“Could this McLaren F1 make £10 million at Monterey?” we asked a week ago when this one-owner example of the greatest supercar was announced as star lot at Bonhams Quail Lodge auction in the US. Well, it has just sold, and you can forget £10m. It went for an incredible £12m, making it the most expensive F1 ever.
It was in the right country to sell. Number 44 of the 64 road cars built, it was the first to cross the pond and is one of only a handful of F1s even today to be US street-legal.
What Bonhams billed as a “once in a lifetime opportunity to buy what for many is the ultimate road car” certainly pushed all the right buttons for one canny investor/enthusiast. They paid out US$15,620,000 for it including the premium, which translates £12,132,509 – enough to buy a fleet of 58 McLaren 720Ss!
Some of the other star cars failed to find buyers on the day – including the 1956 Maserati A6G/54 Gran Sport Spider (estimate: £2.4-2.7 million) and the 1963 Ferrari 400 Superamerica Aerodinamico, but plenty of others found new homes, including:
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