Doug DeMuro on Ferrari's electric car reveal, the Aston Martin F1 disaster, and why classic car values aren't coming down

Summary

Doug DeMuro on Ferrari's electric car, Aston Martin's F1 troubles, and classic car values

Doug DeMuro, founder of Cars and Bids, argues that Ferrari's electric car is a deliberate play for new buyers, particularly in China and among younger consumers, rather than an attempt to satisfy existing enthusiasts. Ferrari has so far revealed only the interior, designed with Jony Ive's LoveFrom studio. DeMuro reads that choice as nervousness about how the exterior will land. Spy photos taken outside the factory show a car that looks, in his words, like a station wagon, though he notes Ferrari has a long history of building deceptive preproduction disguises.

The broader EV sports car category has not produced a single clear success. Lamborghini recently canceled its electric project. Maserati's electric Gran Turismo has been a commercial failure. Porsche quietly walked back plans for an electric Boxster, and its Mission X hypercar is effectively dead. DeMuro says Ferrari's internal logic is probably that if anyone can crack the formula, it's them, but he's candid that they're nervous too.

Porsche hypercar

With the electric hypercar shelved, Porsche is back to the drawing board on a 918 successor. DeMuro says he lobbied Porsche directly for a manual, naturally aspirated follow-up to the Carrera GT, but expects a hybrid automatic to be far more likely. Porsche is worried about deviating from what works, and DeMuro argues the 918 itself helped pave the way for the Taycan and hybrid 911s, so the brand treats the hypercar as a technology showcase rather than a pure driver's car. He puts the probable price ceiling of a new car in the $2 million range, though F50s are currently selling at auction for around $8 million, suggesting serious collector money is available.

Classic car values

Auction prices for modern classics have moved sharply. DeMuro says some cars are up 70% in three to four months, and he has had to raise insurance on his own Carrera GT twice in recent memory. His read is that this is not a bubble. Post-COVID values never corrected on the F40, F50, or Carrera GT, and he does not expect them to now. The people who had these cars on their bedroom walls as teenagers now have serious money, and FOMO accelerates the move once prices start rising. At a recent Florida auction, a Ferrari 250 GTO sold for approximately $38 million while an Enzo, once priced at a 100x discount to the GTO, sold for around $11 million. The GTO-to-Enzo spread has compressed to roughly 3x, reflecting a shift in collector appetite from pre-war and classic-era cars toward the millennial poster-car generation.

BYD

DeMuro is genuinely impressed by BYD's international expansion. He sees BYD cars regularly crossing from Mexico into San Diego and notes their penetration across Europe and Latin America even as the US moves to restrict Chinese imports. BYD's announcement of a nine-minute charge from 10% to 97% capacity is, in his view, potentially the most important EV development in years. Range anxiety and charge time remain the primary reasons consumers resist adoption, and solving that removes the last meaningful objection.

Rivian R2 and Scout

The Rivian R2 is his most anticipated consumer car of the year. He has already driven it and calls it genuinely good, though EV demand headwinds are real. Scout Motors, majority-owned by Volkswagen Group, which is also a Rivian investor, is building what looks like a direct Rivian competitor, a boxy electric off-roader, with the distinction that Scout will offer a plug-in hybrid variant for range-anxious overlanders. Scout has pushed its launch to 2028. VW Group is effectively pitting the two brands against each other, and it is unclear how that resolves.

DeMuro's caveat on the overlanding market is that eight of his neighbors own Rivian R1Ss and none of them overland. They are suburban parents doing school runs. Developing complex off-grid capability for a niche that will not spend $120,000 on a new vehicle is, in his view, largely a marketing exercise.