Week-long totals when auctions closed hit US$371mil, down 8% from 2023. — Bloomberg
LOS ANGELES: Amid high interest rates, uncertain global economic climates, the US presidential election and a glut of vehicles available, vintage car collectors downshifted their spending in Monterey, California, at overcrowded auctions that ended on Saturday.
Week-long totals when auctions closed hit US$371mil, down 8% from 2023, according to data provided by Hagerty Inc, well below the bonanza days of US$469mil sold in 2022.
Half of the vehicles sold failed to realise their low price estimate, a Hagerty spokesperson confirmed.
“Not great,” is how Simon Kidston, an analyst and consultant who founded the K500 Index of classic car data, described it.
He blamed the high number of vehicles for sale – most of which had already been offered in recent months – and the hectic car week schedule as much as interest rates and geopolitical uncertainty for the lacklustre results.
“With auction houses trying to flood the market all at the same time and all at the same place, no matter how strong a market, it can’t absorb that kind of saturation,” Kidston said.
“There were too many cars, too many similar cars, all offered at the same time during a busy weekend of lunches, dinners, launches, concours, racing and private hospitality.”
Insiders are characterising the vibe as a temporary shift rather than an all-out bust.
Only small segments of the market are truly correcting downward and after-auction deals are already pushing final totals higher.
Sell-through rates across five auction houses hit 71% as of Sunday, up from 69% last year, according to Hagerty.
“The most important takeaway from the sophisticated and highly intelligent long-term collector is simple – they didn’t buy or sell anything this weekend,” said Steve Serio, a longtime automotive broker for elite car enthusiasts.
“They realise there will be opportunities for them in future transactions, as they are patient.”
Think of it as corrective, not catastrophic, said Peter Brotman, an automotive agent, who was buying and selling cars for international clients last week.
He described many of the cars left unsold as having a case of “freezer burn”.
Of the top 10 sales of the week, six were Ferraris.
The top seller among five auction houses was a 1960 Ferrari 250 GT SWB Spider that went for US$17mil, including buyers premiums at RM Sotheby’s, besting its US$16mil low estimate.
A 1955 Ferrari 410 Sport Spider that sold for US$12.9mil, including fees at RM Sothebys came in third.
The 1938 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900 Lungo Spider that had been stolen and recovered, was listed with a high estimate of US$20mil and wound up as the second-highest sale of the week.
Its US$12.7mil hammer price (US$14mil including fees) was the end of a disastrous bid to recover the US$23mil AIG shelled out in an insurance payment for the car in 2022, though it represented a good deal for the buyer.
Still, blue-chip vehicles suffered the most from the rocky market.
Sell-through rates for cars valued at US$1mil or more dropped to 52% from 63% in 2023, according to Hagerty.
The average price of a vehicle sold this year dropped to US$459,000, down from US$478,000 in 2023.
“It’s a big transitional market for many 1950s, 1960s cars,” said Serio.
“The ‘rich’ demographic buyers are younger and less interested in the old guard connoisseur cars.”
Several big-ticket Italian cars went unsold. A 1972 Ferrari 365 GTS/4 Daytona Spider was left on the stand with a high bid of US$2.1mil at Broad Arrow, a 1957 Maserati 200Si there failed to sell with a high bid of US$3.2mil.
Kidston blames a get-rich-quick car-buying mentality, which has diverted some buyers from vintage cars with racing provenance and “intrinsic value” to ultra-low-mileage cars with extreme rarity and big-ego specs.
“It’s become more about shopping than collecting,” he said.
Younger collectible cars indeed fared somewhat better than older vehicles this year in Monterey, with late-model supercars from Lamborghini, Bugatti and Ferrari going to new homes as market demographics evolve.
A red 1995 Ferrari F50 set a world record for the model when it took US$5.5mil (including fees) at RM Sotheby’s on Aug 16-even though it had been repainted multiple times.
Proponents of the segment said the weekend illustrated a positive changing of the guard.
Later-production Diablos like the 1998 Diablo SV that Gooding sold for US$428,500 and the 2008 Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 Roadster that RM Sotheby’s sold for US$1.4mil represented big jumps in the market for these cars, said John Temerian, founder of the We Are Curated vintage exotic car dealership in Miami.
Such sales showed that many collectors want usable cars they can drive to social events and group rallies, not just keep locked in a garage, he said. — Bloomberg
