Morning Glory: Pebble Beach Auctions
Over the last five years we’ve started our Car Week adventures at the Gooding & Company Pebble Beach Auction. It’s an opening salvo of the ultimate car weekend where we and tens of thousands of others come to the Monterey peninsula to bask in the glory of everything automotive.
We start our day early, arriving well before the doors open to preview the multitude of cars that will change hands over the weekend, and coincidentally, many of them will later be entered in the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance over the years to come. Though in some cases as we reveal later, it can happen in a matter of days. As the doors open, we always find ourselves amongst the few truly dedicated willing to make the early trek to spend some quality time with cars up for auction. To say its magical is an understatement and not an adequate description of the experience. The very first car we saw on our visit was a McLaren F1 for crying out loud! But more on this car later…
It is a one on one experience for those that first arrive where the viewer can connect with a car and almost hear it whisper it’s history calling out to be driven once again. They come with the provenance of former racing victories and concours trophies or for having been part of notable collections. It is a curated collection of dreams and promise. Not just machines up for auction but storytellers of past glory and glory to be had. Also, full disclosure is necessary here, we truly enjoy the complimentary coffee at the coffee bar, this year sponsored by Putnam Leasing with drink names such as Enzo Espresso, Mocha Benz, and our favorite the California 250 Cappuccino.
This is the part where we must acknowledge the weekend’s biggest sale. Only 106 McLaren F1s were ever built and the model up for auction only had a 242 miles on the clock making it one of the most pristine versions ever sold at auction, which may not being saying much since these cars rarely come up for sale in the open market. When the weekend was over it would fetch the world record auction price for the McLaren F1 breed at $20,465,000.
The cars that cross the auction block are often to be seen at future Car Weeks gracing the greens of Pebble Beach or being driven in absolute anger at Laguna Seca Raceway. Often on Carmel’s Ocean Avenue previously auctioned super cars such as the Ferrari F40 or Bugatti Veyron can been seen cruising the avenue. This is all to say that the Gooding and Company auction is a significant incubator for the cars of Car Week.
In one case, the exchange from auction block to Concours occurred at record speed. On Friday evening a Bugatti Type 35 became the most expensive Bugatti Type 35 ever sold at auction at $5.6 million, and on Sunday morning was on the fairway at the Pebble Beach Concours. By Sunday afternoon it had taken home the Chairman’s Trophy.
Staff Picks
Not that you care, but we thought we’d each like to share which cars were our own personal best of auction. Not necessarily the ones we thought would fetch the highest prices, but those that were “all the money” to us.
For Andrew:
Choosing a favorite from this auction was a bit like choosing my favorite kid. There were about 5 serious contenders for my choice if I had the proverbial “all the money in the world.” And as I’m co-founder of this franchise, I’ve made the executive decision to choose two favorites. My first, co-equal choice is a 1970 Lamborghini Miura P400S. Sure it’s a beautiful vehicle. It’s a classic, it’s Italian and it’s considered by some to be the first real supercar. That’s all fine and good, but I’m not a huge “Lambo guy.” Add to those attributes that it was owned by the late Rush drummer, and bona fide ROCK GOD, Neil Peart, and that gets all of my attention. Iconic Lambo + Neil Peart = WINNING! I went back to this sexy silver car three or four times and just kept thinking…this is one of the coolest automotive things I’ve ever seen. It sold for $1,325,000 at the hammer.
My second, co-equal choice was one that I knew I was going to like when I saw it in person. I’d been watching all the social media on it and reading all the email updates from Gooding for a month. “Lambo guy,” I’m not….”Porsche guy,” I am indeed. I’m also slowly working through something akin to an automotive mid life crisis of sorts. Until a few years ago I hadn’t given much thought to re-embracing the things of my formative years in the 80s and early 90s. Well, times have changed, and I’ve really come around to love and appreciate the mostly ridiculous things of that time. Behold, the 1984 Porsche 969 Turbo by Rinspeed! This thing is half turbo slant, half Ferrari Testarossa, and all bonkers! It hurt my eyes to look at it, but I couldn’t stop looking at it. This thing is 100% of its time, and a perfect time capsule (still has its original Pioneer stereo!), and was offered at no reserve by its original owner! Pure #RAD
The pre-auction estimate on this car as $125-150K, but it sold at a staggering $235,200 when all was said and done.
Mark’s Picks:
Straight from the top it was the featured car, the McLaren F1 that did it for me. It is the totem to which all future pursuits toward hypercar perfection are measured. The dream come to life of the ultimate what-if question as in, what if engineers and designers could build an unparalleled performance car for the road. The creator of the F1, Gordon Murray was able to convince Ron Dennis and the might of McLaren to back the project. In 1988 it would set the top speed world record for fastest production car reaching 240.1 mph. Like the CLK GTR that I mention later, you’ll never forget seeing the F1 in the wild or on the auction block as only 106 were ever made with only 64 being street legal. Only seven were ever sold in the United States. To all the hypercars that came after, it stares back with the unmistakable look of “you wish you could be me.”
In second place, the 1998 Mercedes Benz AMG CLK GTR Strassenversion looks like an alien spacecraft and now unlike most of the movies we enjoyed in the late 1990s, still holds up twenty five years later Only 25 of the road-legal AMG CLK GTR were ever built meaning that more than just looking rare, it is rare.
The CLK GTR was the product of the rules and regulations of the European FIA-GT series started in 1997. In order to be included in the championship, automakers had to homologous the model they wanted to race, meaning they had to produce a road version and according to the rules they had to build no fewer than 25. This era of racing and the rules governing it led to seem fairly incredible and unique road cars including the Porsche GT1 and Panoz Esperanto GTR-1.
Ironically, this was being auctioned on the same weekend as the McLaren F1 we mentioned earlier as the engine development of CLK-GTR was completed via the secret purchase of a McLaren F1 racing car which was used as a test Mule for the AMG V12 engine.
The racing version of the CLK-GTR was utterly dominant as in 1997 the team won six of the series’ 11 rounds and won every round of the 1998 championship.
This specific car had just 1,442 km on the dial at the time of auction, yet the bidding would not reach the reserve price.
Lastly, I know, it’s too easy to pick a Ferrari in any contest. It’s can be the equivalent of a non-soccer fan picking their favorite team and 90% of the time choosing Manchester United. Must be something about that red uniform, just like that Ferrari red paint.
Displayed on one of the pedestals in the auction tent, demonstrating its significance as a featured auction car for the weekend was the 250 GT LWB California Spider Competizione.
In the five years (1957 to 1962) of its production Ferrari only built 106 California Spiders and only 50 were long-wheelbase (LWB). Of this small group, only 10 were equipped with competition features making them race prepped and ready. Each competition model was unique with no two examples being the same. While the California was never intended to be a race car, Ferrari is always happy to take your money if you want to go racing. This specific chassis was raced in Italy by Octavio Randaccio (What a name!) and in 1959 raced it in several races and hill climbs with the epic tricolore livery that it is displayed in today (restored).
Aside from it’s history and uniqueness, it is just a stunner to look at. Walking into the section of the auction tent the 250 GT was surrounded by all model of automotive dreams, yet I couldn’t look away. Even without knowing its history at first look it just exuded motoring excellence! It would also end the weekend fetching the highest selling price for a Ferrari auctioned during Car Week 2021 at $10,840,000.
And when the last bid was in, it was clear that the 17th year of the Pebble Beach Auctions was a resounding success. The 115 lots sold over the two day auction realized a staggering grand total of $107,045,410 in sales. This included four vehicles in the top ten sales of the weekend and the top two highest valued car sales overall when comparing to the other weekend auctions around the peninsula.
According to https://www.classic-car-auctions.info/, Car Week auction results overall were up 37% over 2019 results for a total sales number for all cars sold at something like $343 million!
In conclusion, we’d like to thank the fine folks at Gooding & Company for allowing us to visit and take in all of their offerings, as they’ve graciously done for the last several years. We’ve really come to appreciate it as part of our annual tradition and certainly hope to begin our 2022 Car Week festivities in the same fashion. As always, we have included a gallery below to give you an idea of the full spectrum of vehicles that Gooding & Company had on offer at this year’s event.
-The Loud Pedal
