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Monterey has always been the week where the collector car market shows its hand, and this year the hand was a royal flush. RM Sotheby's closed its 29th annual Monterey sale with $380 million in total results — the highest-grossing edition in the event's history — with a 90 percent sell-through rate and registered bidders from 39 countries.
The scale of it is easier to grasp in tiers. Sixty-nine lots cleared $1 million. Fourteen cleared $5 million. Six cleared $10 million. And two sailed past $30 million. When the dust settled, 38 existing world auction records had fallen and nine cars set benchmarks in categories that had never had a public auction result at all.
"We're witnessing something truly remarkable in the collector car world, and this Monterey was an incredible indication of what the market is capable of right now," said Gord Duff, President of RM Sotheby's. "We assembled arguably the strongest catalogue of cars we could, and our clients, new and old, took every opportunity to bring these cars home. It wasn't just pre-war, American, or modern. We saw cars from nearly every make and era break records."
The McLaren That Rewrote the Record Book
Saturday night belonged to a 1996 McLaren F1 GTR, which hammered away at $34,655,000. That figure does two things at once: it makes this the most valuable McLaren F1 ever sold at auction, and the most valuable British car ever sold at auction, full stop. For context, the previous F1 GTR auction record sat at $5,280,000. This wasn't a step up. It was a different staircase.
American iron answered on the same night. A 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport — one of the most sought-after competition Corvettes in existence — sold for $18,705,000, making it the most valuable Corvette ever to cross an auction block.
A $40 Million Ferrari, All of It for Charity
The evening's headline number didn't go to a vintage racer at all. The 2026 Ferrari Luce "Tailor Made," offered exclusively for charity, achieved $40,000,000 and became the most valuable new car ever sold at auction — breaking a record RM Sotheby's itself set just a year earlier. Every dollar of the proceeds benefits The Ferrari Foundation, a 501(c)(3) public charity supporting educational programs and community projects worldwide.
Ferrari's presence didn't stop there. The marque accounted for six of the week's top 10 sales, with the 1995 F50 at $12,105,000, the 1985 288 GTO at $11,555,000, the 2003 Enzo at $9,410,000, the 2015 LaFerrari at $8,695,000, and the 1991 F40 at $8,365,000 all finding new homes.
Friday: Hypercars With Serious Numbers
Friday's session leaned modern and extreme, led by The Driver's Philosophy Collection — a group of track-focused machines and hypercars that combined for $53,359,500. A 2023 Ferrari Daytona SP3 topped the collection at $17,825,000, followed by a 2025 Bugatti Mistral at $8,310,000 and the one-off 2024 Pagani Huayra Roadster "Executor" at $8,035,000.
Thursday: Clark Gable's Duesenberg Leads the Pre-War Charge
If you were worried the pre-war market had gone quiet, Thursday said otherwise. The 1935 Duesenberg Model JN Convertible Coupe by Rollston and Bohman & Schwartz — built for Clark Gable and offered from The Sam and Emily Mann Collection — sold for $9,080,000 against a previous model record of $594,000.
The same collection produced a 1937 Delage D8-120 S Aerodynamic Coupe by Pourtout at $5,780,000, and the Mann Collection finished the night at $34,886,500 overall. Elsewhere, The Ray and Bonnie Kinney Collection totaled $10,468,800 and The Jim Patterson Collection realized $8,242,500.
What It All Means
The through-line is that quality separated itself from everything else. Modern hypercars and blue-chip pre-war coachwork rose together, which doesn't usually happen — and it suggests collectors are rewarding rarity, provenance, and significance regardless of the decade stamped on the title. From Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, and McLaren to Duesenberg, Delage, and Packard, the best examples ran away from the pack.
Whether $380 million becomes the new floor or stands as a high-water mark is a question for next August. For now, it's the number every other auction house is measuring itself against.
Source: RM Sotheby's press release, 17 August 2026. All photography ©2026 Courtesy of RM Sotheby's.
