Top News

Monterey Car Week has wrapped up once again, leaving behind a trail of new supercars and one-off machines. Now that the celebrations are over, it is finally clear that this year’s auctions were genuinely record-breaking, with the five major auction houses together generating about $762 million in total sales, including premiums and charity events.

According to Hemmings, RM Sotheby’s, Gooding Christie’s, Mecum, Broad Arrow and Bonhams collectively sold more than three-quarters of a billion dollars’ worth of cars between Thursday, August 13, and Saturday, August 15. That is not only a new all-time record for the Car Week auctions, but it also completely surpasses the earlier $471 million record set in 2022. To underline just how dramatic that increase is, last year’s auction total was estimated at $433 million. That works out to a 76 percent jump.

Hemmings says around 1133 vehicles were offered across the major auction houses during Monterey, with 859 of them finding new owners. That translates to a 76 percent sell-through rate across all the houses. Sellers at Gooding Christie’s saw the strongest result with a 94 percent sell-through rate, followed by RM Sotheby’s at 87 percent, while Broad Arrow completed the top three with an 85 percent sell-through rate. Even more notably, 142 cars sold for more than $1 million, helping push the average sale price for the entire week to $887,399. Last year, that figure was closer to $525,000. In addition, 11 cars sold for more than $10 million each.

The biggest headline of the event was a one-of-seven Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe, which changed hands for $42,905,000. Close behind it was the first Ferrari Luce, which reached $40,000,000 as part of a charity auction. A McLaren F1 GTR brought in $34,655,000, making it the most expensive McLaren and the most expensive British car ever sold at auction. One of Chevrolet’s Corvette Grand Sport racers also went under the hammer in a rare public sale, setting a new benchmark for the model with a hammer price of $18,705,000. Ferrari was also strongly represented elsewhere, with two Enzos, two F50s and a 288 GTO each bringing in more than $10 million. Some of the marque’s other famous models came close to that mark as well, including an F40 that sold for $8,365,000 and a LaFerrari that traded hands for $8,695,000.

Personally, I hope this new group of owners will not be too hesitant to actually drive some of these hugely valuable machines in the future, but as prices keep climbing higher and higher, that seems increasingly unlikely. For all the ways Car Week has changed over recent decades, that remains one aspect of these sales that the enthusiast community still has not fully got used to.