"New" Ferrari driven one mile in 33 years among hidden gems at RM Auctions Monterey

The package landed on my porch with a thud — twin catalogs from RM Auctions that felt more like telephone books for medium-sized cities. On those 600-plus glossy pages were more than 120 dream cars to be auctioned off at Pebble Beach Aug. 15 and 16. For a car lover, leafing through these books is akin to a child being deposited in a candy factory; the world slips away.

Beyond just being a treat to peruse, the catalogs revealed intriguing — and sometimes outrageous — things about the state of the collector hobby in general and the perceived value of certain cars in particular. Among the revelations:

Some people really never drive their cars: What do RM’s 1979 Lamborghini Countach LP400S Series I, 1981 Ferrari 512 BB and 1989 Ferrari Testarossa have in common? They’re time machines whose owners inexplicably resisted driving them over the past decades.

With, respectively, 536, 444 and 95 miles on their odometers, these supercars challenge the notion that a regularly driven exotic is the best investment, with estimates of $600,000 to $800,000 for the Lambo, $275,000 to $375,000 for the BB and $200,000 to $275,000 for the “Miami Vice”-ish redhead. The 512 BB stands out as a monument to monastic reserve; it was delivered with those miles (actually kilometers) on its dash; the owner spent the next three decades traveling behind the wheel of his Italian sports car for only half a mile.

In contrast, a driven but maintained Testarossa will typically go for under $100,000. But if you were dirt poor in 1989 but lusted after that particular Ferrari, this is your chance to re-enact that dealership experience by buying a vehicle that still has its seats covered in factory plastic.

The mother of all extended warranties: Top-of-the-heap outrageousness never goes out of style, which explains the estimated auction price of between $1.9 and $2.5 million on a 2013 Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport Vitesse “Le Ciel Californien.” Yes, that is the full name of the car, which boasts 1,200 hp, a rear air brake to haul you in from 257 mph and a not-for-everyone white over blue paint scheme meant as an ode to the blue California skies.

But perhaps the most eye-popping thing about this machine is buried deep in the lengthy catalog description, an almost casual aside that the 3,000-mile machine “comes with an extended factory warranty which will remain in effect until May 30, 2019. The current price for such a warranty is approximately $255,000.” Come again? Nearly 300 large for a warranty? Let’s hope that includes oil changes for the W16 engine and perhaps new wipers.

Get ‘em while you can: Not that long ago, an ‘80s Ferrari 328 GTS was $50,000 or less all day long, a nice but not museum quality Mercedes 300SL Gullwing cost a cool half-million dollars, and barely driven Ferrari Enzos could still be snatched up for around $1.5 million. But if you are still waiting on those trains, they’ve left the station.