Ferrari 456 Buyer's Guide

The 456 is Ferrari's great understated car: a 442bhp 5.5-litre V12, 2+2 seating, and Pininfarina's cleanest shape of the nineties. Our data catches its defining split precisely: a 1995 456 GT manual sold for £40,283, while live automatic and unspecified cars are estimated at £22,000–26,000 and £30,000–38,000. The six-speed manual carries the money, and the gap is not closing.

Know your versions

One generation, 1992–2003, in two phases. The original 456 GT (from 1992) has the pop-up headlamp-adjacent purity of the first design and the gated six-speed manual; the 456 GTA (from 1996) added a four-speed automatic developed with FF Developments, which suits the car's GT brief but not its values. The 456M GT and 456M GTA (1998–2003) revised the nose, undertray, interior and cooling; the M cars are the better-sorted daily proposition, though some prefer the original's details. Around 3,300 cars were built in total across all versions, manuals a minority, right-hand-drive manuals a small minority, which explains what happens at auction when one appears.

What to pay

One sale on record: £40,283 for a 1995 456 GT manual in May 2026. The live listings frame the rest: a 1998 456 estimated at £22,000–26,000 and a 1998 456 GTA at £30,000–38,000. On our evidence, £22,000–26,000 is where automatic-era cars start, the £30,000–38,000 band covers better GTAs, and £40,283 is what a manual GT actually brought. That is one of the cheapest routes to a front-engined Ferrari V12 in existence, with the caveat that the purchase price is the down payment, not the cost.

What goes wrong

The V12 itself is strong, but everything around it is priced in Maranello lire: a cam-belt service is engine-out-adjacent labour on early cars and must be documented on schedule, and valve-guide wear on hard-used engines announces itself with smoke on the overrun. Self-levelling rear dampers are expensive to overhaul and often quietly replaced with standard items; check what is fitted. The interior is the classic sticky-switch Ferrari cabin, restorable but tedious, and leather shrinkage on the dash is common. GTA transmissions are durable if serviced, but a slurring change means a specialist bill few cars at £22,000–26,000 estimates can justify. Corrosion appears in the sills and around the rear arches on neglected cars; these were used as actual transport, which is to their credit and their bodies' cost. Buy on history file thickness above all.

Our view

The 456 is the connoisseur's cheap Ferrari and will stay that way until the market notices there are barely three thousand of them. Our £40,283 manual result against £22,000–26,000 automatic estimates says buy the manual if the budget allows; it is the version collectors will fight over. But a well-documented GTA at the £30,000–38,000 level is a magnificent car in its own right, and the M-series cars are the most usable V12 Ferraris of their era. Skimped maintenance is the only thing that makes a 456 cheap to buy and ruinous to own; the file matters more than the mileage.