Fake Ferrari that starred in Ferris Bueller’s Day off is set to fetch $400,000 at auction

The ‘Ferrari’ driven by Ferris Bueller during the most famous act of truancy in the history of cinema is to fetch around $400,000 when it goes up for auction in Florida on March 2nd. 

The car is not an authentic Italian sportscar but rather is one of the three or four replicas, reports vary, built specifically for the 1986 classic Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. 

Considering one of the most iconic scenes in the movie sees the car shoot out a window and fall several stories before crashing, its understandable why replicas were used. 

One of the replica cars driven by Ferris, a 1985 Modena Spyder California, will be sold for somewhere between $350,000 and $400,000 as part of Bonham’s Amelia Island Auction. It’s not clear which scenes this car was used in. 

In 2020, a real 1961 GT 250 Ferrari fetched $17 million at auction. 

The iconic car that Ferris Bueller uses to bring his girlfriend and best friend to Chicago was not a real Ferrari but rather a replica built in California 

Ferris Bueller director John Hughes got the idea for using replicas after reading about California-based Modena Design & Development in an edition of Car & Driver magazine. The company specialized in building car replicas. 

The original script called for a contemporary Mercedes to be the car of choice for Ferris and his friends. When Hughes first called about the company making a replica for the movie, they hung-up on him thinking it was a practical joke. 

Since it was built, the Spyder has had two owners, one a Paramount employee who bought it after production and later a plastic surgeon. 

The surgeon accepted the car from the employee as payment for services in 1989. The car’s whereabouts were then unknown as the doctor sold it in the 2000s. 

Classic car website Hemmings reported in 2019 that a few years earlier a Modena employee named Neil Glassmoyer read about a Spyder for sale in Southern California. 

When he went to inspect the vehicle, he determined it was one that had made for Ferris Bueller thanks to production markings. Glassmoyer bought the car immediately. 

He redesigned the car, replacing the automatic transmission with a manual one, as well as giving it new brakes and wheels.    

The car now comes equipped with leather interior, a Ford-made 302ci Pushrod V8 engine, a new 16-speaker Blaupunkt stereo system. The owner will also receive paperwork from Paramount confirming it was used in production. 

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The car was in the possession of a California-based plastic surgeon for years but was considered lost until 2013

One of the car’s original designers tracked it down and bought it on the spot when he realized it was used in the movie 

The car is expected to fetch between $350,000 to $400,000 when it goes up for auction in March

The Spyder may be about to make an appearance on the silver screen after Deadline reported in August 2022 that Paramount had greenlit a spinoff movie Sam and Victor’s Day Off that will follow the two parking garage valets who go for a joyride in the car in the original movie

When it was made for the movie it was given an automatic transmission as star Matthew Broderick couldn’t drive manual at the time. 

One of the other cars made for the movie is on display at a Planet Hollywood restaurant while the other, which was a bare bones car with no engine, was the one destroyed in the iconic finale of the movie. That was also rebuilt and sold at auction in 2022. 

The Spyder may be about to make an appearance on the silver screen after Deadline reported in August 2022 that Paramount had greenlit a spinoff movie Sam and Victor’s Day Off that will follow the two parking garage valets who go for a joyride in the car in the original movie. 

The car’s listing on the auction site doesn’t mention if putting the car in reverse won’t alter the mileage. Incidentally, putting an authentic 1961 Ferrari GT in reverse would change the odometer.