Market highlight
Porsche guru Andy Prill analyses the reasons behind an ultra-modern classic 996 Turbo Cabriolet selling for an eye-watering £1.15m
Two printable adjectives among a host of expletives uttered by a stunned crowd when the hammer fell on Lot 150 at RM Sotheby’s recent Paris sale are ‘wow’ and ‘unbelievable’. There was a palpable intake of breath as the realisation of what we had seen sank in.
The lot in question was a 1995 Porsche 911 Turbo Cabriolet and the shock was a winning bid of €1,344,000 (£1,149,000) paid to take this car home. Fair enough, it is a rare car with just 14 examples produced by Porsche Exclusive to a unique specification, but why was someone prepared to pay so much over the €1m top estimate for it? One person standing near me was heard to speculate that the car’s panels must have been made of precious metal. A more plausible reason is that this car is another example of an emerging trend in which we are seeing discerning collectors coveting exceptional examples of low-volume, low-mileage later models. It shouldn’t surprise us that we’re experiencing a generational shift as a younger breed of car collectors realise ambitions to own and collect the cars they dreamed of when they were young and couldn’t afford them.
Over the years, we’ve seen many cars make world record prices at auction but they’ve tended to be the staple, traditional makes and models. We also know it just takes more than one committed bidder to register a big result. But it was the scale of this result that was the surprise and I believe it’s one that rules out speculation as the reason for the price.
Personally, I’m a little concerned that we’re seeing hype perceived as value. But we still live in a free world and people will continue to spend their money as they see fit. Somewhere I suspect there are rapidly growing collections of what I term ‘ultra modern classics’, but why this currently appears to be a Porsche phenomenon remains to be seen.
‘Personally, I’m a little concerned that we’re seeing hype perceived as value. But we still live in a free world, and people will spend their money as they see fit’