McLaren F1 sells for $20.5 million, the most expensive car auctioned this year

A McLaren F1 was auctioned at Pebble Seashore on Friday evening for $20.5 million, exhibiting the continued energy of the basic automotive market.

Gooding & Co. auctioned off the uncommon McLaren F1 to a packed and excited crowd, blowing previous its estimate of at the very least $15 million. The F1, some of the prized collector vehicles for its rarity and place in auto historical past, turned the most costly automotive auctioned this yr and the most costly McLaren F1 ever offered.

The sale provided proof that after a pause in auctions of hyper-priced vehicles throughout the coronavirus pandemic, gross sales of seven-figure and eight-figure vehicles stay particularly sturdy.

“It appears that evidently the identical enthusiasm within the cheaper price brackets exists within the highest as effectively,” mentioned Hagerty, the collector automotive insurance coverage firm.

Gross sales thus far at Monterey Automobile Week in California — which incorporates a number of auctions, exhibits and awards, and consists of the Concours d’Class — are up 34% in contrast with the identical interval in 2019, topping $210 million, in response to Hagerty.

The McLaren F1 was the undisputed star of the week, and collectors and public sale homes had been watching its sale worth intently as a barometer for the market. The F1 is taken into account one of many first trendy tremendous vehicles and is credited with reviving the McLaren racing and automotive model. McLaren solely made about 100 F1s, in order that they not often come up for public sale and collectors world wide wait anxiously for his or her sale.

With a hulking 6-liter V-12 cranking out over 600 horsepower, it had a high pace of 240 mph and was described as “the primary Components 1 automotive for the highway.”

The sticker worth for McLaren F1s after they had been launched within the mid-Nineties was sometimes between $800,000 and $1 million. Whereas many scoffed on the excessive worth on the time, the hovering worth of the F1 makes it one of many best-performing vehicles of all time in terms of worth appreciation. Jay Leno as soon as known as his F1 “the perfect funding I ever made.”

The F1 auctioned by Gooding on Friday was particularly prized, because it had solely 241 miles on it, making it a “time capsule” automotive. It was additionally completed in a uncommon “Creighton Brown.” A 1994 McLaren — with particular LM racing specs — offered at RM Sotheby’s for $19.8 million in 2019.

It is unclear who made the successful bid.