Pebble Beach auctions hit nearly-half-billion-dollar record 

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An obscure pre-war roadster took top honors at the 2022  Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. The 1932 Duesenberg J Figoni Sports Torpedo owned by Lee Anderson beat 40 of the world’s most expensive and beautiful cars to win the Best of Show Sunday on the lawn of the Pebble Beach Golf Links near Carmel, Calif. It was the first time an American car had won since 2013.

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Held annually since 1950, the concours is the climax of Monterey Car Week, a five-day-long Super Bowl of sorts for car-lovers. Early events included specialty car shows highlighting offerings from the likes of Porsche and Ferrari, vintage car races, and dozens of new-car debuts. So many, in fact, that many automotive executives are calling Monterey Car Week the “new auto show.”

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But the biggest draw for many comers were the auctions, which realized record sales this year.

Totals after the final auction August 21 hit US$456.1 million, beating by 15.6 per cent the previous high of US$394.48 million set in 2015 in Monterey, according to data from automotive insurance provider, Hagerty. “The week put an exclamation point on what has been an unprecedented year for the collector car market and allayed concerns that economic volatility will cool buyers’ enthusiasm,” Hagerty analyst John Wiley said in an email.

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Often auction houses will report that their totals creep higher as the week progresses, since many cars that went unsold at public auction are then sold privately in the days directly after. By the morning of August 22, after-sales had increased the week’s haul to US$469 million, up 18.9 per cent over 2015’s record, Wiley said.

“It’s worth considering that the record sales total comes amidst a time of high inflation,” Wiley said, noting that in today’s dollars 2015 sales figure amounts to US$490 million. “Although classic cars are appreciating fast, the dollar is depreciating ever faster.”

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Still, an unprecedented number of million-dollar cars — 113 in total — sold. The average sale price of all cars was US$583,211, up from a US$446,042 average last year, while multimillion-dollar hammer prices made up roughly three-quarters of total sales.

The astounding number of high-value cars came as no surprise to industry insiders and market experts, who had predicted that recent stock market volatilities, the war in Ukraine, and exchange rate between U.S. dollar and euros would not affect the world’s biggest spenders.

Canadian-headquartered RM Sotheby’s saw the top-seller for the weekend, a 1955 Ferrari 410 Sport that went for US$22 million. It also sold several significant pre-war cars like a 1937 Mercedes-Benz 540K Sindelfingen Roadster that took US$9.9 million; and the 1924 Hispano-Suiza H6C Transformable Torpedo that realized US$9.245 million. Top sales for the family-operated house reached US$221.7 million with a 90-per-cent sell-through rate, up considerably over 2021’s US$147 million total with the same sell-through rate. This year, the average price of a car sold at RM Sotheby’s was more than US$1.3 million.

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Not everyone saw such gangbuster results.

Gooding & Co., the official auction house of the concours, realized more than US$105 million in sales and an 82-per-cent sell-through rate, down from US$106 million and 87 per cent in 2021. Its top sellers included the 1937 Bugatti Type 57SC Atalante that sold for US$10.34 million; the 1990 Ferrari F40 that sold for US$3.965 million; and the 1994 Bugatti EB110 Super Sport that sold for US$3.167 million.

Mecum sold US$50.8 million worth of cars at a 64-per-cent sell-through rate, down from US$53.8 million and 77-per-cent sell-through in 2021. Its top lot was a 1958 Ferrari 250 GT ‘Tour de France’ Alloy Coupe that garnered US$2.86 million, but its average sale price was a far-lower US$174,016.

Elsewhere, Bonhams saw US$27.8 million in cumulative sales over the week, with an 88-per-cent sell-through rate. That was down as well from 2021’s US$35.9 million in sales with the same sell-through.

All told, Gooding & Co. and RM Sotheby’s posted all of the top 10 sales between them, leaving Bonhams, Mecum, and Hagerty-owned Broad Arrow to fight for the scraps. Six of the top 10 sellers were Ferraris, which still set the blue-chip standard for collectible cars in the modern era.

The 72nd Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance will be held August 20, 2023.