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Ferrari’s charity arm has just raised $40 million for a car whose buyer will not even take delivery until next year.

A bespoke Tailor Made 2026 Ferrari Luce, identified as “Chassis 0” and described as the first production chassis from the Luce programme, was sold at an RM Sotheby's auction in Monterey on Saturday for exactly $40 million. That makes this example of the controversial electric Italian four-door an extraordinarily expensive Ferrari, even by the standards of most charity auctions.

The auction house waived the buyer’s premium, which means the full $40 million will go to The Ferrari Foundation. The recognised 501(c)(3) charity says it will use the money for future educational initiatives. The car itself, meanwhile, will return to Maranello before its scheduled first-quarter 2027 delivery.

According to the listing, this is not merely an early Luce finished in a special shade. Ferrari Tailor Made developed the car around the concept of light. Yes, that may sound like exactly the kind of Ferrari justification used to spend a fortune on paint, but the exterior finish is called Madreperla Semi-Gloss. It uses a dedicated pigment that is said to shift from green to violet depending on the angle and intensity of the light.

Ferrari matched that pearlescent exterior with an interior trimmed in Perla Le Mans metallic leather, a material created from selected Swiss hides and developed for the Tailor Made programme. Secondary cabin elements that would usually be black are instead finished in Grigio Corvara, while the car also receives dedicated wheels, bespoke brake calipers, and a Ferrari logo set against an optical-white background.

The carmaker says the complexity of applying the paint means no two examples will appear exactly the same. That may sound a little like marketing, but there is no doubt the process is painstaking. It also makes this car even more distinctive beyond its status as the very first of its kind.

Even so, “Chassis 0” is the bigger story. Ferrari describes it as the first production chassis of its Luce programme, making it less a simply special-specification car and more the opening page of a new Tailor Made chapter. The buyer gets the bragging rights, the foundation receives a substantial sum of money, and everyone else will have to wait until 2027 to find out whether the finished car looks as dramatic in person as Ferrari’s description suggests.