Rarely does auction marketing ever truly represent a sale’s contents. For a seemingly greater number of sales every year, we’re blessed with paragraph upon paragraph of hyperbole, as some poor auction house employee tries in vain to find a new way of describing the cars that we’re all intimately familiar with.

RM Sotheby’s recent ICONS sale in New York is a little different. In fact, ‘Icons’ is a brilliantly simple and descriptive way of communicating the types of cars that made up the lot list. Icons, the whole lot of them.

In this post we take a look at some of the lots that grabbed headlines, and make note of a few esoteric listings that caught our attention.

 

1959 Ferrari 250 GT LWB California Spider Competizione by Scaglietti – sold for £13,410,000

This California is as blue-chip as they come, which goes some way towards explaining the staggering £13,410,000 paid for it. California Spiders are rare enough as they are, however chassis #1451 GT is the second of just eight aluminium bodied cars, was delivered from the factory in full Competizione specification (Tipo 128F race engine with high-lift camshafts, larger triple Weber 40DCL6 carburettors and competition spec fuel tank with external filler, all of which it still retains), has genuine Le Mans history (it finished 5th outright in 1959), and has the all-important Ferrari Classiche certification. It’s a lot of coin, but opportunities like this are few and far between.

 

The advent of the modern collectable hypercar

The phenomenon of the modern hypercar is all about supply and demand, and in this respect, the manufacturers have the strategy absolutely nailed these days. Gone are the days of supercars being virtually saleproof when new. Famous stories abound of cars like the Porsche 959 and Jaguar XJ220 sitting in dealer showrooms for years before buyers could be found, but that is clearly no longer the case today. Whilst the industry generally frowns upon people buying cars purely for speculation purposes, it’s hard to knock them for doing it when you look at the numbers. Several were sold at ICONS, and it makes for eye-watering reading.

2018 Bugatti Chiron – sold for £2,812,000. Price when new – £2,518,000. Whilst it’s obviously pretty tricky to comment on an individual car without knowing what exact options it has and how much these options add to the base price, an indicated gain of £294,000 in a matter of months is not a bad investment.

2016 Ferrari F12 tdf – sold for £823,700. Price when new – £339,000. The tdf was only sold to those known intimately by the factory, which might explain the rapid increase. The value of this relationship with the factory? £484,700, it seems. The fact that all who have driven the tdf describe it as nothing short of brilliant and a modern masterpiece may have something to do with it, too.

2015 Porsche 918 Weissac Spyder – sold for £1,291,000. Price when new – circa-£800,000. A jump of £245,500 for each year of ownership is a nice little bonus.

2014 Pagani Huayra – sold for £1,379,000. Price when new – £1,029,430. Once again, Pagani’s are such bespoke vehicles that pricing a particular car is tricky without seeing the original invoice. However, a jump of approximately £349,570 in three years is notable. It’s probably worth it though; a Pagani is just as much work of art and craftsmanship as it is a car. And previous owners say that Pagani ownership comes with a lifestyle, so we guess that you’re getting more than just a hypercar for your money.

2014 Ferrari LaFerrari – did not sell, estimate £3,250,000-3,750,000. Price when new – circa £1,000,000. Many have called it the greatest Ferrari ever. Indeed, it caused plenty of fuss when new, largely because most prospective buyers weren’t actually permitted to buy it at all – a build slot was reserved as a special treat for only the loyalest of Ferrari customers. With such pent-up demand, it’s interesting to note that this example didn’t sell. If it did, however, turning £1mil into £3mil in the space of three years would have been nothing short of a miracle – maybe the market saw it for just that.

 

The one that got away: Ferrari F40

I can distinctly remember a time back in 2002, as a frustrated 17 year old, seeing F40s advertised for sub-£500k and just thinking about how chronically undervalued that seemed. I desperately needed someone to throw me some cash so that I could buy my dream car while they were still ‘cheap’, and I’m sure that I wasn’t alone. Interestingly, F40s stayed sub-£600k for a quite a while, until as recently at late 2014, in fact. But it seems that in early 2015 the market woke up to just how cool they are, and prices almost doubled within a matter of months (see graph at bottom of page). The £926,367 realised for this 1990 US-spec example just reinforces that even further.

 

1952 Jaguar C-Type – sold for £3,942,000

The market’s appetite for competition cars shows no sign of slowing, which is further indicated by the almost £4mil realised for this ’52 C-Type. Interestingly, Chassis XKC 007 doesn’t have an especially notable competition history. It never raced at Le Mans, and its only real claim to fame is that Phil Hill drove it a few times in some low-level American club races before it was sold to the son of a famous film director. This saved it somewhat from complete destruction and it is known as one of the more original C-Type’s out there, and its price goes to show how the market is now favouring originality over complete perfection.

 

Why so expensive? 1992 Lancia Delta Integrale Evo – sold for £142,142

Are we missing something here? According to our auction price tracking tool, the most expensive Delta Integrale Evo 1 sold at auction in the UK this year was well under £60k. Three Evo II Martini 5 editions have brought more, but even the best of those barely broke £110k. Yes, this is one of 400 special ‘Giallo Ferrari’ editions – although it seems like most of the final Evo’s were all some sort of special edition. And yes, with just 6,500km on the clock and in factory original condition, it’s likely the best Evo 1 in the world. But still, £142k seems like a lot of cash.

I guess, in that room in New York with the floor throwing millions of pounds at cars all night long, what’s forty or fifty grand between friends?

 

The switch – what’s happening with 300SL prices?

Night follows day, gravity sucks, and 300SL Gullwings are worth significantly more than 300SL Roadsters. That’s been the natural order of things – until now, at least. Over the last few months we’ve started to notice a reversal of that trend, and the prices realised for a pair of 300SL’s at ICONS seem to reinforce that notion.

This older-restoration 1955 Gullwing made £1,009,000, whereas this 1958 roadster, restored twice, made £1,049,000. What’s interesting is that this result removes the speculation – same sale, same room, same night, same group of buyers. Maybe the Roadster is slightly nicer owing to its recently completed restoration, but neither car has a particularly significant history or notable previous owner. It’s only an extra forty grand, but Roadsters were half the price of Gullwings as recently as six years ago…

 

…and a few collectables for the garage.

At £8,900, this is probably the most expensive chunk of reinforced concrete ever sold. But how cool is this – a genuine 1930s era kilometre marker from the Circuit de la Sarthe. 4.5km places it somewhere around the L’Auberge des Hunaudieres restaurant, on one of the most famous places on the track. Oh, to imagine the legendary scenes that this lump has witnessed.

 

Here’s one for the Steve McQueen fanboys out there (okay, lets be honest, that’s all of us). The actual Bell helmet and Hinchman Nomex racing suit worn by McQueen in the famous movie Le Mans. At a cool £250,000, this is the ultimate man-cave addition.

 

View the complete results listing here.

And, as promised, the justification as to why you should have mortgaged the house to buy an F40 a few years ago…