Aston DBR1 smashes a Brit sales record
During a $60m (£46.8m) evening at the Portola Hotel, Monterey, bidding for a 1956 Aston Martin DBR1, chassis number one, lasted for nearly seven minutes until a private collector won this historically important Aston for $22,500,000 (£17.55m, including premium) – a world record not only for the marque, but for any British car sold at auction. It was one year ago at the same RM Sotheby’s Californian sale that the previous $21,800,000 (£17m) record was set by the 1955 Jaguar D-type.
The 1959 Nürburgring 1000kwinning DBR1/1 was raced by Aston works team drivers Stirling Moss, Jack Brabham, Carroll Shelby and Roy Salvadori. Consigned
‘It won the Nürburgring 1000k and was driven by Moss and Brabham’
from the same stable of Astons, a 1959 DB4GT prototype, for which at least $6m was forecast, was contested by three bidders until gavel fall, the winner paying $6,765,000 (£5.28m with premium), and a highly competitive 2006 DBR9 soared above the $275,000325,000 guide to make $616,000 (£480,480).
Earlier in a $43.87m (£34.22m) Friday morning session at Quail Lodge, Carmel, Bonhams hammered away a 1995 McLaren F1 – number 44 of the 64 road cars, and the first of only seven fully federalised US street-legal McLaren F1s – for $15,620,000 (£12,183,600 with premium), a record auction price for an F1.
The reassuring 73 per cent sale rate was certainly boosted by 53 of the 81 cars, many of them high value assets, being driven across the stage and auctioned entirely without reserve.
The following evening back at RM Sotheby’s, 13 low-mileage Ferrari road cars offered at no reserve and duly sold for $16.5m (£12.87m). The highest priced Prancing Horse at this, the ninth sale in four days on the Monterey peninsula, was a 1961 250GT SWB, which managed an $8,305,000 (£6,477,900) result. An alloy-bodied 1965 275GTB/6C sold for $3,575,000 (£2,788,500), a 1972 GTS/4 ‘Daytona’ for $2,172,500 (£1,694,550), both more than their top estimates.
Little evidence of any slow-down on the West Coast, then…