Crypto News: The $40 million EV

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The $40 million Ferrari

2026 Ferrari Luce ‘Tailor Made’ Source: RM Sotheby’s — 2026 Ferrari Luce ‘Tailor Made’

In 20 years covering cars, Hannah Elliott has never attended an auction more raucous than RM Sotheby’s evening sale on Aug. 15 in Monterey, California.

More than 1,000 people, mostly men, crowded inside a ballroom while another 2,000 milled around in a fenced-off pen outside, hitting the bars and shouting at the big screen as auctioneer Sholto Gilbertson delivered an Oscar-worthy performance. In the age of remote online sales and social media overload, people seemed to revel in the rowdy, communal moment. It felt like chaos barely restrained — and that was before the first Ferrari Luce hammered for $40 million.

Sold to benefit Ferrari’s own youth charity, the Jony Ive-designed EV was purchased by a rookie collector and set a record for a new car sold publicly.

The sale came as a resounding clap-back to the hand-wringing and “computer mouse on wheels” vitriol the brand’s first fully electric vehicle had endured upon its debut in May, causing Ferrari shares to fall almost 8%. “It was a genius move,” Spike Feresten, the American television writer who hosts a popular car podcast, said the next day, applauding Ferrari’s ability to pivot the narrative around a polarizing vehicle.

That this happened at the annual de facto center of the car world, the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, is also indicative of where the vintage market —and car culture at large — is headed while new vehicle sales plateau.

Button handing out awards in 2017. Source: Kimball Studios/Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance — Of the risks facing Pebble Beach, outgoing chairman Sandra Button had this to say: “When people dream of going to the Kentucky Derby, they don’t want to go one year and everybody’s wearing T-shirts and flip-flops.”

The result overshadowed many other significant sales and debuts during this 75th anniversary of the historic concours that itself is navigating the tension between history, prestige and cultivating relevance among a new generation of car fans weaned on video games and hypercars rather than Hollywood films and genteel classics.

The most expensive single car sold last week was American: A 1964 Shelby Cobra Daytona took $42.9 million at the Gooding Christie’s auction on Aug. 14. The svelte blue racer led a white-hot $755.6 million in sales across three days and five auction companies, obliterating the previous record of $471.2 million set in 2022, according to data from Hagerty. Supercars remained ascendent, with multiple Ferraris and Lamborghinis breaking records.

All indicators point to wealthy buyers ready and able to spend on vehicles that offer an opportunity to own something supremely exclusive and aligned with personal values and taste. Luxury automotive brands are practically scrambling over each other to accommodate with ever-more expensive, dramatic and limited vehicles.

Bugatti Destrier makes its public debut at Monterey Car Week Source: Bugatti — Bugatti Destrier made its public debut at Monterey Car Week.

A few highlights: Lamborghini unveiled a Super Veloce version of its Revuelto V-12 hybrid that is expected to cost around $740,000. McLaren showed the McL 6GT supercar priced at roughly $1.5 million, and Aston Martin introduced its $2 million Valen V-12 coupe. Bugatti revealed a Destrier hypercar estimated to cost well over $4 million, a price that Mate Rimac, who controls Bugatti, says won’t make a dent in demand.

“I have people stopping me, calling us every day, asking, ‘Hey, can you make one more just for me?’” Rimac said during an interview at an estate Bugatti had rented in Pebble Beach for the week. “It’s never been the case like this before.” The company’s order books are full to 2030.

By the numbers

Visitors to Burgundy can ride bikes in the vineyards. — Wine-optional wine country.

12 million

The number of visitors to France’s wine country in 2025. Even as global wine consumption slips, adventure-hungry tourists can still enjoy the vineyards through horseback rides, cooking classes or barrel making, Lindsey Tramuta writes.

€3,000

What Paris sales exec Matthias Ohresser paid ( about $3,450) for an intensive weeklong kitesurfing camp in Moroccan-controlled Western Sahara, says Sarah Rappaport. He’s part of a new contingent of travelers embarking on “skillcations” to learn everything from rock climbing to beekeeping.

799 yuan

The price of a stay at Yoma, a 24-hour luxury spa in Guangzhou, China. Equivalent to about $119, the package offers spa amenities, all you can eat meals and napping pods for wellness travelers seeking authentic experiences, reports Brittany Chang.

$12

The cost of a pair of lab-grown diamond earrings at Walmart, according to Stacey Vanek Smith. Lab-grown diamond prices sank about 75% from 2020 to 2023, rocking the industry’s old guard.

A new take on tailoring

Cue “Eye of the Tiger” and a training montage — suits are making a comeback.

“People wear suits now because they choose to,” says Savile Row-trained tailor Luke Sweeney. “It’s less about requirements and more about identity.”

The pandemic seemed to spell the end of buttoned-up corporate culture. With the rise of Zoom meetings and remote setups, many professionals got comfortable wearing sweats or shorts on the job — or, bizarrely, wearing sweats disguised as workwear.

But now, the suit industry is getting a second chance, Chris Rovzar reports. Men and women alike are choosing to make their workwear fun, opting for unconventional colors and experimental fabrics to shed the homogeneity of corporate America. Unique timepieces are also getting a boost, as detailed in the latest Watch Club newsletter.

A tailored suit also offers a particular charm in the world of mass retailers, which are experimenting with virtual fitting rooms and AI-generated avatars to solve problems of fit and style.

Hot dog

The men and women of the Bad Düben dachshund group walk across a meadow with their pets at their monthly meeting in Saxony, Germany. — Pack mentality.

Last year, Allie Conti reported that breeders are charging more than $15,000 to deliver fully trained doodles to eager pet parents. Scroll through social media, and it seems like everyone’s got a dachshund nowadays — from Formula One driver Charles Leclerc’s Leo to actor Luke Evans’ Lala. Randy Thanthong-Knight details the sausage dog’s 15 minutes of fame, from bucolic badger hunter to compact city slicker, now one of the world’s most popular dog breeds.

Heating up

Fly-fishing on the Colorado River. — Another blow to the men-holding-fish-on-dating-apps economy.

Extreme heat is taking down a classic American pastime — fly-fishing.

Nathan Risser reports from the Colorado River, where rising temperatures and decreased flows are making it harder for fish to survive. That’s led to a cascade of canceled trips and state-imposed fishing restrictions, threatening the billion-dollar sportfishing economy in the Western US. Skiing, Colorado’s other large tourist industry, has already faced a climate change-induced reckoning, as resorts turn to artificial snow and ticket tactics to keep their businesses alive.

Meanwhile, runners worldwide are grappling with the heat, forcing marathon dates to move and boosting interest in high-tech cooling gear, Nadia Neophytou reports.

The bright spot? There are a few places in the US — and the rest of the world — that haven’t been hit by droughts. California, for one hasn’t seen any fishing closures, and neither has the East Coast, Risser writes.

Progress and preservation

People walk down a street in George Town, Malaysia. Photographer: Stephen J. Boitano/Getty Images — Heritage for whom?

As urbanization and rising land prices increase the pace of development in Southeast Asian countries, historic buildings are getting caught in the crossfire. Nowhere is this more apparent than Malaysia’s Penang Island, home to a bounty of British colonial architecture. “It seems like progress equals concrete here, and unless you knock stuff down and put up high-rises, you are not moving with the times,” artist and resident Louise Goss-Custard tells Karoline Kan for Bloomberg CityLab.

More existentially, “people are continuously reflecting on what these colonial buildings mean,” Indonesian heritage analyst Noandha Dhegaska says. “Yes, they were built by colonizers, but after so many decades of new meanings added to them, is it right to just call them colonial?”

One very specific recommendation: Antique printers tray

You can find example like mine widely available online.

On one of my many vintage shopping expeditions a few years ago I acquired an old printers tray for $50. Once used as a drawer to store individual letters, numbers and punctuation for manual typesetting, it now makes a compelling wall hanging, a nifty little piece of personalized art filled with tiny treasures from my travels — sea glass from the Great Lakes, a commemorative spoon from Ireland, a Champagne cork from France, a matchbook from Aspen.

Mine’s up in my dining room, and it’s been fun watching the collection of items grow and evolve. It’s also great way to be a good host and ease the stress of gift-giving for when you have a dinner party or houseguests. Instead of a performative bottle of wine, ask instead for a small and personal conversation starter to add to the collection. —Brandon Presser

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