Manual Ferrari Values Shift Up A Gear As Six-Speed F430 Spider Sells For Shocking $408,000

Hands up: who bought a lottery ticket after reading about the 11,000-mile 2009 Ferrari F430 Spider we posted about last week? Turns out you would have needed one. The condition and mileage were appealing, and being a 2009 car it’s one of the last F430s. But what really made it stand out, and sell for huge money, was its rare factory-original six-speed manual transmission.

It was specifically the presence of that manual transmission that persuaded one person to pay an outrageous $408,430 to win Bring-a-Trailer’s auction and take it home. In case it needs spelling out, that is an insane amount of money for a Ferrari F430. Almost as much, in fact, as you’d need to spend to buy the limited production 430 16M, the roadster version of the 430 Scuderia, and, according to Ferrari, the most driver-focused of the open-top F430s.

That $408,430 hammer price is getting on for $100k more than similar manual 430 Spiders have sold for on the same auction site recently, and is also over double what you’d expect to pay for a same age, same mileage 430 Spider with the more common F1 semi-auto transmission. It’s also $100k more than the list price of a brand new F8 Spider, and is likely to exceed what you’d have to pay to get into the new 296 Spider Ferrari is currently teasing ahead of its full reveal.

Predictably, there’s been a collective gasp on the internet at what must be a new world record price for one of these cars, but the winning bidder, who goes by RapidoRacer on BaT, doesn’t appear to have any buyer’s remorse.

“I regret not buying a Daytona or Dino many moons ago,” RapidoRacer explained in a comment under the listing at the auction’s end. “Fortunately, I am in a position to buy this last of the model run example of the F430.”

Some commenters wonder why he would spend so much when he could buy a paddle-shift F430 and have it converted to a manual for a fraction of the price. But RapidoRacer claims that, while he has nothing against conversions, he loves originality in his cars.

And no matter how well-executed a conversion is, it can never make a car original. A Porsche 911 GT3 dressed up with all the correct RS parts will still only ever be a GT3 and not a GT3 RS. But Ferrari owners (and BMW E46 M3 CSL owners) have been carrying out manual conversions for several years, theoretically ruining their cars’ originality because the cars are more fun to drive with a stick.

And in the case of Ferrari F430s, manual conversions by the likes of European Auto Group (EAG) are still worth more, not less, than stock, original F1-transmission F430s, if not as much as original manual cars. Surely, then, with the news of this sale price, the huge gulf that’s now present between the price of manual and semi-auto F430s will only result in even more F1-shift cars being converted.

EAG’s website lists the price of a DIY manual conversion kit for an F430 as $25,000, or $35,000 if installed by one of their technicians. The same website offers manual conversions for the Ferrari 599 ($35,000/45,000), and even the Toyota Supra ($15,000/$25,000).

Would you ruin your Ferrari’s originality to perform a manual shift conversion? Leave a comment and let us know.