A 1964 Ferrari 250 GT Lusso at the London Concours in 2024. This is a different car from chassis 5711 GT. Photo: MrWalkr / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
A 1964 Ferrari 250 GT Lusso that once sat in the collection of Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee sold for £1,028,750 at RM Sotheby’s London Auction on 31 October at The Peninsula London. Chassis 5711 GT wears Rosso Cina paint over Pelle Bianco, a white leather that RM’s listing says no other Lusso was ordered with. The listing’s narrative is less certain than its summary about how the white got there.
RM says the car entered Lee’s collection in the early 1990s and gives no further detail. Lee, who had led Samsung Group since 1987, died on 25 October 2020 at 78, the Korea Herald reported. Lot 127 was one of the cars in the sale; Ayrton Senna’s Honda NSX, which Backfire News covered ahead of the auction, was another.
Three interior colors in one lot description
The summary at the top of the lot page says the car was ordered new in the Rosso Cina and white combination. The narrative below it is longer. The first owner, in Sutton Coldfield, ordered the car through Maranello Concessionaires, the British importer, with Oro Chiaro paint, dark red Connolly leather and dark red carpets, then revised the order to Ferrari red paint, cream upholstery and dark red carpets. The page goes on: “It is thought that the factory returned the car with a White interior.”
That is three interiors on paper: dark red, cream and white. RM says the sale includes copies of the original order forms and period correspondence between Maranello Concessionaires and the car’s first few owners. Those papers are what a buyer has to rely on for the white. The listing says Kevin O’Rourke’s MotoTechnique restored the car in 1987 and 1988.
What Ferrari Classiche signed off on
Ferrari Classiche, the factory’s certification program for older cars, certified 5711 GT in 2026. The lot page says the process showed the car retains its original chassis, engine, gearbox and rear differential. That is a check on the car’s mechanical identity. The listing does not name the interior among the items confirmed, so the white leather rests on the order forms and on RM’s own hedge.
Where £1,028,750 sits among other Lussos
Ferrari built 350 Lussos. RM lists this one as the 316th and the 19th of 23 right-hand-drive cars. RM also sold chassis 4383, the 16th Lusso built, for £1,130,000 at Cliveden House. That car had Fantuzzi coachwork, a 2011 restoration by DK Engineering and broadcaster Chris Evans among its past owners. By Backfire News’s arithmetic, 5711 GT sold for £101,250 less, about 9 percent.
The comparison is imperfect, since the Cliveden car was an early example with different bodywork, but not every Lusso found a buyer this year. At RM’s Monterey Auction 2026, chassis 5817 GT, a matching-numbers car in Azzurro, carried an estimate of $1.8 million to $2.2 million and is listed as not sold. RM describes 5711 GT’s condition as one that invites a fresh restoration under its next owner, nearly four decades after the last one.
Getting it out of the UK
The car is UK-registered with a V5C, and RM’s page tells bidders that taking it out of the country requires an export licence. Arts Council England’s open general export licence value table sets a £65,000 limit for general articles more than 50 years old and exempts motor vehicles of that age only for temporary trips of under six months for social, domestic or pleasure use. A 1964 Ferrari at £1,028,750 is about 16 times that figure.
RM’s page does not name the buyer or say where the car goes next. Whoever it is will decide whether the 1987 restoration stays as it is, and whether the interior gets touched at all.
When an auction house says a car’s defining feature is only thought to be original, should a buyer pay one-off money for it, or wait until the paperwork settles the question?
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