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The Most Expensive Car Ever Auctioned in United States

The 1937 Bugatti Type 57SC Atalante Coupe that sold for a record $7.92 million

Financial tough times? Hogwash!
Gooding & Company, the official auction house of the 58th annual Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, brought in a total of $64.2 million during it’s two-night auction of ultra-rare collectible cars on August 16 and 17.

One lucky bidder paid a record setting $7.92 million dollars for a 1937 Bugatti Type 37SC Atalante Coupe. That’s the highest price ever paid for an automobile in the United States. The $64.2 million take broke even last year’s huge tally of $60 million. Twenty cars sold for more than $1 million and five cars sold for more than $2 million.

“Our auctions at Pebble Beach this year represent the finest grouping of cars we have ever had the honor to offer, and the strong sales results reflect that exceptional quality,” said David Gooding, president and founder of Gooding & Company. “We’re proud to have set the North American auction record with the $7.92 million sale of the 1937 Bugatti Type 57SC Atalante Coupe, and to have reached noteworthy milestones in a host of other categories as well.”

Dr. Peter Williamson’s collection of 12 Bugattis, the finest collection of it’s kind to ever come to auction, played a big part in bringing in such a large crowd to the Gooding & Co. auction. His 12 cars alone sold for over $15.5 million, a portion of which was donated to the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center and the Dartmouth Medical School. The results of the auction as a whole were mixed though, with some of the 140 cars selling for below estimate, and one in five actually failing to sell at all.

Here are the top five big sellers:
1937 Bugatti Type 37SC Atalante Coupe – $7.92 million, the big one, the highest price ever paid for an automobile in the United States.
1959 Ferrari 250 GT LWB “California” Spider – $3.63 million - Yes, you heard right, Cameron’s dads car from Ferris Buellers Day Off.
2009 Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport 001 - $3,190,000
1938 Alfa Romeo 6C 2300B Mille Miglia “Sleeping Beauty” – $2.585 million
1950 Ferrari 166 MM Berlinetta Le Mans – $2.2 million.

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Formula One Pot Boils Over

Max Mosley, FIA President The major F1 manufacturers and teams finally got a bellyful. Yesterday they announced they would leave the sport’s governing body, the FIA (Féderation Internationale de l’Automobile), and run their own racing series in 2010. This is auto racing’s version of the rebellion that’s racking Iran.

The Formula One Teams Association (FOTA) comprises eight teams—Ferrari, BMW-Sauber, Renault, McLaren-Mercedes, Brawn GP, Toyota, Red Bull Racing, and Scuderia Toro Rosso. These guys are the heavy hitters of international formula racing, and they have apparently had enough of the dictatorial whims of FIA president Max Mosley (above) and cohort Bernie Ecclestone (below), its business head, the money man.

We wrote about the F1 revolt, including Max and his Nazi sex orgy, last month. Between them, Max and Bernie have run the FIA like two stooges out of a Mel Brooks movie. British racing hero Jackie Stewart told Autocar Magazine:

I think a lot of people are kind of fed up with the dictatorial attitude. It’s been coming for some time. I think the teams feel that they have been bullied in some way for quite a long time, trying to force things through. I have said for a long time that the FIA needs to be restructured and there needs to be more corporate governance.

Bernie Ecclestone, CVC Capital Partners You bet. And Brother Bernie, like his namesake Madoff, has finally been unmasked. Formula One generates more than $1 billion a year.

Formula One teams—the people who design the cars, invest the cash and put the drivers on the circuit—get half the cash, while CVC, a privately-owned [sic] company of professional money-makers, get the rest. Meanwhile, there is no investment in the grass roots or in the infrastructure of motor racing or the circuits. Bernie and CVC simply sit there and take the loot.

The teams are especially fed up with having no say in running the sport. So things are beginning to look like the streets of Tehran. Like Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Max has a revolt on his hands after wielding Supreme Leader power for many years. To the streets, race fans!

If the breakaway teams race in the U.S., as seems possible, would you attend?

—jgoods

UPDATE

The FIA has responded to the threatened withdrawal by suing the eight racing teams (the FOTA), accusing them of “serious violations of law,” breaking contracts and “a grave violation of competition law,” whatever that is.

“The positions have hardened on both sides,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said. “The teams feel they have gone as far as they can, the FIA feel they have gone as far as they can and we’ve ended up in a situation where a solution hasn’t been found.
“We’ve no alternative because if we can’t race in Formula One under the current rules, if you want to keep competing then you’ve got to look at something else.”

Another element driving the lawsuit, which had some special words for Ferrari, has been the growing bad blood between Max Mosley and Ferrari head Luca di Montezemolo.

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Rumors Abound: Honda’s S2000 Successor

Many tears have been shed for the Honda S2000 (left), which will be discontinued after this model year. It’s a great sports car that had a wide appeal: 65,000 sold in the U.S., and over 110,000 worldwide.

Now the Japanese car magazine Best Car has run a story that’s been reiterated and replicated around the globe about an S2000 successor.

The car may look something like the ugly duckling below. And it may (we hope) not.

The revived S2000 is to be a 2+2 coupe with AWD. Apparently, it will use hybrid power, as found on the new Insight or the Civic IMA. The powerplant will be a V6 or a high-revving four-cylinder, perhaps like that in the S2000. There’s a lot of talk but little hard data yet.

So it’s kind of fun to speculate as to what will emerge from Honda’s labs. We do know that the company has canceled the V10-powered NSX, at least for now, but it is going to produce the CR-ZX (left), a cool-looking sporty hybrid, á la the Insight, with a direct-injection 2.5-liter engine. This car is scheduled for 2010 production.

I must say the idea of a hybrid AWD with V6 power sounds kind of weird. But we know Honda has done weird things before and made them pay off.

Batteries and AWD mean more weight and more complexity, the antithesis of the spartan approach Honda took with the S2000. Do you think that will work?

—jgoods

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The Five Most Expensive Cars Ever Sold at Auction

The most expensive car ever sold at auction

What would you do with $12.2 million?

You might buy yourself a really nice car, but still only drop a couple hundred grand and have plenty left to give to family you’ve never met. Or you could blow it all on ONE car. Yes, that’s what I would do.

A 1957 Ferrari 250 Testa Rossa sold this month at auction in Italy for a world-record $12.2 million. The sale broke a record set a year earlier at the same auction, also for a Ferrari. That one was a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spyder that sold for $10.9 million.

So Ferrari now owns the top two spots in the most-expensive-cars-ever-sold-at-auction contest. What cars round out the top 5?

Number 3: 1931 Bugatti Royale, $9.7 million

1931-bugatti-royale

Only six of these babies were ever built. It had a 12.7-liter engine and was 15 feet long. Hey, that’s under $1 million per foot!

Number 4: 1962 Ferrari 330 Testa Rossa, $9.2 million

1962-ferrari-330-testa-rossa1

This car was driven at the 1962 Le Mans and was the last Ferrari race car to have its engine in the front.

Number 5: 1937 Mercedes-Benz 540K Special Roadster, $8.2 million

1937-mercedes-benz

Some say this is the world’s finest example of a 5.4-liter sports car.

Of the top 5 most expensive auctioned cars ever, 3 are Ferraris. Even more interesting, Ferrari owns 5 of the 10 most expensive. A 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO sold for $6.2 million in 1991 (put it up for sale today, and I’ll bet it would take the number one spot!), and a 1953 Ferrari 340/375 Berlinetta Competizione that won the 1954 Le Mans sold in 2007 for $5.8 million.

What do you think: Is a cool $12 million a good deal for a collectible car? What cars from today might end up on this list in the future?

-tgriffith

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Audi’s Up, BMW’s Down—Way Down

Latest earnings reports showed that Audi was the big winner in 2008, as we reported. It’s a bit of a shock to learn that BMW profits were down nearly 90% over the past year. Sales were down 37% in the U.S., a 28-year low.

Now why should this be so? The recession aside, I can think of at least two reasons: declining quality and dismal design. There has been an escalation in complaints recently about everything from electronics to transmissions and engine shut-downs. You can read the catalog here and here (regarding dealers, mostly). It’s really an appalling list.

As to design, the company recently introduced the Concept 5 Series Gran Turismo (photos, left) at Geneva. They called it “a new look at sporting luxury mobility” that “focuses on providing elegance, space, versatility and supreme comfort in one eye-catching design.” Well, what do you think? I think it’s a beast from any angle, as befits one of Chris Bangle’s last designs.

Taller and longer than the 5 Series on which it’s based, the GT is reportedly close to production—in which case, BMW’s downturn is likely to continue.

Come on, guys/gals, we know you love BMWs, but would you buy one of the company’s new GTs?

—jgoods

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Small Car, Big Title: 2009 MINI John Cooper Works Performance Cabrio

mini-jcw-open-rear MINI/BMW has announced the new JCW Convertible, one nifty car, though it will cost you $34,950 base. The standard MINI Cooper convertible, hardly plain old vanilla, had an MSRP of $24,550. What does that extra ten grand get you? With a 208-bhp turbo, the JCW should be a blast to drive (0-62 in 6.9 seconds), and it possesses an “outstandingly sporting character,” per the press release.

See it at the Geneva Auto Show March 5-15, or get one from your local dealer starting in April. Whether or not you can afford the price, we bet you’ll be tempted.

This new car has all the MINI virtues and more: a Sport button to press for more torque, plus better throttle (drive-by-wire in this car) and steering response; 17-inch alloys with run-flat tires; larger discs and Brembo brakes; and a host of options. Here are the ones for the JCW Hardtop; those for the convertible aren’t yet on the website, but may well be the same.

09minicooperscabrioprf15002 pt-cruiser-convt1

Neat as this car is, I still think it looks kind of lame with the top up—very much like the PT Cruiser, that is, bulky in back with blind spots.

But this baby ain’t no PT Cruiser. Beginning in 1947, the Cooper Car Company began producing those marvelous Cooper rear- and mid-engine F-1 cars that dominated racing for much of the ‘50s. (Short history here.) In the 1960s came the Classic Mini Cooper, one of the great rally cars of all time, and finally the MINI Cooper S versions, which BMW ownership of the JCW brand has only enhanced.

Of course, it’s overpriced. But would you buy it if you had the bread?

—jgoods

General Motors kicked off with the expansion of the Invest in America program ...

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Should V8 engines be outlawed?

Someday the era of gasoline-powered vehicles will come to an end.

While no one really knows what technology will come forward to take over the top spot from fossil fuels, we all know the cars on the road in 50 years will be very different from the ones we’re buying now.

In the short term, carmakers obviously need to become more fuel efficient (which is the topic of major controversy recently) to maximize every drop of remaining oil. The biggest change I think will be the demise of the V8 engine, especially as higher performance V6 engines and diesels become more popular.

2010 Cadillac SRX

Take a look at the 2010 Cadillac SRX and you won’t see the fire-breathing Northstar V8 as an option, but instead a duo of V6 options. The outgoing V8 put out 320 horsepower with a 4.6-liter engine, while a new turbocharged V6 is reported to put out 300 horsepower from a 2.8-liter.

That, my friends, is the kind of progress we can expect to see in the coming years. I’d even go so far as to say V8 engines should be completely outlawed. With new technology like the SRX’s V6 and the clean diesel technology from companies like Mercedes-Benz, traditional V8 engines might be better suited for museums than street use.

2010 MINI Crossover concept

While families who need the space of an SUV will still be able to buy them, other options such as the 2010 MINI Crossover Concept will spring up for those who need a moderate amount of space, all-wheel-drive and the fuel economy of a 4-cylinder engine.

With options like high-performance V6 engines, clean diesels, and practical, moderately sized 4-cylinder crossovers, who needs V8 engines? Should they eventually be outlawed?

-tgriffith

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Geneva: Cars, Watches, Good Food and Money

Geneva has always been the most refined of the auto shows—not the largest, not the most debuts, not the most media noise. Yet the major manufacturers generally are there, and the atmosphere is less frenetic than at other venues. This year it will feature some introductions, and we want to share a few interesting preview photos with you.

Much talk has been generated by the so-called Bio Bentley, a biofuel-powered Continental GT we’ve seen only in a “teaser shot” that doesn’t give much away. If the Queen can convert her limo to bio-goo, it’s probably a good idea for commoners.

The new Benz E-Class Coupe replaces the current CLK and reportedly may go on sale later this year after the sedan debuts in the summer.

Opel has a 5-door hatchback called the Ampera (above), a lithium-ion battery powered, 220-volt rechargeable, with a small IC engine for longer distances. They want to be “the first European automaker to provide customers several hundred kilometers of non-stop electric driving.” Several hundred?

2007_chevy_beat_conceptside_view2 2008_chevrolet_sparkrear_three_quarter_view2 Much media malarkey has been generated over the Chevrolet Spark, which will finally appear in the flesh, so to speak, at Geneva. We covered some of this before, but here are three photos showing the progression from 2007 Beat concept to 2008 Spark and now the expected 2011 car (on right). As in most cases, the concept “beats” the execution.

More concept cars for Geneva: The EDAG, a black blob in basalt fiber (lightweight, stable, recyclable, and fairly cheap stuff, they say) is an all-electric, 150-km range car using light-emitting diodes for front and rear lighting in glass panels. The company is calling it “an open-source project,” meaning it wants to work with others in the further development of the car. Interesting, but glass front and rear panels?

Mitsubishi will show the MiEV SPORT AIR, an all electric zero-emissions effort with removable top and interesting lines, at least in the sketches. If you can’t tell front from back, you’re not alone. The company is pushing this as a performance vehicle that should go on sale in Japan by year’s end for “the equivalent of $24,000.” Some 30 are being tested on Tokyo’s streets.

All right, readers, tell us which of these cars you would like NOT to come to the U.S. . . . and why not?

Find more on the Geneva Auto Show website.

—jgoods

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