Michael Jordan's Ferrari 550 Maranello sells for a record $2.7 million

A 1997 Ferrari 550 Maranello once owned by Michael Jordan sold for $2.7 million at a Joopiter and Curated auction that closed Wednesday evening. The gavel price stands as a record for the road-going grand tourer. That is more than double where the auction house expected it to land.

Joopiter had said ahead of the sale that the car would command as much as $1.3 million, and bidding ran well past that figure. The house did not disclose the prior record the sale broke. A 2001 550 GT1 race car brought $4.9 million in 2021, but it is not street-legal.

The car, chassis no. 108712, is finished in Rosso Barchetta over a tan leather interior. Its driver's seat was customized to fit Jordan's six-foot-six frame. That is the sort of provenance detail that separates a celebrity-owned example from any other 550 Maranello crossing the block.

Under the hood is the 5.5-liter naturally aspirated V-12 fitted to every road-going example of the model. It made 478 hp and 419 ft lbs of torque when new, good for zero to 62 mph in 4.4 seconds and a top speed of 199 mph. The odometer shows just 1,900 miles.

Those figures may still be within reach given how little the car has been driven. Jordan held onto the Maranello into the early 2000s before letting it go, and the intervening years were evidently gentle on it. A grand tourer with that provenance and that mileage rarely surfaces.

How the car shaped a sneaker

The 550 Maranello did more than sit in Jordan's garage. It directly inspired the Air Jordan 14 from 1998. The sneaker carries a Jumpman logo modeled on the Prancing Horse badge, quilted leather side panels, and a tire-tread heel, details lifted straight from the car.

The connection runs deeper than cosmetic borrowing. Jordan can be seen driving the vehicle in The Last Dance, the ten-part docuseries charting the sixth and final championship of his career. That footage, now streaming, puts the car at the center of the most watched basketball story ever told.

We know the Maranello's territory well. Our ranking of Italian car brands puts Ferrari at the top, its reputation forged in Formula One with a record 16 constructors' titles. The 488, launched in 2015, remains the marque's all-time best seller, and the 550 sits a generation before it.

The front-engined V-12 layout also places this car in a lineage collectors chase. Our guide to the best classic cars for collectors ranks the Ferrari 250 GTO among the most valuable, changing hands around $50 million. There, a celebrity link multiplies a car already scarce on its own merits.

A costly week at Joopiter

This sale was not even the most expensive Jordan item to move through the same auction house this week. A day earlier, on Tuesday, Joopiter sold the jersey Jordan wore in Game 3 of the 1998 NBA Finals for $12.26 million. That broke the record for a game-worn jersey.

The previous mark also belonged to Jordan. His jersey from Game 1 of that same 1998 Finals held the record, and the new figure surpassed it by $2.16 million. Two records in two days, both tied to the same man, is a measure of how collectors value the Jordan name.

Our ranking of the most expensive cars ever sold puts a 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe first at $142 million. The private-sale Ferrari 250 GTO fetched $70 million.

Within supercars built this century, the Rolls-Royce Amethyst Droptail leads at a reported $40 million for a one-off Coachbuild commission. Our list runs down to the McLaren Speedtail at $2.25 million, which means this record-setting Ferrari sits at the accessible end of seven figures.

There is precedent for a provenance premium at auction, and we have covered it before. A Bugatti Veyron named after racing driver Jean-Pierre Wimille sold for a record $5.4 million on our pages. Celebrity and racing links consistently lift a car beyond what its spec sheet alone would justify.

The price also lands in a week that put Jordan memorabilia across two of the categories we cover, cars and sneakers, where our coverage of style has long tracked the Air Jordan line and its influence. This result gives the two a shared data point at last.

What the sale does not tell us is how deep the buyer market runs. Joopiter declined to identify the previous 550 record it broke, which leaves the benchmark unclear. That is the one figure in the story the house chose not to publish, and it matters for valuing any future example.

The immediate next question is whether more Jordan-linked cars follow this one to market. The G.O.A.T.'s name just produced two records in two days across two auction categories. A record result at double the estimate is the clearest signal yet that the market is pricing provenance aggressively.