Every August, one stretch of the California coast decides what collector cars are worth for the next twelve months. Five auction houses set up within a few miles of each other, more than a thousand cars cross the block over three days, and the numbers that come out the other end become the reference every dealer, insurer and private seller argues from until the following summer.
In 2026 those numbers broke. Monterey Car Week produced the largest auction week in the hobby’s history by a margin nobody predicted — a 73% jump on the previous year, eleven cars past eight figures, and the most expensive American car ever sold at auction. This page is the running record: the totals, the top sales, the houses, and the parts of the market that quietly went backwards while the headlines went up.
The 2026 Monterey Car Week auctions totalled roughly $756 million by Hagerty’s final count, up about 73% on 2025’s $432.8 million and comfortably past the previous record of about $471 million set in 2022. Sell-through held steady at 75%. Eleven cars sold for eight figures or more — more than the previous five Monterey weeks combined. The top sale was a 1964 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe at $42,905,000, the most expensive American car ever sold at auction, followed by the first production Ferrari Luce at $40,000,000 in a charity lot.
One year is an anecdote. Three years is a trend line. Here is what the Monterey Car Week auctions have actually done, using Hagerty’s tallies, which are the figures the trade quotes.
| Year | Total sales | Lots sold / offered | Sell-through | Average sale |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024 | $391.6M | 821 / 1,143 | 72% | $476,965 |
| 2025 | $432.8M | 818 / 1,078 | 76% | $529,035 |
| 2026 | ~$756M | 844 / 1,124* | 75% | ~$886,000* |
Read the middle columns before the first one. Sell-through barely moved — 72%, 76%, 75% — and the number of cars sold rose only slightly, from 821 to 818 to 844. The market did not get broader in 2026. It got heavier at the top. Nearly every dollar of that $323 million increase came from a handful of extraordinary lots, which is a very different signal from a rising tide.
If you searched for the Monterey Car Week 2026 result you will have seen at least three numbers, and all of them are defensible:
Magneto has a point worth taking seriously. A car auctioned for a foundation attracts bidding that has nothing to do with what the car is worth, and folding it into a market total inflates the trend line. Whichever figure you prefer, Monterey Car Week 2026 was a record by a wide margin — but if you are using these numbers to value your own car, use the $718.3 million version. It is the honest one.
Eleven cars cleared eight figures — more than the previous five Monterey weeks put together. Seven of the top ten wore a Ferrari badge, and three of those were the same model.
| # | Car | Price | House |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1964 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe (CSX2300) | $42,905,000 | Gooding Christie’s |
| 2 | 2026 Ferrari Luce ‘Tailor Made’ — chassis 0 | $40,000,000 | RM Sotheby’s |
| 3 | 1996 McLaren F1 GTR | $34,655,000 | RM Sotheby’s |
| 4 | 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport | $18,705,000 | RM Sotheby’s |
| 5 | 1963 Ferrari 250 P | $18,705,000 | Gooding Christie’s |
| 6 | 2023 Ferrari Daytona SP3 | $17,825,000 | RM Sotheby’s |
| 7 | 1996 Ferrari F50 | $14,575,000 | Mecum |
| 8 | 1995 Ferrari F50 | $12,105,000 | RM Sotheby’s |
| 9 | 2003 Ferrari Enzo | $12,100,000 | Mecum |
| 10 | 1985 Ferrari 288 GTO | $11,555,000 | RM Sotheby’s |
Look past the top two and the story is the 1980s and 1990s. An F50 twice, an Enzo twice, a 288 GTO, an F1 GTR. The cars that made the money at Monterey Car Week 2026 were the ones today’s peak-earning buyers had posters of, which is the oldest pattern in this market and the most reliable one.
CSX2300 was the first Daytona Coupe built, Carroll Shelby’s answer to Ferrari’s dominance of the FIA GT championship. It debuted at the final round of the 1964 season, raced at Le Mans in 1965 where a broken crankshaft ended its run while it led, and ran Daytona, Sebring, the Nürburgring 1000 Kilometres and the 12 Hours of Reims. It never won outright. It did help Shelby American take the 1965 FIA World Manufacturers’ Championship, the first and only time an American constructor has done so.
Shelby himself owned it later in life. Collector Larry Bowman then held it for more than two decades before Gooding Christie’s sold it for $42,905,000 — the most expensive American car ever sold at auction. The buyer has not been named.
Ferrari unveiled the Luce, its first electric car, in May 2026 with a starting price around 550,000 euro. Three months later RM Sotheby’s offered chassis 0, the first production chassis of the programme, finished in a one-off Madreperla semi-gloss with Perla Le Mans leather and built to US specification. It made $40,000,000, with every dollar going to the Ferrari Foundation, a 501(c)(3) supporting educational work.
Treat that number as philanthropy with a car attached, not as a valuation. Nobody should price a Luce off it, and no Luce owner should expect anything close. It is the single most important asterisk in the Monterey Car Week 2026 results.
| Auction house | 2026 total | 2025 total | Top 2026 sale |
|---|---|---|---|
| RM Sotheby’s | ~$370–380M | $163.8M | Ferrari Luce, $40.0M |
| Gooding Christie’s | ~$159–162M | $127.8M | Shelby Cobra Daytona, $42.9M |
| Mecum | ~$104–111M | $39.5M | 1996 Ferrari F50, $14.6M |
| Broad Arrow | ~$58–97M | $57.4M | Ferrari Enzo, $10.7M |
| Bonhams | ~$12M | $44.2M | Bugatti Chiron, $4.6M |
Bonhams is the outlier and it is worth naming. It went from $44.2 million in 2025 to roughly $12 million in 2026, having moved its sale to Laguna Seca. Consignment follows footfall at Monterey Car Week, and footfall follows location. If you are choosing where to consign a car, that swing is more instructive than any headline total.
A record total hides as much as it reveals. Underneath the 2026 headline the market sorted itself hard by category, and several blue-chip segments went backwards.
Strong at Monterey Car Week 2026: modern hypercars with genuine rarity — Daytona SP3, Bugatti Mistral, Pagani Huayra. The 1980s and 1990s halo Ferraris from the 288 GTO forward. Serious restomods, with Singer and Thornley Kelham both delivering. Early Porsche 911s. And, quietly, the brass-era and veteran cars, which are supposed to be the segment nobody under sixty wants.
Weak at Monterey Car Week 2026: 1960s Ferrari road cars, where the 250 GT Lusso is down more than 11% since 2020. Pre-merger AMG, which had been a reliable story for several seasons. American muscle, where ambitious estimates went unmet even on rare cars. And Porsche 356 variants, where several genuinely blue-chip examples failed to reach their low estimates.
That last group matters more than the records do. Magneto’s David Lillywhite summed the week up as being about iconic models in superb condition, and the corollary is the warning: a good car in an unfashionable category did not get carried along by a record week. If you own one of those, the $756 million number is not about you. Our breakdown of which exotic car values are actually appreciating works through the same split in more detail.
2025 was, at the time, the second-biggest Monterey Car Week on record: $432.8 million across 818 of 1,078 lots at a 76% sell-through, an average sale of $529,035, and ten new Ferrari world records. It looked like a strong year. Twelve months later it reads as the last normal one.
The 2025 top five were a Ferrari Daytona SP3 Tailor Made at $26,000,000 (RM Sotheby’s), a 1961 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Competizione at $25,300,000 (Gooding Christie’s), a 1993 Ferrari F40 LM at $11,050,000, a 1995 Ferrari F50 at $9,240,000 and a 2020 Bugatti Divo at $8,550,000. Set that against 2026 and the shift is stark: the car that topped 2025 would only have made third place a year later.
On the reveal side, 2025 belonged to the Lamborghini Fenomeno — a 1,065 hp hybrid V12 built in a run of 29, reaching 100 km/h in 2.4 seconds — and to Bugatti’s Brouillard, the first creation of its Programme Solitaire, which debuted at The Quail. Chevrolet also brought the Corvette CX and CX.R Vision Gran Turismo concepts, a 2,000 hp design study rather than a production promise. Only one of those three was a car you could actually order, which is the usual ratio for the week.
Auctions are the loudest part of Monterey Car Week, not the whole of it. The 75th Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in 2026 gave Best of Show to a 1935 Duesenberg SSJ Special Speedster — a reminder that the judged half of the week still runs on pre-war American coachwork rather than on anything with a turbo.
The concours result and the auction result are related. A 1935 Duesenberg Model JN Convertible made $9,080,000 at RM Sotheby’s the same week. Class wins and Best of Show placings move money in the pre-war market in a way that has no equivalent among modern cars. For the full event picture — schedule, concours, debuts and how to actually do the week — see our Monterey Car Week 2026 guide and our coverage of the Bugatti Destrier one-off that debuted there.
This is general information, not investment or valuation advice. Auction results are one data point per car, not a price for your car. Get a specialist appraisal before you buy, sell or insure.
Our family has been buying and selling cars for more than a century, and one thing has not changed in all that time: the people who do well are the ones working from real numbers rather than from the last headline they read. Monterey Car Week produces the best public dataset the collector market gets all year, so we keep the results here in one place and add to them every August rather than writing a fresh recap that expires in six weeks.
Wondering where your own car sits after a week like that? Browse our inventory or list your car with us. If you are new to this end of the market, start with our first-time exotic car buyer’s guide. And our sister publication Exotic Car News covers the auction calendar year-round.
Roughly $756 million by Hagerty’s final tally, a record and about 73% up on 2025’s $432.8 million. Sell-through held at 75%, and eleven cars sold for eight figures or more, more than the previous five Monterey weeks combined. Magneto counted $718.3 million excluding the $40 million Ferrari Luce charity lot.
A 1964 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe, chassis CSX2300, at $42,905,000 through Gooding Christie’s. It is the most expensive American car ever sold at auction. The first Daytona Coupe built, it raced at Le Mans, Daytona, Sebring, the Nurburgring and Reims, and helped Shelby American win the 1965 FIA World Manufacturers’ Championship.
Because it was a charity lot. RM Sotheby’s offered chassis 0, the first production chassis of Ferrari’s first electric car, with all proceeds going to the Ferrari Foundation. The Luce launched in May 2026 at around 550,000 euro. The $40 million result reflects philanthropy rather than market value and should not be used to price any other Luce.
$432.8 million across 818 of 1,078 lots, a 76% sell-through and a $529,035 average, which was the second-highest total in Monterey Car Week history at the time. The top sale was a Ferrari Daytona SP3 Tailor Made at $26,000,000, and ten new Ferrari world records were set that week.
RM Sotheby’s, by a wide margin in 2026 at roughly $370-380 million against $163.8 million in 2025. Gooding Christie’s was second at about $159-162 million, followed by Mecum and Broad Arrow. Bonhams fell from $44.2 million to around $12 million after moving its sale to Laguna Seca.
Not necessarily. The 2026 record came from a handful of exceptional lots rather than broad growth: sell-through and lot counts barely moved. Several established categories went backwards in the same week, including 1960s Ferrari road cars, Porsche 356 variants, pre-merger AMG and American muscle. Value your car against its own category and its own documentation.
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