Because He Can’t Drive 225: Sammy Hagar’s LaFerrari Hits $4.675 Million
It’s been a busy news week in the realm of Ferrari supercars. In Italy on Thursday, Ferrari unveiled its latest high-performance halo machine, the 1200-hp V-6 hybrid F80, which is a direct competitor to the just-announced McLaren W1. With only 799 planned for production, it is the next step in a line that includes the 288 GTO, F40, F50, Enzo, and LaFerrari. Speaking of, in the Arizona desert last Saturday, one of the most famous of the 500 LaFerraris built, owned by former Van Halen frontman Sammy Hagar, sold for $4,675,000—a solid return over his $1.4 million purchase price in 2015.
Hagar is a car guy’s car guy, with an eclectic collection that runs the gamut from 1960s muscle to modern German supercruisers. And yes, Ferraris, including a 365 GTB/4 Daytona, a 599 GTB Fiorano, and of course the black Ferrari 512 BBi made famous in the video for “I Can’t Drive 55.”
Then there’s the LaFerrari. In a brief video posted to X over the summer, Hagar references the super exotic as his “I can’t drive 225” car. Which helps explain his reason for wanting to part with it.
“I can’t drive it. I don’t drive it,” he said in a separate video posted to USA Today last November. “At my age, my vision, my reflexes, everything, it’s just too much car for me.” As a result, the LaFerrari has just 1566 miles on the odometer.
Hagar purchased the car new, having traveled to Maranello to spec it himself. He chose the unique (and quite lovely) cream exterior after seeing similar paintwork on a 1960s Ferrari in a photograph at the factory. For the interior, he went with a matching cream leather with black piping and carbon fiber accents, and his initials appear on the steering wheel.
The LaFerrari made waves when it debuted, thanks in large part to its mild hybrid system, Ferrari’s first such powertrain. The 6.3-liter V-12 made 789 hp at 9000 rpm and was paired with an F1-derived 120-kW kinetic energy recovery system (KERS) good for another 161 hp, for a total output of 950 hp. This made it the most powerful road-going Ferrari ever produced. Car and Driver called it “hellaciously quick,” with 0 to 60 mph coming in just 2.5 seconds and the quarter mile in 9.8 seconds at 150 mph, en route to a claimed 218 mph top speed.
Hagar originally consigned his LaFerrari to Barrett-Jackson’s January 2024 Scottsdale auction, but inspection revealed the car’s specialized high-voltage lithium-ion battery to be at the end of its eight-year life-cycle, with a costly replacement unavailable at the time. With the issue now sorted thanks to Ferrari of San Francisco, off it went to B-J’s Scottsdale Fall Auction.
The car crossed the block October 12, the day before Hagar’s 77th birthday, and he flew up from his home in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, to be on stage and personally hand over the keys to the new owner.
Hagerty has tracked 46 sales of LaFerraris in the secondary market. The two biggest results have come for open-top Aperta models, produced 2016–18, both of which benefited charities, with a $10 million result at RM Sotheby’s auction at the Ferrari factory in September 2017 and a $7M result for the 500th and final LaFerrari Aperta in December 2016. On the low end, if such a thing can be said about a seven-figure car, RM sold a 2014 model in London in 2022 for $2.25M. The bulk of LaFerrari sales tend to fall between $3M–$4M, which fairly matches current valuation for these cars: #3 (good) condition are valued at $3.3M and #2 (excellent) examples hover around $3.8M.
At $4.675 million, Hagar’s La Ferrari tops our #1 (concours) figure of $4.4M. But that should come as no surprise. He’s a highly likable public figure with a long connection to the marque. The car stands out by virtue of its attractive color scheme. It has been driven sparingly and with great care, showing very few, if any, flaws. It’s fresh from a pretty significant service, and Hagar was on stage this week to be a part of the selling spectacle. One could very well make the case it is the best LaFerrari in the world and was priced accordingly.
Now that its V-6–powered successor has broken cover, it will be interesting to watch where LaFerrari prices go.
Back when Sammy teamed up with Michael Anthony, Chad Smith and Joe Satriani to form Chicken Foot he was asked why the group got together. He looked at Anthony and replied, “we needed gas money”. At that time Satriani was driving a Prius.
Hagar is on the Ferrari select customer list. Really.
A $274,000 battery. Lol. No thanks. I’ll stick with gasoline.
To add to this, I recall reading that for LaFerrari and also the P1, its really critical to keep these trickle charged and that if the car was not on a charger for more than a week or two, the battery would brick. From what I read, this was also a contributing reason why the car got pulled last year as it sat without a charger prior to auction. If anyone has first hand knowledge, please correct me if this is not accurate.
MT – I think Sammy ran out of extension cords to run all the Battery Tenders and forgot to run to Walmart.
It’s a beautiful car but that temperamental hybrid battery price is crazy.
I’m not a fan of “big bucks being shelled out for celebrities’ cars just because they’re celebrities’ cars”, but I actually like Sammy and am glad he got a good return on his investment.