Ferrari reportedly supplied 15 cars over the eight-season run of Magnum, P.I. This one, chassis number 28251, is said to be the first — the car from the pilot episode, “Don’t Eat the Snow in Hawaii,” the same episode that gave us the opening-credit burnout seared into every Gen Xer’s brain.
Barrett-Jackson will send it across the stage at its Palm Beach auction April 16 through 18, no reserve. That last detail matters. A different Magnum 308 GTB sold last year for $115,000.
Without a safety net, this one could go for less. Or a bidding war between nostalgic baby boomers could push it into the stratosphere. No reserve means anything can happen.
The 1979 308 GTS wears Rosso Corsa over what was originally a Crema interior, though Hagerty reports it was re-trimmed in Nero black before being resold after its screen duty ended. It has the quad-cam 2.9-liter V8 fed by four Weber carburetors — the carb car, not the fuel-injected GTSi that took over for seasons two through six, or the Quattrovalvole that closed out the series. The early carb cars are the ones purists want anyway.
Authentication comes from Ferrari historian Marcel Massini and F-Register, which places it in the first season alongside two other 1979 carbureted cars. This isn’t some tribute build with a Hawaiian shirt draped over the passenger seat. It’s documented screen history.
The only modification made for filming was to the driver’s seat. Tom Selleck stands six-foot-four, and fitting him into a 308 required removing seat padding and sliding the seat as far back as possible — basically the same trick tall guys use at Miata track days.
Whether those seats have been fully restored to factory spec is a point of mild dispute. Hagerty says they were converted back to standard before Ferrari North America prepped the car for resale. The Barrett-Jackson listing doesn’t confirm it.
The car also shows its age. Hagerty describes “signs of a life well lived, with plenty of patina,” along with aftermarket additions including a CD player and a rear valance. This is not a concours trailer queen. It’s a 46-year-old Ferrari that worked for a living, briefly, then passed through private hands for decades.
A clean, non-celebrity 308 GTS typically trades in the $58,500 to $67,500 range. The Magnum provenance roughly doubled that number at the last comparable sale. The question now is whether the first car — the pilot car, the one that may have been in the opening credits — commands something beyond that $115,000 benchmark.
Hollywood provenance is unpredictable. The Bullitt Mustang sold for $3.74 million. A Knight Rider Trans Am fetched $150,000. The Magnum Ferrari sits somewhere in that strange space between genuine automotive artifact and pop-culture memorabilia.
Two hundred and thirty horsepower (some sources say 240), a gated five-speed manual, a limited-slip differential, pop-up headlights, and a removable targa roof. It was never the fastest Ferrari. It was always the coolest one on television.
Palm Beach in mid-April. No reserve. Somebody is going to own the car Thomas Magnum drove before the show even knew what it had. Whether they pay a reasonable premium or an absurd one depends entirely on how many people in that room grew up wanting to be Tom Selleck — which is to say, all of them.
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