$91,600 wasn't enough for this Testarossa in 2020. Today it's at $200,000.

Good morning. Every car in today's issue is being sold on its name. The 1987 Testarossa at the Auction Desk was pre-sold by a bedroom poster decades ago. Tesla reopened $50,000 Roadster reservations last week, nine years and zero deliveries after the first round. Ferrari's first EV got compared to a toaster at its reveal and is sold out into next year. I ran the numbers on all three.

In today's newsletter, we'll get into:

The Auction Desk: A 22,000-mile Testarossa that couldn't clear $91,600 in 2020 is sitting at $200,000 with hours to go.

One Big Story: Tesla is taking $50,000 Roadster deposits again, this time before showing the car.

Engineer's Corner: 620 miles, 1.9 seconds, 250 mph, and rocket thrusters. Which of the Roadster's 2017 numbers survive the math.

Garage Economics: Why a $640,000 Ferrari that almost nobody likes sold out in about eight weeks.

Let’s roll.

This is the spec from the poster: Rosso Corsa over beige, five-speed gated manual, pop-up headlights, side strakes. It shows 22,000 miles, it's on dealer consignment in Florida with a clean Carfax, and it has history on this same platform. On December 30, 2020, this car was bid to $91,600 and didn't meet reserve. As of Sunday night the bid was $200,000, up 118% in under six years, and the auction closes this afternoon at 2:17 PM.

The engineering deserves a minute. Ferrari calls the 4.9-liter a flat-12 and most people call it a boxer, but opposing pistons share a crankpin, so it's really a V12 opened out to 180 degrees. US cars like this one were rated at 380 hp and 354 lb-ft. The engine sits on top of the five-speed transaxle, which keeps the wheelbase short and puts a lot of mass high in the car. Ferrari moved the radiators from the nose to the flanks to keep heat out of the cabin. That's why the rear of the car is so wide, and the strakes are there because several markets wouldn't allow an open intake that large.

That packaging also sets the ownership cost. A timing belt service means lowering the engine and transaxle out of the car on the subframe. This one had it done in October 2025 at 21,000 miles, along with a clutch, spark plugs, a resurfaced flywheel, and refinished engine components. It has covered about 1,000 miles since. The current owner bought the car in June 2025, added roughly 850 miles, paid for the biggest service a Testarossa needs, and is selling 15 months later. The next owner inherits most of that service interval.

Three things I'd ask about before bidding. First, the listing says the slow-down ECUs have been disconnected. Those boxes read thermocouples on the catalytic converters and light a "slow down" warning on the dash when a cat overheats, usually because a misfire is sending unburned fuel into the exhaust. They fail with age and throw false warnings, so unplugging them is common. It also removes the only overheat warning for two catalysts in a tightly packed engine bay. Second, the seats were re-dyed this year, the instrument binnacle has been reupholstered, and the listing notes upholstery wear, so the cabin is no longer in its original finish. Third, the Scuderia fender shields are aftermarket. Paint meter readings are in the gallery and worth five minutes of anyone's time.

One point in its favor: a 1987 build predates the mid-1988 change from a single center-lock wheel nut to five-bolt hubs, the earlier setup collectors call monodado.

My call: I think it sells between $215,000 and $230,000. Red over tan with a fresh engine-out service is the car most buyers picture, and that service is a $15,000 to $20,000 bill the winner won't see for years. The re-dyed seats, the shields, and the disconnected ECUs are what keep it out of the money that sub-10,000-mile cars bring.

Tesla reopened reservations for its next-generation Roadster last week. The terms: $5,000 on a credit card, described as fully refundable, then a $45,000 wire transfer due within 10 days. The reservation isn't final until the wire clears. The car will be unveiled October 1 at an event near Waco, Texas, so buyers are being asked for the money about two weeks before anyone outside Tesla has seen the production design, the price, or the specs.

The first round opened in November 2017, when a prototype rolled out of a trailer at the end of the Semi truck event. The deposit was the same $50,000, and a $250,000 Founders Series required the full amount up front. Production was promised for 2020. The car has since been delayed at least eight times, and Tesla has delivered zero. Some early depositors had trouble getting out. YouTuber Marques Brownlee waited eight years, cancelled, and initially didn't get his first $5,000 back. OpenAI's Sam Altman said his cancellation requests went unanswered.

For anyone who has never put a deposit on a car: a reservation is not an order. There's no purchase contract, no build slot, no locked price, and no delivery date. The depositor holds a place in line for a product that will be defined later. Tesla holds $50,000 of the depositor's cash, interest-free, for as long as the line lasts. The 2017 depositors have been standing in it for almost nine years.

Tesla says the October 1 event will cover pricing, specs, and production targets. The teasers point to a redesign with Cybertruck-style angles and a full-width light bar. Elon Musk has spent months promising a demonstration of SpaceX-designed cold-gas thrusters that he says will let the car hover, and the demonstration car is expected to be remote-operated and not street legal. At a conference this month Musk described the event this way: "Success is not guaranteed, but excitement is." He added that Tesla wants a live audience there to vouch that what they see isn't AI-generated.

Prediction markets are pricing the schedule. A contract on Roadster deliveries reaching customers by the end of 2026 trades under 5%. The same bet for the end of 2027 sits around 61%. Both are thinly traded.

Ferrari, for comparison, showed the Luce first, took the abuse, and then opened the order book (more on that in Garage Economics). Tesla is collecting first and showing second.

Tesla's Roadster page still carries the numbers from the 2017 stage: 0 to 60 in 1.9 seconds, a top speed over 250 mph, 620 miles of range from a 200-kWh battery, and a $200,000 base price. Let’s go through them one at a time.

1.9 seconds to 60. That's an average of 1.44 g, which is a tire problem, not a power problem. Warm, sticky tires on a prepped surface with all-wheel drive can do it. A Model S Plaid runs 1.99 with rollout subtracted, and Rimac's Nevera R did 1.66 last year. This claim was bold in 2017. Today there are cars on sale that beat it.

250 mph. Drag power climbs with the cube of speed. Assuming a drag area close to a modern supercar's, I get roughly 700 hp at the wheels to hold 250 mph, and the Plaid powertrain already makes over 1,000. The Nevera R has run 268 mph, and BYD's Yangwang U9 Xtreme ran 308 mph last September. The limits are tires rated for that speed at that weight, motor rpm on a single-speed gearbox, and battery heat. All three are solvable on a $200,000 car.

620 miles. This is the hard one, and efficiency isn't the reason. 200 kWh over 620 miles works out to about 323 Wh per mile, which is unremarkable: BMW's new iX3 SUV gets an EPA-rated 434 miles at roughly 250 Wh per mile. The trouble is the 200 kWh itself. At today's pack-level energy density of roughly 180 to 200 Wh per kg, that battery weighs 2,200 to 2,450 lb. That's an entire Mazda Miata under the floor of a low 2+2. A sedan can hide a thick pack under a tall cabin, and a sports car with a roofline around 48 inches can't without raising the seats. For scale, the Nevera carries 120 kWh and weighs about 5,100 lb. A 200-kWh Roadster would land well north of that, and every pound shows up in braking distances, tire wear, and cornering. My expectation: range is the number that gets cut on October 1, probably to something in the 400s from a pack closer to 130 kWh.

The thrusters. Musk has claimed 60 mph in about 1.1 seconds with the SpaceX package, which is 2.5 g average. Tires supply about 1.4 g, so the thrusters have to add roughly a full g of push. On a 4,800-lb car that's about 4,800 lb of thrust. Cold gas leaves a nozzle at around 650 meters per second, so that thrust takes about 33 kg of gas per second, or around 80 lb of compressed air for a single launch. Stored near 10,000 psi, that's a carbon-wrapped tank of 70 to 100 liters, which fits with reports that the tank takes the place of the rear seats. Refilling it with an onboard compressor costs an estimated 6 to 10 kWh per launch by my math, equal to 20 or 30 miles of range, plus several minutes of pumping. Hovering is much worse. Holding 4,800 lb off the ground on cold gas burns more than 70 lb of gas every second, so any hover is measured in seconds. That squares with a demonstration car that's remote-operated and not street legal.

There's a cheaper way to get under 1.5 seconds, and we covered it in the McMurtry piece two weeks ago: fans. Pulling the car onto the road raises tire grip without throwing mass overboard, and Tesla was granted a patent last year on fan-driven downforce.

Ferrari's first EV starts European deliveries next month, with US cars due in the second quarter of 2027. The Luce costs €550,000, about $640,000. It has four doors, five seats, four motors, 1,050 hp, a 122-kWh battery, and a claimed 329 miles on the European cycle. The styling is by LoveFrom, the studio run by former Apple design chief Jony Ive and Marc Newson.

The May 25 reveal in Rome went about as badly as a reveal can. Online, the car was compared to a Nissan Leaf, a Honda Accord, a slipper, and a toaster. Former chairman Luca di Montezemolo said Ferrari should take the prancing horse off it. Italy's deputy prime minister complained about the price. Ferrari shares fell as much as 8% over the following days. A month later Enrico Galliera, the chief marketing and commercial officer who had run Ferrari's sales side since 2010, was out. Ferrari says his departure was long planned. His successor, the former head of BMW Italy, started July 1.

Then the order book filled. Ferrari's 2026 allocation of just under 500 cars was reportedly gone by early July, about eight weeks after the reveal. China's 88 cars sold out at launch. On July 30 Ferrari raised full-year guidance to about €7.6 billion in revenue (roughly $8.7 billion) and said its order book covers all of 2027.

I think the styling argument misses how Ferrari sells cars. Galliera's nickname was Dr. No, because his office decided who was allowed to buy the limited cars: the Daytona SP3 (599 built) and the F80 (799 built, around $3.9 million each, all spoken for before the public saw it). Those lists go to clients with a purchase history, and the history gets scored. Reports after the reveal said clients were being nudged toward a Luce to protect their standing. Ferrari firmly denies it, and reportedly told dealers not to pressure its combustion-engine collectors. My view is that nobody has to be told. A client who wants the next Icona knows what his file looks like with the brand's first EV in it and what it looks like without.

Treat it as a cost. Say a Luce loses 35% in three years, which would be a poor result for a Ferrari. That's about $225,000. Limited-series Ferraris have traded well above list once delivered. SP3s listed near $2.2 million and have resold at over triple that price. For a client in that lane, $225,000 of depreciation is an access fee, and a modest one. Monterey supplied the best evidence. Chassis 0 of the Luce sold for $40 million at Ferrari's charity auction in August against an estimate of $1.1 to $1.6 million. The buyer, Herbert Wertheim, is the same client who paid $26 million for the final Daytona SP3 at the same sale a year earlier.

The volume makes this easy for Ferrari. The reported target is about 2,500 Luces by 2030, around 600 a year, or 5% of output. At list price that's roughly $380 million a year, under 5% of revenue. Ferrari has to find about 600 clients a year who decide their standing with Maranello is worth $640,000, and roughly three of every five new Ferraris already go to existing clients.

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