than ever. That 2022 record was the first time an F40 crossed the $3m threshold in a public sale. Since then, 18 further offerings have followed suit. Nine occurred in 2025 alone!
The F40s coming to Mecum at no reserve present promising cases to be the top two sales ever. The Bachman collection is long known to the community, and most of their Ferraris show very low mileage.
The F40s carry only 456 and 865 miles, a small fraction of the 8,766 miles that the average example comes to market with. This ranks them as the second and fifth-lowest-mileage F40s to come to auction of 73 offerings in the last five years. Furthermore, they rank as the two lowest-mileage US-specification offerings.
What makes US-spec cars different, and perhaps even special? The F40 arrived at a time when there were heavy differences in crash and emissions regulations between the US and Europe (even more so than today), and as a result, Ferrari had to tweak the car significantly to sell it stateside. By the time the US version arrived, a few years after the
European debut, it brought numerous changes to the exterior, interior, and mechanicals: 211 of the 1,315 F40s were built in US specification by the end of production in 1992.
For years, US cars have traded at higher prices than their European counterparts. This gap is partially attributable to U.S. cars appearing for sale with fewer miles on average (7,000 miles vs. 11,054 miles/17,790 km for European cars). What helps explain the rest of the difference is that US cars are rarer (211 vs. 1,104) and contain a number of unique details.
Some are debatably improvements, but oftentimes the collector market values rarity for its own sake. US cars do feature a power bump typically quoted at 25-40 more hp over the European cars, although this offsets an extra ~160 lbs. of weight.
The value delta has been shifting recently. Of the 19 F40s to have publicly sold for at least $3m, the first six to do so were all US-specification examples – as were 11 of the first 15. But each of the last four were European-specification example, and recently the average prices for each specification have been converging. According to my data, the price advantage for US cars currently stands at 8.3%.
The Bachman F40s are extremely low-mileage, US-specification examples and thus stand primed to set new benchmarks, as long as their conditions are commensurate with their odometers. They will be informative indicators of whether US cars maintain their market supremacy over European cars after a recent spate of incredible offerings from each specification.
Collectors who prefer the European version have a few more factors to consider, as the model evolved throughout its five-year run. Near the middle of production, European F40s started being fitted with catalytic converters, matching the new US version. Around the same time, Ferrari also began offering an adjustable suspension option – only for European cars.
Catalytic converters mildly stifled power and added weight. The adjustable suspension is often regarded as finicky; some feel it disrupts handling, and it too added weight. F40s from the first few years of European production are consequently referred to as ‘non-cat, non-adjust’ examples, and these are typically the most desirable to collectors. The top seven European-specification sales have all involved non-cat, non-adjust cars.
A further consideration is that the first 16 F40s came from the factory with racecar-style, sliding windows made from Lexan. Quickly, the factory moved to traditional glass wind-ups, but they left the sliders as an option for European-specification cars. Very few buyers chose this option, and by the end of production, only 95 of the 1,104 European cars featured Lexan sliding windows. Today, these examples are sought after and rarely come up for sale. The last time one came to auction was February 2020.
We previously wrote about the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL ‘Gullwing' and how it stands at the top of the collector car market. As I noted then, its closest competition is the Ferrari F40, a model that has been gaining over the last decade while the 300 SL softened. It’s possible the F40 is the next holder of the mantle, and if so, the Bachman collection sale
could be a milestone in getting there.
View All Ferrari F40s For Sale On duPont REGISTRY
Image Source: Mecum Auctions
