Alpine did something at Goodwood this week that most carmakers actively avoid: it hauled out a disguised engineering mule and let the public watch it work. The car is the A110 FUTURE, a rolling test bed for the third-generation A110, and it's running the hillclimb every day of the Festival of Speed from July 9 to 12. The camouflage borrows the outgoing car's body, so there's not much to ogle. The story is underneath, where Alpine has built a bespoke electric platform aimed squarely at the one flaw that has quietly wrecked most electric sports cars: weight, and specifically where that weight lives.

Here's the part worth understanding. Almost every EV uses a "skateboard" layout — one big flat battery slab spanning the floor between the axles. It's cheap to engineer and packages well, but it forces a raised seating position and hands you a nose-to-tail weight split you didn't necessarily want. For an SUV, fine. For a car whose entire personality is balance and low-slung agility, it's poison. Alpine's fix is the Alpine Performance Platform, an aluminium-intensive structure that splits the battery into two packs — one ahead of the cabin, one behind it — to hit a 40/60 front-to-rear balance. In other words, they're using battery placement to fake the weight distribution of a mid-engine car, while keeping the driver low.

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Alpine says the packs use 800V cell-to-pack technology, and it's worth clearing up what that actually means, because it gets muddled constantly. Cell-to-pack means the cells go straight into the pack, skipping the usual intermediate step of bundling them into separate modules first. Deleting that module layer saves weight and space and lets you cram in more energy — good for a car fighting the scales. The catch is repairability: with no modules to swap, damage to the pack is far harder and pricier to fix, which has real insurance consequences. A knock that would mean a module replacement on a conventional EV can threaten the whole pack here, and insurers price that risk into premiums and total-loss thresholds. Buyers should go in clear-eyed about that.

The 800V architecture isn't just a fast-charging brag, either. Higher voltage means lower current for the same power, which allows thinner, lighter cabling and less heat — and less heat is exactly what lets a performance EV do repeated hard runs without the software throttling output to protect the battery. Alpine pairs that with a silicon-carbide inverter, which switches faster and runs cooler than older silicon parts, trimming energy loss and cooling mass. And crucially, power goes to a dual-motor rear axle — two motors on the back means it's rear-driven and can genuinely torque-vector, feeding different torque to each rear wheel to rotate the car. That's how you make a heavy EV feel playful instead of merely quick.

Now the skepticism. Alpine has released essentially no numbers: no power, no curb weight, no battery capacity, no range. Anyone quoting you a horsepower or kilogram figure is working from estimates, not the manufacturer. What's certain is that even an aluminium-bodied, split-pack EV will land well above the outgoing A110's celebrated sub-1,100-kg territory — that's the unavoidable tax of hauling a battery around. The real engineering challenge was never making electric power; torque is the easy part. It's managing mass and rotational inertia so the thing changes direction like an Alpine should. The split battery and rear torque vectoring are the whole bet.

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Some context on what's ending. Alpine built its final second-generation A110 on July 1 — a 300-hp A110 R 70 in Alpine Blue — closing out 35,450 A110s built at Dieppe since 1969, of which 28,701 were second-gen cars. The practical takeaway cuts two ways: if you want the light, analog, combustion A110, that ship has sailed and clean examples of the last ICE cars will likely hold value well. And if you're waiting on the electric one, judge it on cornering behavior and heat management over a full hill or lap, not on whatever power figure eventually gets announced. That's the test Alpine set for itself by running this mule in public — and it's the one that matters.

Images Via: Alpine

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Bonhams|Cars currently has 23 collector cars listed for sale, spanning Grand Prix racers, coachbuilt classics, and modern homologation specials. We sorted the current lineup by published estimate and counted down the eight lots with disclosed pricing, from a six-figure Porsche to a pair of pre-war titans expected to top half a million dollars. Three additional Private Sale icons are listed without a public price and appear at the end as honorable mentions.

#8 — 1997 Ferrari 456M GT — Est. $57,000–$69,000

The 456M GT was the last front-engined V12 Ferrari before the 550 Maranello arrived, blending 1990s reliability with a shape penned by Pininfarina decades earlier. This example wears a subtle metallic blue over tan and carries the lowest published estimate in our countdown, making it the most attainable entry point on the list.

View the listing at Bonhams|Cars

#7 — 1958 Porsche 356A Speedster — Est. $230,000–$300,000

Bonhams' Connoisseurs Collection Part IV entry, this Speedster is offered without reserve and represents the purest expression of Porsche's lightweight, top-down formula from the late 1950s. Clean history and no-reserve terms make this the auction's most approachable path into air-cooled ownership.

View the listing at Bonhams|Cars

#6 — 1927 Hispano-Suiza H6B Tourer — Est. $270,000–$400,000

One of the star lots in the Connoisseurs Collection Part IV, this Hispano-Suiza pairs an aluminum-bodied tourer with the marque's legendary overhead-cam six, the same running gear that powered Hispano's aero-engine pedigree. Offered without reserve, it is the oldest car in our countdown and the priciest of the pre-war lots.

View the listing at Bonhams|Cars

#5 — 1967 Lamborghini 400 GT 2+2 — Est. $300,000–$400,000

Bonhams calls this 400 GT 2+2 one of the finest surviving examples of Lamborghini's first true grand tourer, the car that established the marque before the Miura arrived. Under the skin, it combines a 320-horsepower V12 with genuine four-seat practicality, making it one of the most usable classic Lamborghinis on offer.

View the listing at Bonhams|Cars

#4 — 1953 Mercedes-Benz 300 S Roadster — Est. $410,000–$460,000

Headed to the Zoute Sale in Knokke-Heist, this 300 S Roadster represents Mercedes-Benz's post-war flagship, hand-built in tiny numbers and aimed at Europe's wealthiest buyers. Its inline-six and elegant convertible coachwork make it one of the most collectible 1950s Mercedes models on the market.

View the listing at Bonhams|Cars

#3 — 1973 Ferrari 'Dino' 246 GTS — Est. $400,000–$470,000

Making its debut at the Goodwood Revival sale, this Dino 246 GTS is the targa-topped, Scaglietti-bodied version of Ferrari's small V6 sports car, a model widely credited with saving the marque's mid-engine lineup. Clean, road-registered, and drop-top, it splits the difference between usability and six-figure exotica.

View the listing at Bonhams|Cars

#2 — 1936 Aston Martin 2-Litre Speed Competition Two-Seater — Est. $670,000–$800,000

Formerly owned by noted collector T.A.S.O. Mathieson, this Aston Martin is a genuine period competition car built for 1930s club racing. Cars with this level of pre-war racing pedigree rarely reach the open market, which helps explain why it carries the second-highest estimate in this lineup.

View the listing at Bonhams|Cars

#1 — 1929 Bugatti Type 35C Grand Prix Two-Seater — Est. $670,000–$940,000

Topping our countdown is this Type 35C, part of the same Connoisseurs Collection as our #6 Hispano-Suiza and offered without reserve. The Type 35 is arguably the most successful racing car in history, and the supercharged "C" variant added another layer of period competitiveness, pushing this example's estimate above every other lot in the sale.

View the listing at Bonhams|Cars

Honorable Mentions: Price on Request

Bonhams also lists three marquee cars through its Private Sale channel, each priced privately rather than carrying a public auction estimate. Given their significance, we're including them here as bonus entries rather than trying to rank them numerically against the auction lots above.

1967 Lamborghini Miura P400

Widely regarded as the car that invented the modern supercar, the Miura's mid-mounted V12 and Bertone-styled body still turn heads more than half a century later. Bonhams handles this one through Private Sale rather than at auction, with pricing available only on request.

View the listing at Bonhams|Cars

1973 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona

The Daytona was Ferrari's answer to the Miura, a front-engined GT built to prove V12 grand tourers could still outrun their mid-engined rivals. This example is offered as a Private Sale, meaning a price is negotiated directly with Bonhams rather than set by public estimate.

View the listing at Bonhams|Cars

1972 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 'Daytona' Competizione — Ex-Le Mans 24 Hours

This is no ordinary Daytona: it's a genuine works-prepared Competizione that raced at Le Mans, one of the most historically significant Ferrari road-racers ever offered privately. Documented competition history at this level places it in a different category from the standard road cars in our countdown, and pricing reflects that.

View the listing at Bonhams|Cars

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GAA Classic Cars kicks off its July sale with one of the deepest benches of Blue Oval metal we've seen at a single auction this year, spanning a quirky '50s retractable hardtop, numbers-matching NASCAR homologation legends, and even a modern-era GT40 tribute. We combed the current consignment list and ranked the ten Fords we think collectors should have on their radar, counting up from cool to essential.

1. 1959 Ford Fairlane Skyliner 500

Ford's wild retractable hardtop returns to the block in red-over-red, its parking-garage-defying roof still tucking away into the trunk on command. This example wears a rebuilt 300-horsepower 352 V8, refreshed brightwork, and dual spotlight mirrors, plus AACA honors from two separate years — proof that the Skyliner's oddball engineering has aged into pure charm.

View the listing on GAA Classic Cars

2. 1967 Ford Shelby GT500

This fastback was among the last Shelbys built at Carroll Shelby's original Los Angeles shop before production moved to Michigan for 1968. Restored from the frame up in its factory Lime Gold, it runs a rebuilt 428 Police Interceptor V8 with twin 600 Holley carbs, retains its original dash pad, and comes with a Deluxe Marti Report confirming the story.

View the listing on GAA Classic Cars

3. 1970 Ford Shelby GT500

Finished in the rare factory Pastel Gray with blue stripes, this GT500 was brought back to factory spec down to the Shelby dash signature and space-saver spare tire. Power comes from a numbers-correct 428-cubic-inch V8, and a Deluxe Marti Report backs up the car's history — GAA is calling it investment-grade, and the presentation supports that claim.

View the listing on GAA Classic Cars

4. 1970 Ford Mustang Boss 302

Ford's homologation special for SCCA Trans-Am racing shows up here in white with black graphics, its signature shaker hood, rear window louvers, and factory spoilers intact after a full rotisserie restoration. Magnum 500 wheels and the Decor interior finish off one of the best-handling small-block Mustangs Ford ever built.

View the listing on GAA Classic Cars

5. 1967 Ford Mustang Eleanor

Built to the MTF Eleanor body kit spec that made the '67 fastback a movie icon, this tribute car backs its looks with Wilwood brakes, coilover front suspension, and a nut-and-bolt rotisserie restoration. It's registered as number 505 in the official Eleanor Registry, for buyers who want the Hollywood look riding on thoroughly modern underpinnings.

View the listing on GAA Classic Cars

6. 1965 Ford Shelby Cobra Factory Five Racing Mark V

A freshly completed Factory Five Mark V build wrapped in green over a bronze-wheeled stance, powered by a 450-horsepower Coyote crate V8 through a six-speed manual. Independent rear suspension, a stretched wheelbase, and a roomier cockpit modernize the Cobra formula, and with less than 100 miles logged, it's essentially new.

View the listing on GAA Classic Cars

7. 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429

Ford built the Boss 429 purely to legalize its semi-hemi 429 for NASCAR, and only about 850 left Dearborn for the 1969 model year. This numbers-matching S-code example received a concours-grade restoration from noted specialist Drew Alcazar and comes backed by a Deluxe Marti Report and its original window sticker — a genuine homologation legend.

View the listing on GAA Classic Cars

8. 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429 — KK #1502

A never-restored Boss 429 survivor with its matching-numbers 429 S-code engine and original four-speed still in place, once part of Peter Klutt's Legendary Motorcar collection. It carries build number KK #1502, a Deluxe Marti Report, and a Peter Brock Award from the Muscle Car & Corvette Nationals — untouched history that only gets harder to find.

View the listing on GAA Classic Cars

9. 1966 Ford GT40 MKII Kit Car

A painstaking recreation of the No. 1 MKII that Ken Miles and Denny Hulme drove at Le Mans in 1966, right down to the Gulf-inspired roundels, stripes, and a reshaped rear clamshell with MKII-style intakes. Power comes from a 427-cubic-inch V8 breathing through a dry-sump system, with just 46 miles logged since the build was finished.

View the listing on GAA Classic Cars

10. 2006 Ford GT

With Carfax-confirmed 18 miles on the odometer, this supercharged GT is essentially a time capsule of Ford's early-2000s reboot of the GT40 legend. Mark IV Red paint, painted racing stripes, and an ebony leather cabin wrap around the 5.4-liter supercharged V8 and six-speed manual that made this generation of GT an instant modern classic — and the clear pick for the top spot.

View the listing on GAA Classic Cars

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A genuine, high-revving V10 firing up in public in 2026 is not something anyone expected to witness again, yet here we are. Red Bull Advanced Technologies has finally run the RB17 in motion at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, its first dynamic outing after appearing as a static model back in 2024. Adrian Newey — who designed the thing before decamping to Aston Martin — is among the drivers taking it up the hill, alongside Red Bull's Isack Hadjar, reserve driver Yuki Tsunoda, and Academy driver Alisha Palmowski. Red Bull is clear that these are demonstration runs, part of an ongoing testing and development program, not a flat-out assault. Nobody sane uncorks a bespoke V10 on Goodwood's narrow, hay-bale-lined driveway.

The headline number everyone repeats is the combined output — Red Bull's target sits around 1,200 hp from the naturally aspirated Cosworth V10 plus a hybrid assist, all fed to the rear wheels. Fine. But the parts worth understanding are the ones the spec-sheet crowd skips.

Start with the engine, because it's a proper piece of engineering rather than a marketing prop. Cosworth built a bespoke 4.5-litre 90-degree V10 that spins to 15,000 rpm, and the 90-degree vee angle wasn't chosen for packaging — it was picked because it resolves the engine's first-order forces and moments to zero. In plain terms, that geometry lets the ten cylinders cancel each other's primary shaking so cleanly that the whole car benefits in smoothness and noise. That's the difference between a V10 that merely revs high and one that stays civilized doing it.

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How does it reach 15,000 rpm at all? Conventional metal valve springs go into "float" at extreme engine speeds — they can't close the valves fast enough and the valvetrain loses control. Cosworth's answer is Air Valve Spring technology, pneumatic springs lifted straight from Formula 1. It's the same trick that let noughties F1 V10s — including the Cosworth TJ2005 in Red Bull's debut car — scream past 19,000 rpm. Here it's deliberately reined in.

And that restraint is the genuinely clever bit. The V10 is electronically limited to 15,000 rpm, not because it can't spin higher but because Red Bull demanded an engine life of 24,000 kilometres between rebuilds. Anyone who remembers the V10 era knows those engines were often junk after a few hundred kilometres — a race weekend chewed through multiple units. A 24,000 km service life turns a Formula 1 fever dream into something an owner can actually flog at track days without a rebuild bill after every session. For a car you'll only ever drive on circuit, that maintenance figure matters more than peak power.

Here's a detail almost nobody will flag: Cosworth engineered the V10 to meet Euro 6 emissions legislation, despite the RB17 being track-only and legally exempt from it. Building emissions compliance into a car that never needs it is either future-proofing for a road-conversion path or simply Cosworth applying its standard hypercar recipe. Either way, it's a regulatory choice worth noting.

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Mechanically, the V10 is a semi-stressed member, meaning it carries some of the chassis loads rather than hanging off a subframe, and it drives the rear axle through a lightweight carbon-fibre transmission. Cosworth quotes a top speed beyond 350 km/h — roughly 217 mph — which, tellingly, is lower than plenty of road-going hypercars. That's the giveaway that the RB17 was built for cornering and downforce, not straight-line bragging; a track car trades terminal velocity for grip every time.

For the handful of buyers, the practical realities are stark. Just 50 will be built, and because it's track-only, it can't be registered or insured as a road car — it's an agreed-value track asset that lives on trailers and circuits, with the usual implications for usage and resale liquidity. This is not a car you drive to lunch. It's a private-circuit toy engineered to F1 intensity, and the fact that Red Bull is running it up a public hill at all, with Newey himself aboard, is the closest most of us will ever get.

Images Via: Cosworth

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Rick Ross let a couple of horses munch hay out of his Ferraris, filmed it, and the clip did exactly what it was built to do: travel. Before we get to whether Maranello is sharpening its knives, let's separate what actually happened from the breathless framing, because the interesting story here isn't the stunt — it's how little of the panic around it holds up.

The setting is Ross's fifth annual car show, held June 13 at his 235-acre Fayetteville, Georgia estate he calls the Promise Land. Feeding horses out of the cars has become a recurring bit at the event, not a one-off meltdown, and the two cars in the frame are open-top Ferraris — by the bodywork, a 488 Spider and its successor, the F8 Spider. Both are series-production convertibles, which matters a great deal to the question everyone keeps asking.

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That question — "will Ferrari blacklist him?" — mostly misunderstands how Ferrari's leash actually works. The brand's real contractual power lives with its limited and special-series cars: the hypercars, the Icona models, the track-only XX machines. Buyers of those sign agreements that typically include a right of first refusal and anti-flipping clauses, plus restrictions on unauthorized commercial use and modification. Break those terms and yes, you can torch your standing for future allocations. But a standard 488 Spider or F8 Spider carries no such lifetime obligation. Once you've bought one outright, what you do with it — hay included — is legally your business, and Ferrari has no mechanism to claw anything back. The celebrity "ban" stories that always resurface in these conversations are largely unverified lore, and none of them involve someone getting punished for how they used an ordinary production car they already owned.

So the "wrath of Ferrari" angle is thin. The genuine risk Ross is running is to the cars themselves, and it's more real than the internet's outrage.

Hay and horses are quietly hostile to a car interior. Horse saliva is wet and mildly acidic, and Nappa leather does not enjoy being slobbered on and then left to dry in the Georgia sun — especially in a Spider, where the cabin is already more exposed to weather than a coupe. Beyond the obvious staining, the sneaky problem is chaff: fine hay dust and seed heads work their way into switchgear, seat rails, seatbelt reels, and the drainage channels for the folding roof, where they hold moisture and jam mechanisms. There's also the pest angle every barn owner knows — hay in an enclosed space is a standing invitation for rodents, and mice happily chew through modern wiring insulation, some of which is soy-based and practically marketed to them. A nested-in wiring harness is a five-figure headache in a car like this. None of that is dramatic on camera, but it's where the actual money hides.

On the insurance side, there's essentially no claim to be made here, and Ross wouldn't want one anyway. A collection like his rides on an agreed-value multi-car policy, and self-inflicted cosmetic soiling from a publicity stunt is exactly the kind of owner-caused wear insurers don't touch. Where it could get thorny is downstream: if hay left in a cabin invited rodents that later caused, say, an electrical fire, an adjuster would reasonably ask whether that was negligence rather than an accident. Intent matters when the damage traces back to something you filmed yourself doing on purpose.

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Here's the market reality that makes the whole thing lower-stakes than it looks. The 488 Spider and F8 Spider are depreciating, high-production modern Ferraris, not appreciating limited editions. A bit of hay theatre doesn't dent a collectibility they don't really have — and that's arguably the message. Treating them as props rather than garage-queen investments is its own kind of flex, one that only reads as reckless if you assumed these were untouchable.

The practical takeaway for anyone who isn't a rap mogul: enjoy your car however you like once it's yours, but know that the damage worth worrying about is organic matter and moisture in the cabin, not a phone call from Italy. Detail it promptly, keep the hay out of the switchgear, and don't let anything with teeth nest near the loom.

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Mecum Auctions is preparing for its 2026 Harrisburg sale, scheduled for July 22 through 25, with an expected 1,200 vehicles crossing the block over the four-day event. Among the standout consignments is the Great Lakes Collection, a privately assembled group of American performance cars that traces the muscle car era into its later revivals.

The collection's early anchor is a 1970 Ford Mustang Boss 302, one of Ford's homologation specials built to satisfy SCCA Trans-Am racing rules. Under the hood sits the high-revving, small-block 302 V8 that Ford engineers tuned specifically for road course duty, paired here with the factory competition stripe treatment and the fender callouts that mark the model apart from a standard Mustang. Examples like this one have become a benchmark for collectors chasing genuine late-1960s pony car performance rather than modern reproductions.

Corvettes make up another thread running through the Great Lakes Collection, reflecting decades in which Chevrolet's sports car repeatedly redefined what an American two-seater could do on both the street and the track. Rounding out the group at the newer end is a 1997 Chevrolet Camaro Z28 30th Anniversary edition, a limited-production tribute built to mark three decades of the Camaro nameplate and now increasingly sought after as fourth-generation Camaros gain traction with collectors who grew up around them.

Taken together, the lineup reads like a condensed timeline of American performance, moving from the muscle car wars of the 1960s and 1970s through the more understated performance cars of the 1980s and into the nostalgia-driven specials of the 1990s. For Mecum, folding a themed collection like this into an already packed 1,200-car docket gives Harrisburg 2026 a natural storyline for bidders who collect around a specific era or nameplate rather than a single car. Registration for the sale is open now, and Mecum has published the collection online for advance previewing ahead of the July auction dates.

Cars from the Great Lakes Collection, including this 1970 Ford Mustang Boss 302, will cross the block at Mecum's 2026 Harrisburg sale. Photo courtesy of Mecum Auctions.

The Great Lakes Collection logo. Image courtesy of Mecum Auctions.

Mecum has run its Harrisburg auction for more than a decade, and the sale has grown into one of the larger stops on its annual calendar alongside marquee events in Kissimmee and Indianapolis. A themed group like the Great Lakes Collection tends to draw both dedicated marque collectors and newer bidders looking for an easy entry point into a specific era of American performance, and dealers who track Mecum results say multi-car collections often perform well precisely because they let buyers build a small fleet in a single transaction rather than bidding against each other lot by lot.

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America's car culture runs deep, and nowhere is that more obvious than in its museums. From glass-walled galleries showcasing coachbuilt classics to speedway halls packed with Indy winners, these institutions preserve the stories behind the machines. Whether you're planning a dedicated road trip or just want a rainy-day detour, here are some of the most rewarding car museums to visit across the country.

Petersen Automotive Museum — Los Angeles, California

Wrapped in swooping stainless steel ribbons along Museum Row, the Petersen is hard to miss and even harder to leave. Three floors trace automotive history from horseless carriages to hypercars, with rotating exhibits on hot rods, film cars, and design studios. Down in The Vault, a paid add-on tour opens a climate-controlled basement holding rarities once owned by royalty and movie stars. It's less a static display than a working archive, and the depth of the collection rewards a slow, unhurried visit.

America's Car Museum — Tacoma, Washington

Known locally as LeMay, this Tacoma institution holds one of the largest collections in the country, built around the personal cache of collector Harold LeMay. Galleries are arranged thematically rather than strictly by era, tracing how design, racing, and everyday transportation evolved together. Its size means visitors can spend an entire afternoon without repeating a row, and the museum regularly rotates cars in and out of storage to keep return visits fresh.

Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum — Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

The Simeone specializes in competition history, and its collection reads like a who's who of endurance racing, with Le Mans and Mille Miglia veterans parked wheel to wheel. What sets it apart is the weekend Demo Days, when staff start up and drive selected cars for visitors rather than leaving them silent behind velvet ropes. For anyone who wants to hear these machines run, not just see them, it's one of the few places in the country built around that idea.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum — Speedway, Indiana

Located inside the track's front stretch, this museum is essentially a shrine to open-wheel racing, with a rotating lineup of former Indianapolis 500 winners on display. A bus tour around the 2.5-mile oval is included with admission, giving visitors a lap past the yard of bricks at the start-finish line. Racing fans will recognize decades of liveries and sponsor logos, but the museum also does a solid job explaining how the cars and safety technology changed across a century of competition.

National Corvette Museum — Bowling Green, Kentucky

Sitting across the street from the GM assembly plant where every Corvette is built, this museum is part shrine and part cautionary tale, thanks to the 2014 sinkhole that swallowed eight cars on live television. Several of the damaged cars are preserved on display exactly as they were pulled from the ground. Beyond that infamous chapter, the galleries walk through every generation of Corvette, and visitors can pair the trip with a factory tour next door.

The Henry Ford Museum — Dearborn, Michigan

This is less a car museum than a museum of American innovation that happens to have an extraordinary automotive collection inside it. Presidential limousines, early Ford prototypes, and land-speed record cars share space with artifacts from aviation and industry, making it one of the broadest collections on this list. The adjoining Greenfield Village adds working historic buildings and demonstrations, turning a visit here into a full day rather than an afternoon.

Gilmore Car Museum — Hickory Corners, Michigan

Spread across a rural campus of restored barns and historic structures, the Gilmore feels more like a small town built entirely around cars than a single building. Marques get their own dedicated houses on the property, including a restored 1930s diner and a collection focused entirely on Model Ts. The scale of the grounds means a visit involves genuine walking between exhibits, which makes it a nice change of pace from the single-building museums elsewhere on this list.

None of these collections are static, so it's worth checking current exhibit schedules before a visit, since cars frequently rotate in and out of storage or head out on loan. Together, though, they form a pretty complete picture of why the car holds such a permanent place in American culture, from the racetrack to the assembly line to the open road.

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Every summer in Monterey, and at select sales scattered across Europe and the United States throughout the year, a small circle of bidders reminds the world that a car can be more than transportation — it can be a museum piece, a trophy, and a store of value all at once. The following ten results represent the highest nominal prices ever paid for automobiles under the hammer, each one a snapshot of what happens when rarity, provenance, and motorsport pedigree collide with a room full of determined paddles.

1. 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe — $143,000,000

Nothing else on this list comes close. When RM Sotheby's arranged a private sale of this SLR coupe on Mercedes-Benz's behalf in May 2022, the result more than tripled the previous auction record in a single stroke. Only two Uhlenhaut Coupes were ever built, and Mercedes had kept both locked away in its own collection for decades, which made the sale itself almost as newsworthy as the number attached to it. Proceeds were directed toward a scholarship fund, giving the sale a philanthropic footnote rarely seen at this level of the market.

2. 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196R Stromlinienwagen — $53,917,370

A genuine Grand Prix winner from Mercedes' dominant mid-1950s Formula 1 program, this streamlined W196R sold through RM Sotheby's in Stuttgart in early 2025. Cars of this type carried Juan Manuel Fangio to championship glory, and the streamliner body — designed for high-speed circuits like Reims and Monza — makes this variant especially coveted among racing purists.

3. 1962 Ferrari 330 LM / 250 GTO — $51,705,000

Sold by RM Sotheby's in New York in November 2023, this car occupies a strange and fascinating gray area in Ferrari history: originally built as a 330 LM Berlinetta, it was later rebodied as a 250 GTO, giving it a dual identity that has fueled years of debate among marque historians. Whatever one calls it, the result confirmed that Maranello's early-1960s competition cars remain the bedrock of the ultra-high-end market.

4. 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO (chassis 3413GT) — $48,405,000

For years this Monterey sale in August 2018, handled by RM Sotheby's, stood as the outright benchmark for the entire collector car hobby. Chassis 3413GT carries genuine period racing history, and the 250 GTO's status as arguably the most desirable road-legal race car ever built continues to anchor its position at the top of nearly every serious collector's wish list.

5. 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO (chassis 3729GT) — $38,500,000

Proof that the GTO's appeal shows no sign of fading, this example crossed the block with Mecum in Kissimmee in January 2026. Its result reinforced just how tightly bunched the handful of surviving GTOs are at the summit of the market — a testament to a production run of only three dozen cars built between 1962 and 1964.

6. 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO (chassis 3851GT) — $38,115,000

Bonhams brought this GTO to Carmel in August 2014, and at the time the sale set a new world record for any car sold at public auction. It held that distinction for roughly four years, a reminder of how quickly benchmarks in this segment of the hobby can be rewritten.

7. 1964 Ferrari 250 LM — $36,344,960

RM Sotheby's sold this 250 LM in Paris in February 2025. Ferrari built the LM as a mid-engined successor intended to keep winning at Le Mans after the front-engined GTO era, and while homologation politics limited its factory racing career, surviving examples are prized for their rarity and their transitional place in Ferrari's competition lineage.

8. 1957 Ferrari 335 S — $35,730,510

This front-engined sports racer sold through Artcurial in Paris in February 2016, at the time becoming the most expensive car ever sold at a European auction. The 335 S represents the final, most powerful evolution of Ferrari's 1950s sports-racing formula before regulation changes reshaped endurance racing entirely.

9. 1967 Ferrari 412P — $30,255,000

Bonhams sold this 412P in Carmel in August 2023. Built for privateer teams competing against Ferrari's own factory entries, the 412P carries a slightly unusual position in Ferrari lore — a car engineered to race against its maker — which collectors have come to find especially compelling.

10. 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196 — $29,600,000

Rounding out the list is another Fangio-linked Grand Prix car, this one sold by Bonhams at Goodwood in July 2013. At the time, it set the record for the most expensive car ever sold at auction, a title it held until the Ferrari GTO market began its own dramatic climb later that decade.

A market defined by two names

Look closely at this list and a pattern emerges immediately: eight of the ten results belong to either Ferrari or Mercedes-Benz, and every single car was built for competition rather than the road. That is not a coincidence. Documented race history, tiny production numbers, and a direct link to a manufacturer's most storied motorsport era are the three ingredients that seem to matter most once bidding climbs into eight and nine figures. It's also worth noting how compressed this list is chronologically — most of these records were set or broken within the last decade, suggesting the ceiling for historically significant competition cars is still very much moving upward.

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Apollo Automobil brought the largest stage in the car world, the Goodwood Festival of Speed, to a private customer's driveway this week. The company handed over the first production example of its EVO hypercar, a track-only machine named the Caribbean Dragon, and then sent it straight up the hillclimb. It is a legitimately serious piece of engineering: a naturally aspirated V12, a curb weight under 1,300 kilograms, and a carbon monocoque lighter and stiffer than the one it replaces. None of that, however, is the real story. The real story is what Apollo has quietly done to its build process, and what that shift says about where serious hypercar collecting is headed.

A Car Named for Its Paint, Not Its Power

The Caribbean Dragon takes its name from a contrast in finishes rather than a spec sheet. Apollo's craftsmen applied Pearl White paint with a Diamond Dust finish across roughly half the car's more than 75 individual carbon fiber body panels, and Ocean Blue with a Blue Diamond finish across the rest, each hand-finished in eight paint layers. Apollo says the paintwork alone consumed more than 1,000 hours. The wheels carry the theme forward, with pearl white forged rims and matching calipers at the front and blue diamond-finish wheels with blue calipers at the rear. Inside, a blue carbon "bionic" structure sits against 3D-printed aluminum trim, Ocean Blue leather, and white contrast stitching. It is, by any reasonable measure, closer to bespoke coachwork than a standard hypercar options list.

Ten Cars, or Ten Commissions?

That distinction matters more than it sounds. When Modern Car Collector first covered the EVO's debut as a prototype, Apollo positioned it as a straightforward ten-unit limited series, the kind of production run collectors are used to evaluating: identical mechanical spec, minor cosmetic variance, value driven mostly by build number and originality. The Caribbean Dragon suggests something different. Apollo built this car to one customer's stated color and material vision, down to a bespoke titanium exhaust whose surface will shift color with heat over years of track use. If each of the remaining nine EVOs is similarly customer-directed, Apollo has effectively moved from limited production to bespoke commission, closer to how a coachbuilder treats a one-off project than how it treats a standard model run. For collectors, that changes the diligence required. Matching numbers and build sheets still matter, but so does documentation of the original commissioning brief. Two EVOs could carry identical mechanical specifications and look nothing alike, which means comparables will be difficult to establish at resale, and provenance will need to describe not just what was built, but why it was built that way.

The Engineering Underneath

Strip away the paint and the EVO is still a legitimate track weapon. The new carbon fiber monocoque weighs 165 kilograms, 15 percent stiffer and 10 percent lighter than the tub in the outgoing Intensa Emozione. Power comes from a naturally aspirated 6.3-liter V12 producing 800 horsepower and 765 Newton-meters of torque, sent through a six-speed sequential gearbox rather than a dual-clutch unit. Carbon ceramic brakes and Michelin Pilot Sport Cup 2 tires round out a package that Apollo says will reach 100 km/h in 2.7 seconds on the way to 335 km/h. In a moment when most of the EVO's rivals have gone hybrid or turbocharged, including Ferrari's F80, a high-revving, naturally aspirated V12 with no electrification is becoming its own kind of rarity, independent of how many are built.

Why Track-Only Changes the Collector Math

The EVO cannot be registered for the road, and that is a feature, not a limitation. It places Apollo in company with Aston Martin's Valkyrie LM, McLaren's own track-only hypercar built to outrun its Le Mans racer, and Red Bull's RB17, all recent examples of manufacturers building cars explicitly outside road homologation. Track-only ownership is a different asset class than a road-legal hypercar. There is no daily-use argument, no insurance comparison to a garage-kept road car, and no depreciation curve tied to mileage. Value instead follows access: track time, transport logistics, and a buyer pool that already owns the infrastructure to use the car as intended. That is a narrower, more specialized form of liquidity than the broader hypercar market enjoys, and it should factor into how any collector prices future resale.

Twenty Years Since Gumpert

The Caribbean Dragon's debut was timed to the 20th anniversary of the first Gumpert Apollo delivery in 2006, and that history is worth remembering. Roland Gumpert, a former director of Audi's motorsport program, built the original Apollo as an uncompromising, lightweight machine that set a Top Gear power lap record in 2009 and a Nurburgring Nordschleife lap of 7:11.57 in 2010, a benchmark that stood for nearly two years. The company later passed through new ownership and was rebranded simply as Apollo, eventually producing the Intensa Emozione in 2017. At this year's Goodwood Festival of Speed, alongside other new-era hypercar debuts like Zenvo's Aurora, the original Gumpert Apollo, the IE, and the new EVO all ran together, three distinct eras of the same underdog engineering philosophy. A marque that survived a near-disappearance and came out the other side with its performance identity intact carries a different kind of credibility than a well-funded newcomer with no history to defend. That is worth more to serious collectors than most spec sheets.

What Serious Buyers Should Watch

For collectors tracking the EVO as it eventually reaches the secondary market, three things will matter more than horsepower. First, completeness of documentation: because each car is a bespoke commission, the paper trail describing what was requested and why will be as important as a factory build sheet. Second, originality of wear: the Dragon Skin exhaust is engineered to shift color with heat, meaning a well-used example will look meaningfully different than one that has never seen a track day, and that patina should be read as authentication, not damage. Third, scale: with only ten EVOs ever built, and each one visually distinct, there may be no true comparable sale for years, which means early transactions will set the market rather than reflect it.

Apollo revealed a lot about the Caribbean Dragon at Goodwood this week: the paint process, the powertrain, the lap numbers. But the most useful detail for collectors wasn't in the press materials. It was the decision to build an exhaust that visibly changes with use. In a hypercar market full of cars bought to be preserved rather than driven, Apollo built one that is designed to show, permanently, that it was used exactly as intended.

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Lange, a Land Rover Defender 110 completely re-engineered by the Arkansas design house Helderburg, is back on the market at $348,720 with one owner and 4,137 miles on the clock. Read quickly, that's a listing. Read closely, it's a small but telling data point about how a very new category of collector vehicle behaves once it leaves the builder's hands.

The interesting part of this story was never the diesel tune or the beadlock wheels. It's that a commission finished in May 2024 and driven barely 4,000 miles by its original owner is already cycling back onto the market — not because anything went wrong, but because that owner simply moved up to a larger Helderburg build. That pattern reveals more about how today's high-net-worth buyers engage with bespoke vehicles than any spec sheet can.

A Third Category, Not a Restomod

Helderburg doesn't describe Lange as a restoration or a restomod, and the distinction is worth taking seriously rather than dismissing as marketing language. A restoration returns a Defender to original specification, with all the mechanical limitations that implies. A restomod — the approach behind builds like the LS3-powered 1962 Corvette we featured recently — typically prioritizes outright performance, often at the cost of numbers-matching identity. Lange takes a third path: the original chassis and engine block remain, re-engineered rather than replaced, so the truck's numbers-matching identity survives a 42-percent power increase, a fully custom suspension, and a bespoke interior.

The debate isn't abstract for Land Rover buyers, either. We recently covered a 1997 Defender 90 NAS built around a 450-horsepower LS3 V8, a textbook restomod that trades chassis-correct identity for outright power. Helderburg's pitch is the opposite bet: that a Defender can gain the performance and comfort those swaps chase without giving up the one thing that makes it a documented, traceable object rather than a kit built around a chassis plate.

It's a similar argument to the one Singer has made for two decades with the Porsche 911. Our recent coverage of Singer's Sorcerer made the same case for a very different vehicle, and it's no accident that both companies lean on numbers matching as a central credibility claim. It tells a sophisticated buyer that the object in front of them is still, legally and mechanically, the original car.

Why Numbers Matching Still Matters on a Diesel Land Rover

Land Rover ended Defender production in 2016, and U.S. import law requires a vehicle to reach 25 years of age before it can be titled here. That combination means the pool of legally importable, left-hand-drive Defenders shrinks in real terms every year, as clean early trucks are exported, parted out, or simply used up. A builder working from a genuine, documented chassis and engine block draws on a finite and diminishing resource in a way that a fabricated or import-only body never can. That is Helderburg's own representation of Lange's identity, and it hasn't been independently authenticated by a third-party marque specialist — worth remembering before treating numbers matching as verified fact rather than a builder's claim.

The Real Story Isn't the Spec Sheet

The more revealing detail is why Lange is for sale at all. According to Helderburg, the original owner commissioned Lange for exactly the ranch-and-highway duty described in its build story, then shortly afterward ordered a larger Defender 130 that became his primary ranch truck — leaving a barely used, one-owner Lange sitting mostly idle. That isn't the story of a collector car changing hands after a career of use and documented history. It's closer to the pattern seen in yacht or watch culture, where buyers trade up within a single maker's catalog rather than holding an object for what it has already done.

It also means Helderburg is, at the moment, both the manufacturer and the only real marketplace for its own cars. There is no independent auction record for a Helderburg commission the way there now is for Singer's reimagined 911s, which have traded publicly at major auction houses and built a visible price history in the process. Until that kind of third-party price discovery exists for Helderburg builds, the word investment attached to Lange's listing should be read as aspiration rather than established fact.

Reading the Price

Helderburg quotes roughly $387,000 to commission an equivalent Defender 110 today, against a 12-to-14-month build schedule. At $348,720, Lange is priced about 10 percent below that replacement cost — a thin discount for a vehicle that is already sorted, broken in, and available immediately rather than more than a year away. That pricing suggests the seller isn't discounting out of distress, and that Helderburg's internal resale market is being priced closer to replacement cost than to depreciation. Most vehicles, even desirable ones, lose value faster than that in their first two years. Lange, so far, has not.

Genuinely Collectible, or Simply Expensive?

Both, in different measures. The engineering is real and well documented: a single owner, indoor storage, no smoking, and ongoing coverage under Helderburg's own concierge program. The scarcity underlying it — a shrinking supply of clean, legally importable Defender donor vehicles — is a legitimate long-term factor, not a marketing invention. "The difference lives in the engineering," Helderburg says of its own work, and on the mechanical evidence, that claim holds up. But the investment case remains unproven in the way that matters most to serious collectors: verified, repeated, third-party sales. Until Helderburg commissions change hands at public auction the way Singer's have, Lange is best understood as an exceptional, low-mileage vehicle for someone who wants Defender character without Defender compromises — not yet a demonstrated store of value.

In this corner of the market, rarity isn't stamped on a build plate. It's dictated by how many original chassis are left to start from — and, increasingly, by how quickly the last owner decided he wanted a bigger one.

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A fully restored 1970 Oldsmobile 442 W30 is up for grabs in a charity giveaway that organizers say ties into the nation's 250th anniversary celebration this summer.

The grand prize centers on one of the most respected muscle cars of its era. Only 2,574 examples of the 442 W30 were built for the 1970 model year, making the giveaway car a genuine rarity. Under the hood sits a 455-cubic-inch V-8 rated at 370 horsepower, an engine known for the big-cube torque and street presence that defined Detroit's golden age.

The car has undergone a frame-off restoration and is described as being in concours condition. It wears a Matador Red finish with white stripes over a pearl base, a red-and-white color scheme organizers are leaning into as a fit for the patriotic milestone. The bold styling and rare production numbers combine to make the Oldsmobile a standout at cruise nights and car shows.

Entry does not depend on a purchase. Instead, participants can enter by making a donation supporting a lineup of veterans' and children's charities, giving the promotion a fundraising purpose alongside the appeal of the prize itself. Organizers frame the effort as a way for car enthusiasts to support causes while chasing a piece of American automotive history.

The giveaway is scheduled to end July 16, 2026, placing its finish squarely in the middle of the summer's anniversary festivities. The winner will receive more than just the keys. Organizers say they will include $32,000 toward the federal taxes owed on the prize, an addition meant to ease the financial burden that often accompanies winning a high-value vehicle.

For muscle-car fans, the combination of a rare model, a top-tier restoration and a charitable mission offers a distinctive shot at owning a classic that helped shape an era of American performance.

Win The Car Here

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Two exceptionally rare Mopars finished in the same iconic shade of blue make up the grand prize in the latest Dream Giveaway, pairing a car from the golden age of American muscle with one of the most extreme factory machines built today.

The first grand prize is a 1970 Plymouth Cuda 340 convertible, a car organizers describe as a genuine one-of-one factory build. It wears B5 Blue Fire Metallic Hi-Impact paint over a black interior and black convertible top, and is powered by a 340-cubic-inch V-8 rated at 275 horsepower paired with a Torqueflite three-speed automatic. Adding to its rarity is a factory Shaker hood, an option seldom seen on a 340 convertible. The car previously belonged to the well-known Lingenfelter Collection, lending it further pedigree. Convertible Cudas were uncommon to begin with, but this specific combination stands alone.

The second grand prize brings the theme into the modern era. It is a 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170, one of just 10 produced in B5 Blue with a full cloth interior, a color match to the vintage Cuda. The Demon 170 carries a supercharged 6.2-liter V-8 producing more than 1,000 horsepower, routed through an eight-speed automatic. It adds a widebody configuration, a rear seat delete group, a satin black hood graphic, red seat belts and a trunk dress kit. Billed as the most powerful production muscle car ever made, most examples were claimed immediately and disappeared into private collections, making this specification especially hard to find.

The winner also receives a one-day course at Radford Racing School.

Dream Giveaway says it will cover $64,000 in federal prize taxes on the winner's behalf. Those who prefer money over metal can choose an alternative cash prize of $150,000, with a net value of $112,500.

For collectors, the pairing offers a matched set of muscle machines bridging two generations that organizers say will never be duplicated.

Win The Car Here

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Dream Giveaway is running its latest sweepstakes around a frame-off restored 1970 Oldsmobile 442 W30, giving fans of vintage muscle a shot at owning one of the scarcest performance cars from that era. Proceeds support a mix of veterans' and children's charities, with entries closing on July 16, 2026.

WIN HERE

Just 2,574 units of the 442 W30 ever rolled off the line, and this survivor has been brought back to concours-level condition through a full frame-off rebuild. Its Matador Red paint and white racing stripes sit atop a pearl-toned cabin, a red-and-white combo that lines up neatly with the nation's 250th anniversary festivities this year. Power comes from the model's original 455-cubic-inch V-8, good for 370 horsepower.

The prize package also covers the tax hit: Dream Giveaway is contributing $32,000 toward the federal taxes due on the win. Tickets begin at $10 apiece, and bigger contributions unlock additional entries on a sliding scale. Anyone who prefers not to donate can still enter at no cost using the sweepstakes' free-entry option outlined in the official rules.

WIN HERE

This round, Modern Car Collector readers get a bonus: extra entries added on top of whichever ticket tier they select.

Check out the Dream Giveaway 442 W30 listing for the complete build sheet and photo gallery, and get your entries in before the July 16 cutoff.

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A remarkably low-mile American icon is now up for grabs through a new giveaway, and there is a way to boost your odds. Entrants who act now can add extra chances to win, improving their shot at claiming either the car itself or a sizable cash alternative.

WIN HERE

The grand prize is a 2006 Ford GT with only 435 miles on the odometer, though winners can instead choose $400,000 in cash. Those who select the car will also receive an additional $25,000 to help cover related costs.

This example is especially notable for how well it has been preserved. Painted in Tungsten Grey clearcoat metallic with silver stripes over an Ebony leather interior, it is one of only 541 units built in this color scheme for the model year. The listing notes it has had a single owner since new and remains in showroom-fresh condition, complete with original protective films and factory stickers.

WIN HERE

Under the hood sits a supercharged 5.4-liter DOHC V8 producing a factory-rated 550 horsepower and 500 lb-ft of torque, paired with a Ricardo six-speed manual gearbox and a helical limited-slip differential — a combination that has helped make the Ford GT a favorite among purists who value manual, driver-focused engineering.

Notable factory features include forged BBS aluminum wheels, Brembo brakes with red-painted calipers, and a McIntosh audio system. The car is further equipped with HID headlamps, a front splitter, rear diffuser, side air intakes, and a center-exit dual exhaust. Its structure — an extruded-aluminum space frame with bonded floors and aluminum panels — draws heavily on the GT40 racers that inspired it.

Inside, carbon-fiber-shell Sparco seats and GT40-inspired vents reinforce the car's motorsport-derived character, prioritizing performance and feel over creature comforts.

WIN HERE

Given its rarity, condition, and low mileage, this GT represents the kind of blue-chip, investment-caliber collectible that rarely comes up outside of major auctions.

For those considering entering, the current bonus-entry offer adds extra appeal — particularly given the option to take a six-figure cash prize instead of the car itself.

ENTER HERE

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A 2026 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 fitted with the ZTK Performance Package is the grand prize in a running giveaway, and the actual car is now parked on the showroom floor at Ciocca Corvette in Atlantic City for entrants to see in person.

Finished in Competition Yellow Tintcoat Metallic, the ZR1 represents the return of what enthusiasts have long called the King of the Hill. Chevrolet bills its engine as the most powerful V8 ever built in America by an automaker, and the car is designed to go head to head with the world's top supercars.

At the heart of the ZR1 is a 5.5-liter twin-turbocharged LT7 V8. The engine shares its basic architecture with the Z06's naturally aspirated LT6 but adds twin turbochargers, a first for a factory-produced Corvette. The flat-plane crank design and forced induction were engineered to draw the most performance possible from that layout. Corvette Chief Engineer Josh Holder has described the ZR1 as sitting at the very top of the lineup, built to satisfy the sports car world's endless appetite for ultimate performance.

The standard ZR1 chassis pairs Magnetic Ride dampers with a lower-drag body and an adjustable rear spoiler. It comes with a carbon-fiber front splitter, rocker moldings, side intakes with brake cooling and a front underwing, all riding on Michelin Pilot Sport 4S tires over 20-inch front and 21-inch rear wheels. The setup is meant to balance everyday road comfort with track capability.

Organizers encourage repeat entries, noting that every entry counts toward the grand prize as well as any active flash or bonus giveaways. Entrants are automatically added to a VIP Club that offers early notice of limited-time promotions. More than 100 winners have already been drawn, many of them repeat winners.

Recent flash giveaway winners included Daniel Vasquez of South San Francisco, California, who won a Blackstone griddle, and Larry Roberson of Humble, Texas, who won $350 in free entries and a $100 gas card.

Organizers note that images shown do not depict the exact vehicle, which has been allocated but not yet built, and that options may vary based on availability.

Win The Car Here

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Collectors spend years searching for the right opportunity. Sometimes it's a documented one-of-one muscle car. Sometimes it's a limited-production modern performance icon before values climb even higher. Almost never is it both.

The Dream Giveaway Mopar Dream Machines Sweepstakes is giving one winner the opportunity to own two of the most desirable Mopars of two different eras—a 1-of-1 1970 Plymouth Cuda 340 Convertible and a 1-of-10 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170. Even better, Modern Car Collector readers receive more entries when they enter through our exclusive offer.

One Car. One Build. One Chance.

The centerpiece of this extraordinary prize package is a documented 1970 Plymouth Cuda 340 Convertible that stands alone in the Mopar world.

ENTER HERE

Factory finished in B5 Blue Fire Metallic with a black convertible top and black interior, it is the only example ever produced with its exact combination of equipment, including:

• 340ci V8 rated at 275 horsepower
• TorqueFlite automatic transmission
• Rare factory Shaker hood
• Matching black interior and convertible top

Its documented history includes ownership in the prestigious Lingenfelter Collection, adding another layer of significance to an already exceptional collector car.

For serious Mopar enthusiasts, opportunities like this simply don't come along.

The Future of Modern Mopar Collecting

The second grand prize represents the end of an era—and perhaps one of the most collectible modern muscle cars ever built.

The 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170 marked the ultimate evolution of Dodge's HEMI-powered performance cars, delivering an incredible 1,025 horsepower from its supercharged 6.2-liter V8.

This example is even more exclusive.

Finished in matching B5 Blue, it is one of just 10 equipped with a full cloth interior, making it among the rarest Demon 170 configurations produced.

Factory equipment includes:

• Widebody package
• TorqueFlite 8-speed automatic transmission
• Rear Seat Delete Group
• Satin Black hood graphic
• Demonic Red seat belts
• Factory trunk dress kit

As collectors increasingly recognize the significance of the final HEMI-powered Dodge halo cars, examples like this have become exceptionally difficult to acquire.

A Collection Built Across Five Decades

What makes this giveaway remarkable isn't simply the rarity of each vehicle.

It's the opportunity to own two milestone Mopars that represent different chapters in the brand's history.

One symbolizes the height of the original muscle car era.

The other marks the final, most extreme expression of factory HEMI performance.

Both wear the same legendary B5 Blue, creating a collection few enthusiasts could ever assemble on their own.

More Than Just the Cars

The winner will also receive:

• A One-Day Driving School experience from Radford Racing School.
• $64,000 in federal prize taxes paid by Dream Giveaway.
• Or the option to choose a $150,000 cash alternative (net $112,500).

The Opportunity Ends Now

Whether your passion is factory-original E-body Mopars, modern high-performance collectibles, or historically significant American muscle, this prize package checks every box.

One documented one-of-one.

One documented one-of-ten.

One winner.

This Dream Giveaway ENDS NOW, and Modern Car Collector readers receive more entries when they enter through our exclusive offer. Don't miss your chance to own a pair of Mopar legends that collectors will be talking about for decades to come.

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A Sydney Sweeney-signed movie car reveals more about celebrity provenance than it does about BMW's most affordable roadster

Cars & Bids closed the sale of a 1997 BMW Z3 1.9i Roadster this week for $12,855 — a price that would raise eyebrows for a base-model Z3 in any context, let alone one wearing a non-factory pink repaint, an automatic gearbox, an illuminated airbag light, and 65,100 miles. The car's appeal has nothing to do with driving dynamics. It was repainted for use in Christy, the biographical film starring Sydney Sweeney as boxer Christy Martin, and the dashboard carries Sweeney's signature. A movie poster signed by both Sweeney and Martin herself came with the sale.

The obvious question for collectors watching this result: did the Sweeney connection actually move the number, or would this car have brought similar money as a plain used BMW regardless of what Hollywood did to it? That distinction matters enormously, because "celebrity provenance" and "genuine collector value" are not the same asset class, and conflating them is how buyers overpay for the wrong reasons.

Why the pink matters beyond the paint

The color isn't an arbitrary production choice. Christy Martin fought through the 1990s under Don King's promotional banner, and she built her identity in the ring by wearing pink — a deliberate rejection of the idea that a fighter needed to look tough to be taken seriously. The car's finish, then, isn't just a movie prop gimmick; it's a visual callback to the real person's public image, which is precisely the kind of detail that separates a thoughtful piece of entertainment memorabilia from a cheap tie-in. According to the auction listing, the car itself was reportedly "given away in promotion of the film," meaning its film-world provenance is documented rather than assumed — an important distinction for any buyer considering this category.

What a plain Z3 1.9i actually brings

To answer the valuation question honestly, you have to look past the headline number and at what unmodified, comparable cars are actually trading for in the current market. Hagerty's price guide places a #3-condition ("Good") 1997 Z3 1.9i at $9,100, with a further 15 percent deduction for automatic transmission — the same gearbox as our subject car — bringing a realistic like-for-like benchmark down to roughly $7,700. Hagerty's own data shows the average sale price for a good-condition 1.9i currently sits closer to $10,400.

Real auction results tell the same story with more precision. A one-family-owned 1996 Z3 1.9 — manual transmission, clean history, the kind of documentation collectors actually pay for — sold on Bring a Trailer for $7,719 in mid-June 2026. Another unmodified 1996 1.9 sold for $6,200 in late May. Even stepping up to the more powerful and inherently more desirable 2.8-liter six-cylinder cars, a 42,000-mile 1997 Z3 2.8 with a five-speed manual brought $12,750 in late May — essentially identical money to what our automatic, higher-mileage, repainted four-cylinder car achieved.

That last comparison is the one that matters most. A base four-cylinder Z3 with an automatic gearbox and a non-original paint job — three attributes that would each individually depress value in a conventional collector transaction — sold for the same money as a manual six-cylinder example in better original specification. The gap between what this car "should" have brought as a Z3 and what it actually brought as a piece of Christy memorabilia is somewhere between 65 and 100 percent, depending on which benchmark you use.

Two different markets, briefly occupying the same auction listing

This is the real significance of the sale, and it's a pattern collectors will see more often as auction platforms increasingly host entertainment-adjacent vehicles alongside genuine collector cars. The bidders competing for this Z3 were not cross-shopping it against other 1997 roadsters. They were bidding against each other for a tangible connection to a film and, through it, to Christy Martin's story — a true story significant enough that a studio built a biopic around it and cast one of the more bankable actresses working today. The Z3 itself is almost incidental; it's the canvas the story was painted on.

That's an important thing for serious collectors to internalize before writing a check for something similar. Automotive provenance that compounds in value over decades — matching-numbers race history, factory competition use, ownership by figures central to a marque's own story — draws its strength from the car's relationship to automotive history itself. Entertainment provenance draws its strength from cultural relevance that can fade, be recast, or simply be forgotten within a generation. A Steve McQueen film car endures because McQueen's connection to car culture was genuine and permanent. A repainted rental-fleet roadster used briefly in a single production is a different proposition entirely, and its long-term liquidity depends entirely on whether Christy remains culturally relevant a decade from now — something no amount of paint or autographs can guarantee.

None of this means the buyer overpaid in any meaningful sense. Eleven thousand, eight hundred views and 348 watchers on a base-model Z3 tell you this listing generated attention no ordinary example would ever attract, and that attention is precisely what the winning bidder purchased. But it's worth being clear-eyed about what changed hands: not a meaningfully better BMW, but a more interesting story attached to an ordinary one.

Collectors rarely pay a premium for horsepower alone. They pay for moments — real or cinematic — that a car happens to have been present for. The moment this Z3 was part of cost roughly five thousand dollars more than the car underneath it. Whether that premium holds is a question the collector market, not the automotive one, will ultimately answer.

Source: 1997 BMW Z3 1.9i Roadster from "Christy," Cars & Bids. Photos courtesy of Cars & Bids.

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Most movie stars in the 1930s ordered a Duesenberg the way the rest of us order a sensible crossover: pick the body, sign the check, wait for the truck. Clark Gable was not most movie stars. When his 1935 Model JN reached the coachbuilder, he pulled up a chair next to the designer and started drawing. That car — firewall and chassis number 2585, engine J-560 — is the headline lot of the Sam and Emily Mann Collection at RM Sotheby's Monterey sale, August 13–15, carrying a $5.75 to $8 million estimate.

Before you drown in the Gable-and-Lombard romance the auction copy leans on so hard, it's worth understanding what the JN actually was. By 1935 the Model J was seven years old and the company building it was running out of runway; Duesenberg would be gone by 1937 when E.L. Cord's empire came apart. The JN was the facelift. Rollston's Herbert Newport dropped the bodywork lower over the frame rails, swapped the old 19-inch wheels for 17s, and skirted the fenders to modernize an aging silhouette. Only a small run was built, and per the RM catalog, just four wore convertible coupe coachwork. Gable got the first one.

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Under that long hood sits the reason Duesenbergs still command these figures. The straight-eight displaced 420 cubic inches with twin overhead cams and four valves per cylinder — genuine race-car architecture at a time when most American luxury engines were lazy flatheads making half the output. Gooding, which sold this same car once before, lists it at 265 horsepower through a single downdraft carburetor, feeding a three-speed manual and reined in by four-wheel hydraulic drums. In 1935, this was the fastest, most sophisticated thing you could buy with a U.S. title.

Gable didn't stop at "the fastest." Rather than take delivery, he had the car shipped from Rollston in New York to Bohman & Schwartz in Pasadena, the shop the film colony trusted. Working with designer W. Everett Miller — and, per RM, leaving behind his own sketches still in the file — he stretched the hoodline back over the cowl, cut in cowl vents lifted from early biplanes, raked the windshield a few more degrees, and had the shop build a lower top to match. The radiator shell was painted body color to stretch the car visually, and the rear got fender skirts, twin enclosed spares, and color-matched wheel discs. This is not a man who bought a nice car. This is a man who art-directed one.

Now the part a serious bidder will actually spend an afternoon on. At this level, "matching numbers" is scored down to the individual component, and this car has a footnote. It keeps its original numbered bell-housing, J-560, but under the hood is a block that isn't its own: a New Mexico dealer performed an engine swap around the turn of the 1950s, installing the engine from chassis J-521 while retaining the 560 housing. For a car with provenance this loud, that's the one asterisk. The Manns' answer was to hunt down and buy the original crankshaft, stamped 560, which is crated and going with the car. The message to buyers is clear: the path back to fully original numbered internals is open. The catch is what walking it requires — a full teardown and rebuild of a pre-war DOHC straight-eight is specialist, five-figures-and-climbing work, not a winter project. The next owner inherits a genuine fork: campaign it as the sorted, award-winning driver it already is, or commit to reuniting the numbers and chase absolute purity. Either is defensible. Both are expensive.

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Here's the market context the catalog won't hand you: this isn't the car's first trip to Monterey. Gooding offered it in 2012 at Pebble Beach. Since the Manns bought it in 2005 and are the ones consigning it now, the arithmetic writes itself — it didn't make its number then, and they took it home and kept it for another fourteen years. That's not a warning label. Six-to-eight-million-dollar pre-war cars trade in a thin pond, and a result depends on the right two bidders turning up on the right night. The provenance here is about as strong as American motoring history gets: a car the era's biggest star styled himself, drove with Carole Lombard, and parked in front of some of the most reproduced Duesenberg photographs ever shot. But provenance is a story, and stories only cash out when two people believe them at the same moment.

One practical note for anyone fantasizing about a paddle. The hammer is only the start — budget for a buyer's premium on top, then agreed-value collector insurance, climate-controlled storage, and a Model J specialist on retainer, because there is no AutoZone for a 90-year-old twin-cam eight. The upside is that a JN like this has already done all its depreciating; blue-chip pre-war metal tends to be the steadier corner of the collector market while newer "instant classics" bounce around.

For Sam Mann, an industrial designer who has spent decades insisting the best cars are art, letting this one go is its own kind of statement. For everyone else, it's a chance to watch the market put a dollar figure on the most romantic what-if in American car culture — the machine a movie star drew for himself, during the best years he'd ever get. Bring a very understanding accountant.

Images Via: RM Sotheby's

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The Chip Miller Amyloidosis Foundation has unveiled its biggest giveaway car to date: a 2026 Chevrolet Corvette ZR1 finished in Competition Yellow Tintcoat Metallic and equipped with the track-focused ZTK Performance Package. The giveaway car is currently on display at Ciocca Corvette in Atlantic City, where fans can see the King of the Hill Corvette in person before entries close.

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Under the hood, the ZR1 is powered by the 5.5-liter twin-turbocharged LT7 V8, a flat-plane crank engine that produces 1,064 horsepower, making it the most powerful production Corvette ever built. The ZTK package adds a larger carbon-fiber wing, underbody strakes, and dive planes for the highest downforce of any Corvette in the model's history, along with a flat-top and flat-bottom steering wheel that puts the ZR1 badge front and center.

The giveaway benefits the Chip Miller Amyloidosis Foundation, which funds research and awareness for amyloidosis, a rare disease that took the life of Corvettes at Carlisle co-founder Chip Miller in 2004. Entrants can choose the ZR1 itself or a $175,000 cash option if they win, with several donation tiers available that each come with bonus promotional entries.

Entries close on September 27, 2026 at 11:59 PM EDT, with the winner drawn on October 3, 2026 at the Carlisle Fairgrounds in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The foundation is also running flash bonus giveaways through August 16, giving supporters extra chances to win along the way.

Modern Car Collector Readers Get More Entries to Win

Modern Car Collector readers get more entries to win the ZR1: use our exclusive link below to enter the Chip Miller Amyloidosis Foundation giveaway. Every entry supports amyloidosis research and awareness.

Enter now: https://www.tapkat.org/chip-miller-amyloidosis-foundation/N9PbJE?promo=MCC50

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Independence Day fireworks have faded and Monterey Car Week is still more than a month away, which makes the long weekend of July 9–12, 2026 one of the quieter weekends of collector car auctions in 2026, per RM Sotheby’s global auction calendar. There is no live docket from the biggest American or European houses this time around, but a trio of online sales bridges the four days, and the daily churn on Bring a Trailer and Cars & Bids keeps things from ever going quiet. Here is a look at everything crossing the block this weekend, plus a preview of who is saving their best metal for later in July.

RM Sotheby’s Runs Two Online Sales Through the Weekend

RM Sotheby’s has two timed online auctions overlapping the weekend, a continuation of the online-heavy pattern the house leaned on for the July 4th weekend as well. The Abu Dhabi Collectors’ Edit: Materiality, a joint sale with Sotheby’s spanning cars, watches, jewelry, and handbags, closes Friday, July 10. The automotive half is a tight three-car lineup topped by a 2018 Bugatti Chiron estimated between $2,850,000 and $3,500,000, with bidding sitting at $2,000,000 as of this week. A 1993 Mercedes-Benz 500 GE V8 (estimated $140,000–$250,000) and a novelty Ferrari 126C4 “Junior” child’s car round out the automotive lots.

Running the entire length of the weekend and beyond is Sealed July, RM Sotheby’s monthly timed-bidding sale, which does not close until July 16. The headliner is a Ferrari F50 offered without reserve and guided at £5,000,000 to £6,000,000, joined by a 1972 Ferrari 365 GTS/4 Daytona Spider by Scaglietti (estimated €2,300,000–€2,800,000), a 2005 Maserati MC12, and a 1986 Riva Aquarama Special speedboat. The mix of a no-reserve Ferrari halo car against a private-treaty-style boat sale is a good illustration of how far RM’s Sealed platform has stretched beyond just cars since it launched.

Bonhams Keeps an Automobilia Sale Open

Bonhams’ live motoring calendar is quiet this weekend, but its online Summer Automobilia Auction, including the Robert Lusk Collection Part IV, runs July 6 through July 16 out of Guildford, England, with 171 lots of racing memorabilia, dealer signage, and motoring ephemera crossing the block throughout the window.

Iconic Auctioneers’ Charity Sale Wraps as the Weekend Begins

Iconic Auctioneers, the rebranded Silverstone Auctions, closes its O2 Silver Clef Charity Auction on July 9, the first day of this guide’s window, benefiting the music-therapy charity Nordoff and Robbins. It is a warm-up of sorts for the house, which returns with a much bigger docket later this month when Anthony Hamilton’s £3 million personal collection heads to Silverstone on July 25.

The Daily Churn: Bring a Trailer and Cars & Bids

Away from the big-house calendars, these two collector car auctions sites never stop, with new lots closing every few minutes across the entire weekend. Among the vehicles moving through Bring a Trailer’s docket this week are a 20k-mile 2019 Rolls-Royce Phantom, an original-owner 1978 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40, a 1973 Ford Bronco with its numbers-matching 302, and a five-speed 1986 BMW 635CSi. Over on Cars & Bids, standouts include a rare five-speed 1993 Mercedes-Benz 300SL, an RB26-swapped 2001 Nissan Skyline 25GT Coupe, and a street-legal Porsche 917 replica built on a modern LS-powered chassis. Anyone new to bidding on either platform should read our collector’s guide to bidding smart before jumping in, since reserve and no-reserve auctions behave very differently once the countdown clock starts.

The Big Names Sitting This One Out

For collectors used to a live docket every weekend, this is one of the emptier weekends of collector car auctions all summer. Mecum’s next stop is Harrisburg, running July 22–25. GAA Classic Cars is holding its next sale the same week, July 23–25 in Greensboro. Barrett-Jackson does not return until its Las Vegas sale in September, and RM Sotheby’s next live auction is Monterey on August 13–15, the same week Broad Arrow debuts as The Quail’s official auction partner. Bonhams’ and Iconic’s next major UK sales, Edinburgh and the Anthony Hamilton collection at Silverstone, both land later in July as well.

Reading the Market

A Bugatti Chiron bidding well under its low estimate with just days to go is worth watching against the backdrop we described in our recent look at a two-speed collector car market, where the very top of the market keeps setting records while everything else softens. A no-reserve Ferrari F50 at RM’s Sealed sale, by contrast, guarantees a result no matter where bidding lands, and will be a cleaner read on where the ultra-high end actually sits than an estimate-driven sale ever could be.

Estimates and lot details reflect figures published by the auction houses at the time of writing and are subject to change. Modern Car Collector will report final results as they are confirmed.

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Three exceptional Shelbys are crossing the block at the upcoming GAA Classic Car Auction, each representing a different chapter of Carroll Shelby's Mustang legacy. Leading the group is a frame-off restored 1967 Shelby GT500, followed by a rare, low-mile 1970 Shelby GT500 finished in factory Pastel Gray, and rounding out the trio, a supercharged 1966 Shelby GT350 with documented Shelby Registry history.

1967 Ford Shelby GT500 — Finished in Lime Gold over black, this GT500 has been completely restored from the frame up and is one of the last Shelby Mustangs built at the Shelby facility before production shifted to A.O. Smith for 1968. It carries a rebuilt original 428 Police Interceptor engine with twin 600 Holley carbs, most of its original interior including the dash pad, and comes with a deluxe Marti Report and full documentation.

1970 Ford Shelby GT500 — An investment-grade Shelby finished in rare factory Pastel Gray with blue stripes, meticulously restored from the frame up to factory specs. The owner reports just 40,000 miles, and the car retains its original black interior aside from the dash pad and headliner, along with its 428 CI engine, Shelby dash signature, and a restoration book with deluxe Marti Report.

1966 Ford Shelby GT350 — A Red-over-black GT350 with white Le Mans stripes and a documented history in the Shelby Registry. Power comes from a 289 CID V8 fitted with a Paxton supercharger, Cobra finned aluminum valve covers, aluminum intake, and headers, paired to a 4-speed manual. Other highlights include a roll bar, wood-rimmed steering wheel, Shelby 9,000 RPM tachometer, and 10-spoke aluminum wheels on BF Goodrich Radial T/A tires.

These classics are selling at the GAA Classic Car Auction on July 23-25. Join us at The Palace and bid on over 400 classic and collector vehicles. VISIT our website to register to bid, consign your vehicle and to see all consignments.

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Time is nearly up on one of this summer's biggest automotive giveaways. The Super Mopar Dream Giveaway wraps up its entry period on July 9, and the grand prize pairs two unicorn-level Mopars finished in matching B5 Blue: a documented one-of-one muscle car icon and a modern 1,000-horsepower machine built to echo it.

First up is a 1970 Plymouth 'Cuda 340 Convertible, verified as a one-of-one factory build. It wears B5 Blue Fire Metallic paint over a black top and black interior, pairs a 340ci V-8 with a Torqueflite automatic, and carries a factory Shaker hood that is exceptionally rare on a 340 convertible. Add in its Lingenfelter Collection provenance, and you have a car with no equal anywhere else.

The modern half of the pair is a 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170, the highest-output production muscle car ever built, thanks to a supercharged 6.2-liter HEMI V-8 that tops 1,000 horsepower. This particular Demon 170 is one of only ten finished in B5 Blue, with a cloth interior, satin black hood graphic, and a trunk dress-up kit designed to echo the vintage 'Cuda. Most Demon 170s disappeared straight into private collections, which makes spotting one in this exact configuration a rare sight on its own.

The prize package goes well beyond the two cars themselves. Dream Giveaway is covering $64,000 in federal taxes owed on the win, plus tossing in a bonus day at the Radford Racing School so the winner can actually learn to handle all that horsepower. Anyone who would rather skip the keys altogether can choose a $150,000 cash alternative instead.

WIN HERE

Here's the part built just for our readers: everyone who visits Modern Car Collector gets extra chances to win. Enter using promo code MCC5 and your bonus tickets stack automatically, which meaningfully boosts your odds of driving away with both of these B5 Blue Mopars. Every ticket purchased also benefits the giveaway's nonprofit partner, and a free entry method remains available for anyone who wants in without buying tickets.

Once the clock hits zero on July 9, this pairing is gone for good. Enter now, stack your bonus tickets with code MCC5, and give yourself a real shot at owning a piece of Mopar history.

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The most decorated racer on this year's Festival of Speed entry list arrives with 93 wins, a tragic-idol backstory, and precisely zero verifiable dyno pulls — because he is a cartoon. Goodwood has confirmed that Lightning McQueen, the #95 Rust-eze car Owen Wilson has voiced since 2006, will return to Goodwood for the 2026 event, running Thursday 9 to Sunday 12 July at Goodwood House.

What makes the announcement quietly hilarious is that Goodwood filed it like a genuine driver profile — Doc Hudson mentorship, seven Piston Cup titles, the 2011 World Grand Prix, the 2017 Florida 500 handoff to Cruz Ramirez — all laid out with a straight face. The Duke of Richmond is even quoted saying the team worked "behind the scenes for a number of years" to land him, and that they're delighted his schedule finally allows it. Somewhere in there is the year's best deadpan: the diary of a fictional car was apparently the sticking point.

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Play along with the lore and one number still gives the game away. Ninety-three wins from 434 starts is a 21 percent strike rate. No flesh-and-blood stock car driver has come close to sustaining that — Richard Petty, the actual King, managed roughly 17 percent across nearly 1,200 races, and he's an outlier for the ages. McQueen's résumé only balances in a universe with no physics budget.

The genuinely educational thread Pixar buried in all this is Doc Hudson, billed in the films as "the Fabulous Hudson Hornet." That's a love letter to a real machine. Hudson's low "step-down" chassis and 308-cubic-inch flathead straight-six — with the optional Twin H-Power twin-carb setup — made the actual Hornet a NASCAR wrecking ball in the early 1950s, carrying drivers like Herb Thomas and Marshall Teague to piles of wins before the Big Three's overhead-valve V8s showed up and ended the party. So the cartoon's grizzled mentor is a nod to the last time a scrappy independent American brand made Detroit look slow on a dirt oval. Worth knowing before someone's kid asks why the old blue car matters.

Now the part that matters to anyone who owns a torque wrench: whatever climbs the hill will not be a 358-cubic-inch pushrod V8. Disney's roaming McQueen — the same breed of self-propelled "drive-around" character that patrols Cars Land at Disney California Adventure — is a bespoke, battery-electric animatronic. It has articulating suspension so he can lean into a pose, moving eyes and a working mouth, synchronized speech, and an operator tucked well out of sight. No combustion, no gearbox, no exhaust note to speak of. It's a show vehicle built to make the impossible look effortless, which is its own flavor of engineering flex, even if it'll never trouble a timing beam.

There's even a legal footnote for the pedants. Back in 2010, a real stock car racer named Mark Brill sued Disney, arguing McQueen cribbed the look of his own car. An Oklahoma appeals court sided with Disney, reasoning in essence that a fictional, driverless, talking red #95 can't be confused with a real driver's ride. It remains one of the stranger sentences in American motoring case law.

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As for why the world's most serious garden party for gearheads wants a cartoon on the list — follow the calendar and the ledger. 2026 marks the 20th anniversary of Cars, a franchise whose merchandising has printed money by the billion for two decades. Goodwood has spent recent years widening its audience beyond die-hards, and a six-year-old desperate to meet McQueen is a family of four through the turnstiles. He also slots neatly into this year's "The Rivals" theme, sharing a bill with actual F1 and MotoGP legends. Parking a beloved fictional racer next to real machinery is smart crossover programming, not a gimmick.

Practical notes if you're going: the Festival runs Thursday 9 to Sunday 12 July at Goodwood House in West Sussex, and at the time of the announcement Goodwood listed Thursday and limited Sunday tickets as the last ones standing, the busier days having sold through. Bring the kids for McQueen, then stay for the hillclimb, where cars that actually burn fuel sprint up the Duke's driveway against the clock. One of those two things has a lap record. The other has a merchandising empire. Both, apparently, belong at Goodwood now.

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McLaren has pulled the wraps off a car it never actually built, and it's calling the result a "restoration." That word is doing some heavy lifting, but the car underneath the marketing is the real thing: the M6GT, the road-going supercar founder Bruce McLaren was chasing a full quarter-century before the F1 made the idea famous. It debuts this week at the Goodwood Festival of Speed, which runs July 9–12, and it's worth understanding what McLaren Special Operations actually did here, because it's more interesting—and more slippery—than the press photos suggest.

Start with the history, because it's the whole point. In the late 1960s McLaren's M6A was demolishing Can-Am, and Bruce wanted a closed-roof version that could double as a homologation special and a genuine road car. When a reporter asked him what he was really after, he described a civilised version of one of his racing cars. He built exactly one for himself, registered OBH 500H, and used it as a daily driver to and from the shop. Goodwood says he'd sketched out a run of 50 to take on Ferrari and the rest of Europe's exotica. Then Bruce was killed testing a Can-Am car at the Goodwood circuit in 1970, at 32, and the road-car program died with him. The F1 didn't arrive until 1992. The M6GT sat in the "what if" file for half a century.

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Now here's the part the word "restoration" glosses over. MSO didn't restore Bruce's original car—it built a new one. By McLaren's own account, the chassis is from a different period M6A racer, the bodywork was pulled from original moulds the company dug up in the UK, and the hidden structure—roll hoop, rear frame support, internal clam reinforcement, wiring harness—was fabricated fresh. That's a recreation with authentic bones, not a restoration in the sense a concours judge would use. It's a meaningful distinction if you care about provenance, because a genuine survivor and a factory-built tribute are very different things on a valuation sheet, even when the same badge is on both.

The engineering headaches, though, were real, and they're where the story earns its keep. The single hardest thing about faithfully rebuilding a 1960s British car in 2026 isn't the big stuff—it's the fasteners and bearings. Britain went metric decades ago, so MSO had to chase down imperial-era bearings built to standards nobody stocks anymore, and it brought in aerospace technicians to set period-correct dome rivets the old way. If you've ever tried to source an obsolete imperial bearing for a vintage project, you know this is genuinely miserable work: the tolerances, the fits, and the supply chain all disappeared two generations ago. The windscreen was another dead end—there's no off-the-shelf glass for a car that was never mass-produced—so they scanned the original profile and had a specialist blow new panes to match. Goodwood pegs the whole job at 3,000 hours, with surviving mechanics from Bruce's era on hand, one of whom apparently recalled shaping the original rear upright around a banana in the tearoom. That's the kind of detail you can't reverse-engineer from a scan.

Under the clamshell sits the smartest decision MSO made: they left it alone. Rather than dropping in a modern twin-turbo V8, the car keeps a period small-block Chevrolet paired with a five-speed manual, and McLaren specifically calls out the 'camel hump' cylinder heads matching original spec. For the uninitiated, those are the famous "double hump" castings—identifiable by the two bumps at the ends—prized in the '60s as about the best-flowing factory small-block heads Chevrolet made. It's a period-correct hot-rod choice, and it tells you the brief was authenticity over lap times. McLaren hasn't published power or performance figures, which is telling in itself; this car isn't meant to be benchmarked.

There's a practical wrinkle worth flagging for anyone who fantasizes about McLaren selling these. It won't, at least not this one. The M6GT is a one-off heritage piece, the first entry in MSO's new heritage collection, and keeping it in-house sidesteps the modern regulatory nightmare a customer version would trigger. A new road-legal car built and sold today has to clear type approval, crash and emissions standards, and a raft of homologation that a 1960s Can-Am derivative would fail spectacularly. Continuation and heritage builds live in a narrow legal lane precisely because they aren't offered as new production cars for public road registration. It's the same reason Jaguar's continuation D-types and Aston's DB4 GT builds are the cars they are—period-faithful, often track-oriented, and carefully structured to avoid being treated as new type-approved vehicles.

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For collectors and insurers, a piece like this is its own category. There's no comparable sale, no auction record, no book value—so if it were ever insured privately it'd need an agreed-value policy backed by a bespoke appraisal, because a standard actuarial model has nothing to price against. McLaren won't put a number on it, and honestly, a factory-built, founder-lineage one-off with the original moulds behind it is the kind of thing that gets valued by negotiation, not comparables.

The practical takeaway for the rest of us is simpler. The M6GT is a reminder that McLaren's road-car story didn't start with Gordon Murray and a carbon tub—it started with a Kiwi racer who wanted a streetable version of his Can-Am weapon and didn't live to finish the job. MSO just finished it for him, imperial bearings and all. Call it a restoration if you like. It's really a debt being paid.

Images Via: Mclaren

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Dream Giveaway has launched a new sweepstakes centered on a fully restored 1970 Oldsmobile 442 W30, giving entrants a shot at one of the rarest muscle cars of its era. The nonprofit fundraiser benefits a lineup of veterans' and children's charities, and it wraps up on July 16, 2026.

WIN HERE

Only 2,574 examples of the 442 W30 were ever built, and this particular example went through a frame-off restoration to reach concours condition. It wears a Matador Red exterior with white stripes over a pearl interior, a patriotic color scheme that fits nicely with the country's 250th birthday celebrations this year. Under the hood sits the model's signature 455-cubic-inch V-8, rated at 370 horsepower.

Whoever wins the car won't need to stress over the tax bill either, since Dream Giveaway is throwing in $32,000 toward the federal taxes owed on the prize. Entries start at $10 for a single ticket, with larger donations unlocking bonus tickets on a sliding scale. Entrants who would rather not donate can still take part through the sweepstakes' official free entry method, detailed in the official rules.

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Modern Car Collector readers get an extra edge this time around, receiving bonus entries toward the win on top of whatever ticket package they choose.

Head over to the Dream Giveaway 442 W30 page to see the full build sheet, browse the photo gallery, and lock in your entries before the July 16 deadline.

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When Mecum rolls into Monterey in 2026, few lots will command attention quite like this one: a 2025 BRABUS Porsche 911 Turbo S 900 Rocket R, a car that takes one of the finest sports cars on the planet and turns the volume up to eleven. With only 251 miles on the odometer, this example is as close to showroom-fresh as a modern collector will ever find.

BRABUS has spent decades building a reputation as one of the world's premier independent tuning houses, and while the Mercedes-Benz faithful may know the name best, its work on Porsche's flagship Turbo S proves the tuner's talents translate beautifully across brands. Starting with the already formidable 640 HP twin-turbocharged 3.8L flat-six, BRABUS engineers fitted their own high-performance twin turbochargers along with the PowerXtra Rocket R Turbo upgrade, pushing output to a staggering 900 HP and approximately 738 lb-ft of torque. All of that power is routed through Porsche's slick 8-speed PDK dual-clutch transmission and put down through all-wheel drive, making this one of the quickest, most explosive 911-based machines ever built.

Step inside and the transformation continues in equally spectacular fashion. Black Alcantara pairs with Azure Blue Nappa leather throughout the cabin, with matching blue stitching and exposed gloss carbon fiber trim tying the theme together. The Alcantara-wrapped steering wheel carries a blue 12 o'clock pinstripe, a small but unmistakable signature of BRABUS's obsessive attention to detail. Every surface feels purpose-built, blending motorsport-inspired materials with genuine luxury in a way that few tuners manage to pull off so convincingly.

Rarity is where this car truly separates itself from the pack. BRABUS built just 28 examples of the 900 Rocket R, and only four of them made their way to the United States. Combine that scarcity with a documented 251 miles, and you have a modern supercar that is essentially a time capsule, a car that has already sold out at the factory level and will likely only become harder to find as the years go on. For collectors chasing the next great blue-chip modern performance car, it is difficult to imagine a stronger combination of engineering pedigree, visual drama, and outright rarity.

This 2025 BRABUS Porsche 911 Turbo S 900 Rocket R crosses the block at Mecum's Monterey 2026 auction as Lot R36, and it is easily one of the most compelling modern collector cars to hit the stage this year. With its factory-fresh mileage, extreme rarity, and no-compromise performance credentials, it represents a rare chance to own something that very few people on the planet will ever have the opportunity to buy. Full details, the complete photo gallery, and bidder registration can be found on the official listing at Mecum Auctions.

Visit our website to register to bid, consign your vehicle and browse all consignments. The Mecum Monterey Auction takes place August 13-15 in beautiful Monterey, California.

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Every so often, a car crosses the auction block that doesn't just check boxes on a spec sheet — it redefines what "practically new" really means. This 2023 Porsche 911 GT3 Touring is exactly that car. With a scant 2,000 miles on the clock, a spotless one-owner history, and a specification sheet that reads like a wish list, it is currently listed with no reserve on Bring a Trailer, and it deserves every bit of the attention it's getting.

What makes this particular GT3 so compelling isn't just the mileage, it's the way it was ordered. Porsche's Touring package strips away the towering rear wing of the standard 911 GT3 and replaces it with a discreet, speed-activated spoiler and a mesh-grilled decklid, turning one of the most track-focused 911s ever built into something that could believably pass for a well-optioned Carrera at a glance. Finished in a handsome Agate Gray Metallic over a black and Sport-Tex interior, this example plays the sleeper card beautifully, and that only adds to its appeal for enthusiasts who want maximum performance with minimum shouting.

Underneath that subtle bodywork sits one of the greatest naturally aspirated engines ever fitted to a road car. The 4.0-liter flat six revs to a screaming 9,000 rpm and sends 502 horsepower and 346 lb-ft of torque to the rear wheels, here through Porsche's seven-speed PDK dual-clutch transaxle and an electronically locking differential. Direct fuel injection, VarioCam variable valve timing, dry-sump lubrication, and individual throttle bodies all point to an engineering team that treated this motor less like a component and more like a piece of art. Recent service work, including fresh spark plugs and an oil change, means the next owner can simply enjoy it.

The chassis is every bit as serious as the engine. Porsche Ceramic Composite Brakes with cross-drilled, ventilated discs provide massive stopping power at every corner, while 20-inch front and 21-inch rear center-lock wheels wrapped in Pirelli P Zero rubber put that power down with confidence. A front-axle lift system and rear-axle steering round out a package designed by engineers who clearly wanted this car to be as usable as it is fast, equally at home ducking over a steep driveway or carving a mountain road.

Slide inside and the theme continues. Carbon-fiber full bucket seats trimmed in black leather and Sport-Tex hold driver and passenger in place, while Silver Grey seatbelts and a Race-Tex headliner add just the right amount of contrast. The Chrono package's dash-mounted stopwatch sits proudly ahead of a 9,000-rpm tachometer, and modern comforts like Porsche Communication Management, navigation, a Bose sound system, a back-up camera, and cruise control mean this is a GT3 that can be driven and enjoyed every single day.

History matters just as much as specification on a car like this, and this GT3 Touring delivers here too. It has remained with its original owner since new, is accompanied by a clean Carfax report showing no accidents or reported damage, a digital copy of the original build sheet, the owner's manual, and a clean Texas title. Offered by respected Scottsdale, Arizona dealer casciomotors, this is about as documented and honest an example as the model year is likely to produce.

Cars this clean, this well-optioned, and this lightly used rarely come up for sale, let alone with no reserve. Bidding is active and climbing on Bring a Trailer, with the auction ending soon. For anyone who has been waiting for the right modern-classic 911 to add to a collection, this may well be it.

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Ferrari just did something that reads like a headline from 2005: it put a clutch pedal and an open-gate shifter back in a front-engined V12. The 12Cilindri Manuale revives the metal gate, the third pedal, and the theatrical click-clack that a generation of enthusiasts thought Maranello had buried for good. But before anyone starts polishing their heel-and-toe technique, understand what's really under the tunnel here, because it changes how you should think about this car entirely.

There is no manual gearbox in the manual Ferrari

Let's be blunt about the mechanical reality. The transmission is the exact same eight-speed dual-clutch unit sitting across the rear axle in every standard 12Cilindri. Ferrari didn't engineer a new gearbox. What it built is a separate module up front — a gear lever, a clutch pedal, and a control panel — that has zero physical connection to the transmission or the clutch packs. None. The lever and pedal are input devices. Two Hall-effect angle sensors read where you've put the stick, a sensor tracks the clutch pedal through its travel, and software translates all of that into commands the DCT executes electronically. Ferrari calls it Manuale By-Wire.

So this is a drive-by-wire automatic wearing a very convincing manual costume. Whether that offends you or delights you is a personal matter, but it's the single most important fact about the car, and it drives everything else.

Why fake it instead of building the real thing?

This is where the engineering logic gets genuinely instructive, and it's the part the marketing glosses over. A true three-pedal manual bolted to this engine would be a homologation and calibration nightmare. You'd have to certify a second transmission, which is expensive and slow. Worse, a real clutch introduces driveline shock, pitch, and torque interruption every time it engages — and this car's entire chassis is built around electronics that assume smooth, predictable power delivery. The 12Cilindri runs Side Slip Control, an electronic differential, brake-by-wire, rear-wheel steering, and Ferrari's dynamic-enhancement software. Every one of those systems is tuned around the DCT's behavior. Hang a physical manual off the back and you'd have to re-teach the entire electronic brain how the car moves.

By keeping the DCT and faking the interface, Ferrari sidesteps all of it. The stability and traction systems never know the difference — as far as they're concerned, it's the same automatic transmission doing the same predictable things. It's a clever piece of corporate problem-solving dressed up as a love letter to purists.

The clutch pedal is a machined lie, and it's an impressive one

Here's the part I actually respect. A clutch pedal that's just an on/off switch would feel like garbage, and Ferrari clearly knew it. So the pedal contains a real, engineered mechanical load curve — a preloaded spring, cam, and roller assembly that reproduces the resistance, the bite point, and the progressive travel of an actual clutch, even though pressing it sends nothing but a signal. Independent reports peg the pedal weight at 15 kg, matched to the last manual Ferrari, the 599 GTB Fiorano, which the team benchmarked against.

The shifter is the same trick. Inside that gate sits a module machined from solid steel blocks, weighing under 3.5 kg, using a rotating block and eccentric rollers to generate the loads, the self-centering, and the mechanical "snick." Ferrari even ran a dedicated development program on the sound of the gate. This is force-feedback engineering aimed squarely at your hands, and by every account it's convincing.

Crucially, Ferrari built in consequences. Botch your clutch coordination and you'll stall it or lurch away like a learner — there's a programmed bite point and no auto-blip crutch. A physical solenoid locks the lever if you haven't pressed the clutch, or if you're about to select a gear low enough to grenade the valvetrain. So you can't accidentally drop it from sixth to second and money-shift a 9,500-rpm V12 into oblivion. The system saves you from the one manual mistake that actually destroys engines while still letting you embarrass yourself in every survivable way.

The details worth knowing before you covet one

The engine is untouched: the 6.5-liter naturally aspirated V12, 819 hp at 9,250 rpm and 500 lb-ft at 7,250 rpm, spinning to 9,500. In manual mode you get the first six ratios plus reverse; the seventh and eighth gears are locked away for automatic-mode cruising, which is a tidy engineering tell that six forward gears is all the gate needs to feel period-correct. Ferrari claims a skilled driver matches the automatic's 2.9-second 0–100 km/h — which, if true, quietly raises the question of what the manual is actually for beyond feel. The answer, of course, is feel. That's the entire product.

Every one of the 1,499 units runs through Ferrari's Tailor Made program, and the number itself is a nod — it references the displacement of Ferrari's first V12 from 1947. It's coupe-only, dressed with 365 GTB/4 Daytona pinstripe cues, laser-etched badging, forged five-spoke wheels, and seatbacks embossed with six grooves for the six gears. The interior's tuning-fork center console houses the gate and the backlit knob that glows amber in manual, white in automatic.

Two practical realities for anyone daydreaming about ownership. First, this is a special series, and Ferrari special series with genuine narrative hooks — the return of the gate, a naturally aspirated V12 in an electrified era, a hard 1,499-unit cap — tend to be spoken-for before the public ever sees a configurator, and they historically hold or gain value against the standard car precisely because of that scarcity. Second, from a service standpoint, the good news buried in all this is that the mechanicals are the same proven DCT hardware the rest of the range uses. You're not buying a bespoke, unobtainable gearbox that specialists will fear in fifteen years. The "manual" bits are a sensor-and-actuator module — more electronics to potentially fail down the road, yes, but nothing that leaves you stranded with a one-off transmission and no parts.

Ferrari will tell you this is the purest expression of driving. It's more honest to call it the cleverest: a car that gives you the ritual of the gate and the drama of the clutch while a dual-clutch automatic quietly does the heavy lifting behind the curtain. Whether that's soul or theater probably depends on how much you needed the mechanical connection to be real. But as a piece of engineering sleight-of-hand, it's hard not to tip your cap.

Images Via: Ferrari

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Celebrity factory visits are usually forgettable PR filler. This one is worth a second look—not because Adele can carry a tune, but because of where McLaren let her wander and why that particular building exists at all.

The team posted footage of the singer touring the McLaren Technology Centre with her teenage son, both of them, by her own admission, "obsessed" with Formula 1. She got the access-all-areas treatment: a sit-down in Mission Control with team principal Andrea Stella, a lap in the simulator, and a stop in CEO Zak Brown's office. McLaren says she even improvised her own version of the "Box, box" radio call. Cute. Now let's talk about what she was actually standing inside, because the MTC is one of the more deliberately over-engineered structures in motorsport.

Mission Control isn't a movie set—it's a data-processing nerve center

When Stella walked Adele into Mission Control, that room wasn't staged for the cameras. During a Grand Prix, an F1 car streams data from a few hundred sensors—hundreds of channels covering everything from tire temperatures and brake-caliper heat to hydraulic pressures, energy deployment, and airflow. That telemetry lands back in Woking in near real time, where engineers who never left England analyze it and feed strategy calls to the pit wall trackside. The race engineer talking to the driver is the audible tip of a very large, very quiet iceberg.

Which reframes the "Box, box" joke. That phrase isn't tradition for its own sake—it exists because radio comms have to survive a screaming engine, a crackling connection, and a driver pulling heavy g-loads. "Box" is used instead of "pit" precisely because "pit" and "in" can be misheard against engine noise, while the harder consonants of "box" cut through. It's deliberate signal engineering. Adele's "hurry up, come in, quick now" would get someone crashed at a real pit entry, which is the actual point of the bit.

The building itself is the flex

The McLaren Technology Centre has been the team's home since 2003, designed by Norman Foster, and it's engineered with the same obsessive tolerances the cars are. The staff restaurant is deliberately kept at a lower air pressure than the rest of the building so cooking smells don't drift into the engineering spaces. The famous curtain-wall glass looking over the lake is held up using structural strut concepts borrowed from race-car wing design, because Ron Dennis reportedly didn't want thick support columns spoiling the sightlines. This is a facility where the railings are built without visible seams. When McLaren shows a visitor "places not everyone gets to see," the building is arguably the exhibit.

Worth noting for context: McLaren recently repurposed its previous Woking factory into a dedicated composites facility and consolidated its heritage-car collection at the MTC, so the campus Adele toured is actively expanding its manufacturing footprint, not coasting on architecture.

Why McLaren rolled out the carpet right now

Timing matters here, and it's flattering timing for the team. Lando Norris—who Adele met alongside Oscar Piastri—is the reigning drivers' champion, having clinched the 2025 title at the Abu Dhabi finale by two points over Max Verstappen. McLaren took the constructors' crown the same year, its second in a row and, per Formula 1's own record, the first drivers'-and-constructors' double for the team since 1998. A team fresh off a championship double has every reason to invite a global name through the door.

There's also a genuinely useful nugget buried in Adele's reason for being there. She explained her son got into the sport through karting—and that's not incidental. Karting remains the standard entry pathway into single-seater racing; essentially every current F1 driver came up through it, Norris included, who joined McLaren's young-driver program as a teenager. For any parent watching this thinking their kid's newfound F1 fixation is just screen time, the honest takeaway is that the grassroots route Adele described is the real one, and it's expensive, time-intensive, and starts young.

The simulator lap and the Zak Brown office visit are the fun bits, and McLaren clearly knows the promotional value of a reticent A-lister voluntarily showing up on camera. But the substance here isn't the celebrity. It's that a race team now runs a Grand Prix operation split between a trackside pit wall and a data center in Surrey—and that the building doing the heavy lifting was designed to the same fanatical standard as the cars it builds.

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There's exactly one rotary-engined car that has ever won the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and Mazda is putting it on a plane. The company confirmed that its 1991 Le Mans-winning 787B is coming from Japan to headline the 2026 Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion, running August 12–15 at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca. For a lot of American enthusiasts, this is the first realistic shot at hearing the thing in person—and "hearing" is the operative word.

Why this specific car matters more than most museum pieces

Let's be precise about what's being shipped, because Mazda built more than one of these. Three 787Bs were constructed for the 1991 season, and the one that matters is chassis 002—the No. 55 car that Johnny Herbert, Volker Weidler, and Bertrand Gachot drove to overall victory at Le Mans. Mazda states it's bringing the Le Mans winner, wearing its orange-and-green Renown livery. That car was retired from competition immediately after the race and has lived at Mazda's Hiroshima headquarters ever since, which is exactly why seeing it run on U.S. soil is a genuine event and not just another heritage-fleet appearance.

The win itself remains a statistical freak. As of today, chassis 002 is still the only car to win Le Mans outright without a conventional piston engine, and it was the first overall victory by a Japanese manufacturer—Toyota wouldn't manage the same until 2018. The winning car covered 362 laps and 4,932.2 km, both records for the reconfigured Circuit de la Sarthe at the time.

The engine is the whole story—and the reason it's so loud

Under the bodywork sits the R26B, a 2.6-liter four-rotor Wankel. If you only know rotaries from a tired RX-8, recalibrate: this is a different animal built on the same operating principle. Instead of pistons pumping up and down, triangular rotors sweep around inside epitrochoidal housings, firing three combustion events per rotor per revolution. Spin four of those to 9,000 rpm and you get an acoustic signature no V8 or V12 can replicate—higher-pitched, more frequent power pulses, and physically painful up close. Contemporary accounts from 1991 describe marshals warning spectators to cover their ears. Mazda has scheduled demonstration laps and live engine fire-ups across all four days at Laguna Seca, so plan accordingly.

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Here's the engineering that separated the 787B from the 787 that flopped a year earlier. Mazda's engineers gave each rotor three spark plugs, fitted ceramic apex seals to fix the reliability weakness that had haunted earlier rotaries, and added a continuously variable intake system with telescoping runners that slid between long and short to keep torque flooding across the rev range—the one thing rotaries are historically bad at. In race trim the R26B made roughly 700 horsepower, with qualifying maps reportedly nudging 900. The whole car weighed only about 830 kg.

But the win wasn't about outright power. Mazda knew it lacked the single-lap pace of the Mercedes and Jaguar entries—the fastest 787B qualified well down the order. So the team optimized for fuel economy and durability, hired six-time Le Mans winner Jacky Ickx as a consultant, and drilled its drivers to run fast on the straights while feathering the throttle through slow corners to hit fuel targets. Over 24 hours and 28 pit stops, the winning car needed only fuel, tires, one oil top-up, a brake change, a nose swap, and a precautionary wheel-bearing change. The favorites broke or got penalized. Consistency won.

One detail worth filing away: the 787B was the first car to win Le Mans on carbon brakes, a technology now standard at the top of endurance racing.

The "banned for winning" myth, corrected

You'll hear that Mazda's rotary was outlawed because it won. That's backwards. Sports-prototype regulations were already shifting toward 3.5-liter naturally aspirated engines aligned with Formula 1, and 1991 was set as the last season rotaries could run. Mazda committed to its Wankel precisely because it was the swan song. The 787B won under a rule set that was already sunsetting its engine—the timing just made it look like retaliation. Rotaries were gone from the championship for 1992, which is a big part of why this car carries the weight it does.

The supporting cast and the practical takeaway

The 787B anchors a broader Mazda display spanning six decades: the 1967 Cosmo Sport that kicked off the rotary road-car era, the 1989 767B-002, the 1990 787-002, a 1991 RX-7 GTO, the 1992 RX-792P, and the 2019 RT24-P prototype. On the driver side, Japanese endurance icon Yojiro Terada is slated to pilot the 787B during Friday and Saturday's Japanese Cars Exhibition Sessions, with Tristan Nunez and Tom Long handling the 767B and 787 in Group C running, and IMSA veteran Tommy Kendall appearing with his own championship-winning RX-7.

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Two more things for anyone planning the trip. Both the 787 and 787B are also slated for the Pebble Beach Concours lawn on August 16 in a Japanese Motorsports class—a notable milestone, since a concours long defined by prewar European coachwork inviting a screaming rotary prototype tells you Japanese racing machinery has fully crossed into blue-chip collector territory. And if you can't get to California, Mazda points to a livestream on the track's Facebook and YouTube channels. But understand what you'd be missing: the 787B's entire appeal is a thing microphones have never fully captured. This is a car you feel in your sternum. Go stand next to it.

Images Via: Mazda

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There's a specific breed of collector car that makes modern hypercar owners a little nervous: the analog monster with more power than sense, no traction electronics worth mentioning, and a clutch pedal that doubles as a leg workout. The Lamborghini Diablo GT is the patron saint of that club, and one of the 80 built is about to sell to the highest bidder—no safety net.

The car is heading to Bonhams for the auction house's first-ever sale at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca on Thursday, August 13. Bonhams has it listed without reserve, which on a seven-figure Lamborghini is the kind of detail that makes bidders sit up straight. No reserve means it sells, full stop, whether that's a bargain or a record.

Why the GT is the one enthusiasts actually chase

The Diablo carries some heavy history on its shoulders. It was the first production Lamborghini to break 200 mph, and the later VT variant made the marque's first foray into all-wheel drive. The GT threw that AWD hardware in the bin. Sending everything to the rear axle shaved weight and, more to the point, kept the driving experience honest.

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Mechanically, this is where the Diablo stopped being a fast grand tourer and became a homologation-flavored weapon. Lamborghini took the familiar 5.7-liter V12 and stroked it out to a full 6.0 liters—the first Diablo road car to run anything other than the 5.7. That extra displacement, paired with titanium connecting rods, a lightened crankshaft, a magnesium intake manifold, and twelve individual throttle bodies (one hungry mouth per cylinder), lifted output to 575 metric horsepower—567 hp in the way Americans count it—and 465 lb-ft of torque, routed through a five-speed manual. Top speed landed around 215 mph. The same 6.0-liter engine later migrated into the tamer VT 6.0, but the GT got it first and got it angriest.

Here's a detail most people miss: the GT offered an optional rear-view camera feeding a center-console screen that doubled as GPS navigation. In 1999. Long before backup cameras became a federal mandate, a stripped-out Italian track toy had one on the options sheet. The car crossing the block at Laguna Seca has it fitted.

The specific car—and what a buyer should scrutinize

This is number 74 of the run, wearing a glossy Black Rage exterior over Nero leather with racing harnesses bolted to the sport seats. Bonhams reports roughly 8,800 miles (about 14,208 km), one owner since 2007, and maintenance by a marque specialist. Notably, the clutch was already replaced at just over 12,000 km, and it comes with the factory tan leather briefcase, tool kit, owner's manual, service records, and the key with remote.

That clutch note matters more than it looks. These mid-engine V12 Lambos use a single dry-plate clutch, and replacing it is not a Saturday-afternoon job—the engine comes out. A documented clutch already done is money you don't have to spend, and parts scarcity on an 80-car production run means any future work goes through specialists at specialist prices. Anyone bidding should budget for agreed-value collector insurance too; at this valuation, standard policies won't cut it, and mileage-limited agreed-value coverage is the norm.

The market case, and the regulatory footnote

Diablo values have been climbing hard, and the GT sits at the very top of the family tree. For a sense of the ceiling: a Diablo GT sold for $1,435,000 at RM Sotheby's in Monterey in August 2025—and that one wasn't even in showroom condition. A cleaner, lower-mileage, one-owner example offered with no reserve could push past that, or hand someone a genuine steal if the room goes quiet. That's the gamble a no-reserve listing bakes in.

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One more wrinkle worth understanding, especially for overseas bidders. The GT was never federalized for U.S. sale when new; only a handful ever made it stateside. But under NHTSA's 25-year rule, any vehicle at least 25 years old (measured from its build date) is exempt from Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, with the EPA's separate 21-year threshold already cleared by then. A car built in 2000 became freely importable on January 1, 2025. This particular example already carries a U.S. title, so it sidesteps the paperwork entirely—but the rule change is why the global buyer pool for these cars just got a lot bigger, and why prices have followed.

The practical takeaway: if you want a Lamborghini V12 that still talks back, drives the rear wheels only, and predates the electronic nannies, the Diablo GT is roughly as pure as it gets before Audi's engineers civilized the brand. Eighty exist. This one's selling to whoever wants it most.

Images Via: Bonhams cars

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Few nameplates carry the mystique of the 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429. Born from Ford's need to homologate its 429ci semi-hemispherical "shotgun" engine for NASCAR competition, the Boss 429 was never really about the Mustang at all — it was about getting that monster motor onto the track. Only 1,359 were ever built across 1969 and 1970, with roughly 850 produced for the 1969 model year alone. That rarity, combined with the car's outsized presence and racing pedigree, has made the Boss 429 one of the most coveted muscle cars in existence.

Two exceptional examples are heading to GAA Classic Cars' July 2026 auction, and together they tell two very different sides of the Boss 429 story. One is a meticulously restored Wimbledon White fastback; the other is an unrestored Black Jade survivor with a remarkable history. Here's a closer look at both.

The White Car: A Concours-Grade Restoration

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Finished in factory-correct Wimbledon White (paint code 1619-A) over a black Clarion knit vinyl interior, this 1969 Boss 429 (VIN 9F02Z150461) represents the show-quality end of the spectrum. Built at Ford's Dearborn plant and originally sold through Jerry Alderman Ford Sales of Indianapolis, Indiana, it received a concours-grade restoration by respected specialist Drew Alcazar between 2017 and 2018, and has been part of a large private collection for many years.

Under the hood sits the numbers-matching S-Code 429-4V Boss V8, rated at 375 horsepower and fed by a four-barrel Holley 735-CFM carburetor atop an aluminum intake manifold. Power runs through a close-ratio four-speed manual transmission and a Traction-Lok limited-slip differential. The car is fully equipped with power front disc brakes, power steering, and competition suspension.

Period-correct details abound: chrome 15-inch Magnum 500 wheels wrapped in Goodyear Polyglas GT tires, an optional front air spoiler, color-keyed racing mirrors, the Visibility Group package, the Interior Décor Group-Deluxe with woodgrain trim, hi-back bucket seats, an AM radio, a console, and a trunk-mounted period-correct Autolite battery. The documentation package is equally impressive, including the original window sticker, build sheet, original manuals, a Deluxe Marti Report, restoration photos, historical documentation, original seat covers, and the spare tire.

The Black Jade Car: An Unrestored Survivor

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If the white car celebrates the restorer's art, this Black Jade example (VIN 9F02Z164772, KK# 1502) celebrates originality. A never-restored survivor showing 11,432 miles — believed by the owner to be correct — it wears its original Black Jade paint over original black bucket seats, and rolls on original Magnum 500 wheels shod with Goodyear Polyglas tires. It retains its matching-numbers 429 S-Code engine and matching-numbers four-speed transmission, backed by a 3.91 Trac-loc rear axle.

The car's history adds another layer of intrigue. It was sold new from Phil Fitts Ford, Inc. in New Castle, Pennsylvania, and remained with a single owner until 2013. It was later owned by Peter Klutt of Legendary Motorcar, and it earned the Peter Brock Award at the Muscle Car & Corvette Nationals (MCACN) — a fitting honor, given that Brock was Carroll Shelby's first employee and the designer of the Cobra Daytona Coupe.

Prospective buyers should note the title history: per the NMVTIS report, "Classic" and "Exceeds Mechanical Limits" brands were applied on the Pennsylvania title, and the current Maryland title carries a branded Code B, Exceeds Mechanical Limits. The car comes with a Marti Report, dealer invoice, and original owner's manual.

Restored vs. Original: Two Roads to the Same Legend

These two Boss 429s frame one of the enduring debates in the collector-car world. The Wimbledon White fastback offers the reassurance of a documented, concours-grade restoration by a known specialist, presenting exactly as Ford intended when the car left Dearborn. The Black Jade coupe offers something that can never be recreated: genuine, unrestored originality, complete with a compelling ownership chain and a prestigious show award, tempered by the practical realities of its branded title.

Whether a buyer values the flawless finish of a professional restoration or the untouchable authenticity of a survivor, both cars deliver the raw, homologation-special appeal that makes the Boss 429 a cornerstone of any serious muscle car collection. Both are scheduled to cross the block on Saturday at GAA Classic Cars' July 2026 auction.

This classic is selling at the GAA Classic Car Auction on July 23-25. Join us at The Palace and bid on over 400 classic and collector vehicles. Visit our website to register to bid, consign your vehicle and to see all consignments.

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GAA Classic Cars is preparing for its next marquee sale, running July 23 through 25 inside its eight-acre, climate-controlled facility known as "The Palace." Rather than pitching a temporary tent like traveling auction outfits, GAA hosts its sales in the same permanent Greensboro venue year-round, letting consignors park their vehicles weeks ahead of the block while giving bidders a slick, digital-first way to participate. The recurring event typically moves more than 750 vehicles and upward of $20 million in sales across a single weekend.

Topping the July docket is a pair of numbers-matching 1969 Ford Mustang Boss 429 S-Code cars, each valued north of $500,000. Built to homologate Ford's "semi-hemi" big-block V8 for NASCAR, the Boss 429 required Kar Kraft to hand-widen the Mustang's engine bay to fit the motor. Bidders will choose between examples finished in Wimbledon White and Black Jade.

"Our inventory is growing dynamically every day, and this lineup is frankly spectacular," said Kristen Harlow, marketing manager for GAA Classic Cars. "Whether you want a museum-grade supercar with delivery miles, a piece of music history, or a wild custom build that will stop traffic anywhere on Earth, this auction delivers the absolute wow factor."

Also crossing the block:

• A 2006 Ford GT showing just 18 original miles
• A 1958 Nash Metropolitan formerly owned by Jimmy Buffett
• A custom rocket replica mounted on a 1985 International Harvester truck, selling with no reserve
• A collection of more than 50 Corvettes, including a consecutive run of model years from 1958 to 1967
• A 1966 Ford GT40 MKII tribute build
• A 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS LS6
• A quartet of Mopar muscle: a 1970 Dodge Challenger T/A, 1970 Plymouth Barracuda, 1970 Dodge Charger R/T, and 1971 Dodge Charger R/T

Gates open at 8 a.m. ET each day, with memorabilia crossing the block at 9 a.m. and vehicles following at 9:30 a.m. Bidding is available in person, by phone, and online, and the full auction streams live on YouTube. Fans can also catch exclusive interviews and highlights on the Racer Network's live broadcast, airing Friday from 1-4 p.m. ET and Saturday from noon-3 p.m. ET.

The auction runs July 23-25 at 301 Norwalk St. in Greensboro, N.C. More information is available at GAAClassicCars.com.

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Every so often a truck comes along that manages to blend rugged capability with genuine collector appeal, and this stunning 3k-mile 2009 Ford F-250 Super Duty Lariat Harley-Davidson Crew Cab is exactly that kind of standout. Now offered at no reserve, it represents a rare opportunity to own a factory-collaboration pickup that has been beautifully preserved and lovingly cared for by a single California family.

A Head-Turning Harley-Davidson Collaboration

Finished in gorgeous Black Clearcoat with striking Vista Blue flame accents, this F-250 wears the coveted Harley-Davidson Alliance Package with real presence. The package adds illuminated running boards, revised headlights, handsome Harley-Davidson badging, and a set of eye-catching 20-inch Harley-Davidson wheels wrapped in Goodyear tires. A console badge proudly denotes this example as number 127 in the series for the model year, and a fresh ceramic coating helps that deep black paint shine. You can explore all of the exterior details in the full no-reserve listing here.

Just 3,000 Miles From New

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this truck is its incredibly low mileage. With only 3k miles showing on the digital odometer, this is about as close to new as a 2009 model can possibly be. Driven sparingly by a single family, it has clearly been treasured rather than worked hard, and it comes backed by a clean Carfax report showing no accidents or damage along with a clean California title.

A Luxurious, Beautifully Trimmed Cabin

Step inside and the Harley-Davidson theme continues in style. The heated, power-adjustable front seats are trimmed in rich Ebony leather with Bar and Shield logos embroidered on the backrests, matched by the folding rear bench. Thoughtful factory options include a sunroof, navigation, a rearview camera, power-adjustable pedals, cruise control, and Harley-Davidson-branded instrumentation framed by a leather-wrapped steering wheel. It is a genuinely comfortable and upscale place to spend time.

Serious V10 Capability

Under the hood lives Ford's mighty 6.8-liter Triton V10, factory rated at a healthy 362 horsepower and 457 lb-ft of torque, with a fresh oil change completed in preparation for the sale. Power flows through a five-speed automatic transmission and an electronic shift-on-the-fly dual-range transfer case, and a 4.10:1 limited-slip rear differential ensures this Super Duty is ready for towing and true four-wheel-drive adventures whenever duty calls.

Thoughtfully Equipped and Well Documented

Beyond the standout styling, this F-250 is loaded with genuinely useful equipment: a Harley-Davidson drop-in bedliner, a BakFlip folding tonneau cover, a power sliding rear window, PowerScope trailer tow mirrors, UnderCover Swing Case bed storage boxes, a receiver hitch, and a versatile tailgate with an integrated step, ladder, and grab bar. Original with the truck are its window sticker (listing an MSRP of $53,615), the owner's manual, and comprehensive service records, and it most recently passed a California emissions test in April 2026.

A No-Reserve Opportunity Not to Be Missed

Combining head-turning looks, exceptional preservation, and everyday Super Duty capability, this Harley-Davidson-edition F-250 is a wonderfully special find. Best of all, it is being sold at no reserve, meaning it will absolutely sell to the highest bidder. Don't let this one get away, place your bid and view the full gallery on the Bring a Trailer no-reserve auction listing.

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Few automobiles capture the confidence and craftsmanship of America's classic era quite like the Packard Twelve, and this 1935 Packard Twelve Series 1208 seven-passenger sedan is a spectacular example of the marque at the height of its powers. Presented in a deep, elegant dark blue over refined gray cloth, it is exactly the kind of stately, hand-built machine that made Packard the standard against which every other luxury car of the 1930s was measured.

A True Twelve-Cylinder Flagship

At the heart of this Packard sits its magnificent 473ci L-head V12, a beautifully engineered powerplant rated at 175 horsepower when new and famous for delivering its abundant torque with almost silent smoothness. Paired with a three-speed manual gearbox and a vacuum-assisted clutch, it endows the big sedan with the effortless, waftable character that Twelve owners have always cherished. This was the top of the Packard range, and it still feels every bit the flagship today.

Coachbuilt Elegance, Beautifully Presented

Riding on the long 144-inch wheelbase in style 834 seven-passenger sedan coachwork, this Packard is the picture of pre-war grandeur. Wonderful details abound, from the counterweighted bumpers and thermostatically controlled radiator shutters to the rear-hinged rear doors and the fold-down luggage rack. The 17-inch chrome wire wheels, dressed in whitewall tires and topped with Packard Twelve hubcaps, complete a look that is both imposing and genuinely graceful. It is a car that rewards a long, admiring walk-around.

A Coach-Class Cabin Built for Seven

Step inside and the appeal only deepens. The cabin is trimmed in tasteful gray cloth across the front and rear benches, with fold-out jump seats that give the sedan genuine seven-passenger versatility. Handsome wood window trim, a painted woodgrain dashboard, dual gloveboxes, and thoughtful rear-compartment touches such as a robe rope, footrest, and fold-down armrest speak to the pampered travel Packard buyers expected. A bright instrument panel with a 120-mph speedometer and full complement of gauges sits ahead of the three-spoke wheel, ready for the road.

A Wonderful Opportunity for the Classic Collector

Delivered new in 1934 and treated to a refurbishment in earlier ownership, this Twelve has been enjoyed and maintained with care, including a fresh water pump and battery fitted in preparation for sale. For the collector who appreciates the golden age of American luxury, a Packard Twelve seven-passenger sedan represents one of the most rewarding and dignified classics money can buy. This is a genuinely lovely example, and it deserves a close look.

You can view the full gallery, complete specifications, and place your interest through the official listing here: 1935 Packard Twelve Series 1208 Seven-Passenger Sedan on Bring a Trailer.

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The clock is running out, and this is one you do not want to watch from the sidelines. The Super Mopar Dream Giveaway is heading into its final days, with entries closing on July 9. On the line is what may be the most exclusive pair of Mopars ever offered in a single giveaway: a matched set of B5 Blue muscle machines, one from the golden age and one from the modern 1,000-horsepower era.

WIN HERE

Grand Prize #1 is a 1970 Plymouth 'Cuda 340 Convertible finished in B5 Blue Fire Metallic with a black top and black interior. Documented as a 1-of-1 factory build, it pairs a 340ci V-8 with a Torqueflite automatic and a factory Shaker hood that is extraordinarily rare on a 340 convertible. It even carries pedigree from the famed Lingenfelter Collection. Simply put, there is only one, and this is it.

Grand Prize #2 is a 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170, the most powerful production muscle car ever built, packing a supercharged 6.2L H.O. V-8 rated above 1,000 horsepower. This one is a 1-of-10 example in B5 Blue with a full cloth interior, a satin black hood graphic, and a matching trunk dress kit, deliberately styled to echo the vintage 'Cuda. Most Demon 170s vanished straight into private collections, which makes this configuration a genuine modern unicorn.

The value goes well beyond the sheet metal. Dream Giveaway will cover $64,000 in federal prize taxes on the winner's behalf, and there is a bonus one-day session at the Radford Racing School to help you make the most of all that horsepower. Prefer cash? Winners can opt for a $150,000 alternative prize instead.

WIN HERE

Here is the best part for our readers: Modern Car Collector fans get more chances to win. Use promotion code MCC5 when you enter and your bonus tickets stack up fast, giving you far better odds of parking both of these B5 Blue legends in your own garage.

Every entry also supports a good cause, benefiting charity through the program's nonprofit sponsor, and there is always a free entry method available. But do not wait, because once the countdown hits zero on July 9, this once-in-a-lifetime pairing is gone for good. Enter now, add your bonus tickets, and give yourself a shot at Mopar history.

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Think a real collector car has to cost six figures? Not necessarily. We combed current classified listings on ClassicCars.com and Hemmings to round up eight genuinely interesting cars, from a one-of-one art car to a numbers-matching Corvette, all priced at $20,000 or less. Prices reflect current asking prices at the time of writing and are subject to change or negotiation.

1. 1957 Ford Thunderbird — Plainview, Texas

Dad bought this Thunderbird back in 1986, and the family has enjoyed it ever since. Somewhere along the way it picked up a 440ci Chrysler V8 backed by a four-speed manual, in place of its original small-block — an unusual but interesting swap for a first-generation "Baby Bird." The seller reports no leaks, working gauges, and functional power windows, with the original hubcaps included in the trunk.

Asking price: $20,000 (OBO)

View the listing on ClassicCars.com

2. 1976 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray — Carsonville, Michigan

This numbers-matching C3 has been with two owners since new and remains remarkably original, right down to its factory radio and spare tire lock. The seller reports 101,000 miles, a leak-free engine and transmission, and minimal surface rust on the frame — a clean foundation whether you drive it as-is or use it as a base for a full restoration.

Asking price: $20,000

View the listing on ClassicCars.com

3. 1967 Pontiac Grand Prix Convertible — Vista, California

This Grand Prix convertible spent most of its life on the East Coast before making its way to California. It's largely original, with a few tasteful upgrades including dual exhaust and electric ignition. There's some damage to the convertible top from a fallen palm frond, but otherwise it presents as a solid, driver-quality example of GM's personal luxury coupe.

Asking price: $20,000 (OBO)

View the listing on ClassicCars.com

4. 1963 Chevrolet C10 "Surf Truck" — Carlsbad, California

This yellow C10 has been a fixture at Southern California surf spots for decades, complete with a bamboo palapa rack over the bed. The seller says it's appeared in films and magazines and served as the official truck of a local surf club. It's got "surf soul" — a rebuilt 350 V8, a floor-mounted shifter, and just enough patina to prove it's been driven and loved, not garaged.

Asking price: $20,000 (OBO)

View the listing on ClassicCars.com

5. 1975 Volkswagen Beetle "Psychedelic VW" Art Car — Fort Lauderdale, Florida

This is more than a car — it's a rolling piece of art. The one-of-one wrap was created by Laurence Gartel, a pioneer of the digital art movement, and the car was featured at the 2013 New York International Auto Show. Mechanically it's been refreshed with new push rods, valve springs, piston rings, brakes, and tires, with the original fuel injection swapped for a carburetor. It's a genuine showstopper that's easy to drive and impossible to miss.

Asking price: $20,000

View the listing on ClassicCars.com

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Broad Arrow has been climbing the auction-house ladder at an almost suspicious pace since it opened its doors in 2021, and its next move is the kind of thing that reshuffles Monterey Car Week's pecking order. The Hagerty-owned house is now the official auction partner of The Quail, A Motorsports Gathering, and its inaugural sale under that banner runs August 13–14, 2026 at the Quail Golf Club in Carmel Valley, with the Friday session timed to the 23rd running of the event itself. Roughly 175 cars are expected.

Worth pausing on the corporate picture before we get to the metal, because it's the more interesting story for anyone who thinks about this market seriously. Hagerty (NYSE: HGTY) is a publicly traded company that insures collector cars, publishes the valuation data much of the hobby leans on, and owns the auction house selling the cars. That's an unusually vertically integrated stack for one business, and landing The Quail slot after four years at the Monterey Jet Center gives that stack a front-row seat at arguably the most curated event of the week. Keep that in mind when you read any valuation guidance: the house setting estimates is corporately related to the outfit publishing the price guide.

Now, the cars, and what the early consignment list actually tells you about where money is moving.

JDM has fully crashed the blue-chip party

The clearest market signal here is a 1996 Nissan NISMO 400R wearing an $800,000–$950,000 estimate. Sit with that number. NISMO built just 44 of these to celebrate the R33 GT-R's Le Mans campaign, and the 400R swapped the standard RB26 for the stroked, 2.8-liter RBX-GT2 straight-six making 400 horsepower. A decade ago the idea of a nineties Nissan approaching seven figures would've gotten you laughed out of the room. This one, freshly imported after roughly thirty years in Japan, is priced like the modern classic it has become. If you want proof that the buyers who grew up on Gran Turismo now have real money, it's this lot.

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That same modern-collectible energy runs through a 2005 Acura NSX in New Formula Red, one of 20 in that color with the six-speed manual, and a 2016 Dodge Viper GTC packing the 8.4-liter, 645-horsepower V10 with a proper manual, both offered without reserve. That "without reserve" tag matters and buyers should understand it: no-reserve means the car sells to the highest bid, full stop, with no secret floor price the seller can hide behind. Houses love it because it guarantees a sale and tends to whip up livelier bidding; sellers accept it when the market's liquid enough that they trust the room. For a bidder, a no-reserve modern classic is where you can occasionally steal something, or get caught in a bidding-war fever and overpay. Know which one you're doing.

Delivery-mileage supercars: art you're afraid to drive

The headline modern piece is a single-owner 2020 Lamborghini Sián FKP 37 at $2.5–3 million, one of 63, with 284 miles on it. The Sián is historically notable as Lamborghini's first hybrid, but the clever bit is how it hybridized: instead of a heavy lithium battery, it uses a supercapacitor paired with a 48-volt motor for a small electric boost, combining with the 6.5-liter V12 for 808 horsepower. Supercapacitors charge and discharge far faster than batteries and shrug off heat cycling better, which suits a car meant for short, violent bursts. The name, for the trivia drawer, honors Ferdinand Karl Piëch, born 1937.

Here's the practical wrinkle nobody at the podium will dwell on: a 284-mile hypercar has been sitting, and cars like this hate sitting. Fluids degrade, seals dry, fuel goes stale, and exotic hybrid electronics don't love long dormancy. Whoever buys it is paying a premium precisely for the mileage it doesn't have, then inheriting a recommissioning question the moment they want to actually use it. That's the paradox of the delivery-mileage market in one lot.

The same "wild modern" bin holds a 2023 Ford Bronco DR, one of 50 Baja racers Ford Performance had Multimatic build, with 19 miles and a livery nodding to the Big Oly Bronco that Parnelli Jones bludgeoned to back-to-back Baja 1000 wins in the early seventies. It's a turn-key desert truck with no title for the street, which is its own ownership consideration.

The Porsche and Singer contingent

Air-cooled obsessives get a 1990 911 Reimagined by Singer, the "Los Angeles Commission," at $1.1–1.3 million, with its Ed Pink–built 4.0-liter flat-six, and a genuinely special 1996 911 Turbo from the 993 generation in Paint to Sample Violet Blue, offered without reserve and recently gone through by RUF at Pfaffenhausen. Two teaching notes: Paint to Sample and Exclusive-department orders carry a documented premium because they're factory-bespoke and hard to replicate, and RUF isn't a tuner in the strip-mall sense but a recognized manufacturer in its own right, so that service history reads as provenance rather than modification.

Where the real money and history live

The seven-figure serious end leans on motorsport paper, because at this level provenance and event eligibility are the value. A 1954 Maserati A6GCS ($2.4–2.9 million) is a factory Works car raced by Luigi Musso, campaigned for decades at the Mille Miglia Storica and Monterey Historics, and documented by the Maserati authorities collectors actually trust. A 1981 Porsche 924 Carrera GTR ($600–800k) is a Brumos-run, Le Mans class-winning transaxle racer, one of 17. And a 1951 Porsche-Sauter 356 ($1.8–2.2 million) is being sold as a connective-tissue car between Porsche No. 1 and the America Roadster. The recurring phrase across these catalog entries, eligibility for the premier historic events, is doing quiet financial work: an invitation to the Mille Miglia or Monterey Historics is functionally part of the asset.

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Anchoring the traditional blue chips is a matching-numbers 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing at $1.85–2.2 million. If you're newer to this world, "matching numbers," meaning the original engine, transmission, and major components the car left the factory with, is the single biggest swing factor on a car like this. A Gullwing with its original drivetrain can be worth a substantial multiple of an otherwise identical car running a replacement block, which is exactly why the catalog itemizes every original component down to the spindles.

A couple of practical reminders before anyone raises a paddle. Pre-sale estimates are guidance, not gospel, and the hammer price isn't your final number, buyer's premium gets stacked on top, so read the house's terms before you fall in love. And with a chunk of this catalog offered without reserve, the first Quail sale under Broad Arrow's stewardship should be a real-time readout on whether the modern-collectible surge still has legs, or whether 2026's buyers have started getting picky. Either way, the consignment list is the most honest market report you'll get all week.

Images Via: Nick Zabrecky/Courtesy of Broad Arrow Auctions.

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Bentley's personalization arm, Mulliner, tends to operate in the realm of quiet good taste, the kind of car where the wow factor is a veneer sourced from a single tree or a clock face that took someone a week. So a Design Theme by Mulliner built entirely around a paint job that fades from one side of the car to the other is a genuine left turn for Crewe. This is Bentley being loud on purpose, and it's reserved exclusively for the Supersports.

The headline trick is a lateral color gradient. Instead of the usual front-to-rear fade or a roofline two-tone split, the highlight color sits on the driver's side and washes across the bodywork into a darker shade on the passenger side. There's a single off-center stripe running nose to tail, deliberately lined up with the passenger seat rather than the centerline, plus a number eight on the grille and pinstripe accents on the carbon diffusers, fender blades, and sills. Bentley makes a point that the whole scheme reorients itself depending on drive-hand, so the bright side always lands on whoever's steering. It's asymmetry with a thesis.

Why nobody paints cars this way

Here's the part the press release glosses over: a side-to-side fade is a paint-shop nightmare, and that's exactly why you almost never see one from a factory.

A front-to-back gradient is comparatively civilized because it runs along the length of the car, roughly following panel gaps, and each panel transitions gradually into the next. A lateral fade has to travel across the width of the car, which means the color is changing as it crosses the hood, the roof, the trunk, and both fenders more or less simultaneously. Every one of those is a separate panel, some steel, some aluminum, and on the Supersports a carbon-fiber roof, and each material takes and reflects paint slightly differently. Getting a continuous, believable gradient to read as one uninterrupted sweep across all of them, with no visible banding or step at the shutlines, is painstaking hand work. You're blending wet paint across a moving three-dimensional surface and hoping the eye never catches a seam. This is not something a robot arm bangs out.

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That difficulty is the whole flex. Mulliner is essentially advertising that it can do the thing most shops won't quote you on.

The repair bill nobody mentions at the order desk

If you're the sort of person who actually drives a car like this, factor in what a lateral fade does to bodywork repair. On a normal solid-color Bentley, a scuffed fender means the shop mixes the code, sprays that panel, and blends into the neighbors. Simple.

On a car where the color is different on every horizontal slice of the body, a single damaged panel can't just be shot in "the color," because there isn't one color, there's a specific value at that specific position in the gradient. Match it wrong and the fade develops a visible jog right where the new panel meets the old. In practice, a proper repair may force the shop to re-blend across several adjacent panels to keep the transition smooth, which multiplies labor and paint hours fast. The off-center stripe has to be re-registered to line up perfectly too.

For insurers, this is the kind of car that belongs on an agreed-value policy with a shop that specializes in coachbuilt finishes, because a standard body shop quoting a standard panel respray will get the gradient wrong, and a wrong repair on a bespoke Mulliner car tanks its value. Anyone speccing one of these should go in understanding that the paint is a permanent commitment, not a wrap you peel off when you get bored.

Three themes, and a reason it's on this car

Buyers pick from three curated combinations: Dragon (Dragon Red into Black Crystal, Hotspur and Beluga cabin), Electric (Electric Blue into Dark Sapphire, with Klein Blue against Imperial Blue inside), and Brodgar (Pale Brodgar into Brodgar, with a Camel and Beluga interior). Want something else? That's what Mulliner's commissioning team is for. The two-tone logic carries inside, brighter shades wrapping the driver, darker reserved for the passenger, with Full Leather Specification, a Supersports-specific perforation pattern, and a contrast gear lever matched to the driver's seat.

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The driver-worship isn't just decorative posturing, and this is where it connects to the actual machine. The current Supersports is the most single-minded Continental GT Bentley has ever built: a strict two-seater, sub-two-tonne, and the first road-going Continental to send its 666 PS twin-turbo V8 exclusively to the rear wheels. It's a non-hybrid holdout in a lineup that otherwise went plug-in, and it's capped at 500 individually numbered cars. A livery that literally centers the whole car on the driver's hip point is, for once, a design gimmick that matches the engineering brief underneath it.

The number eight on the grille reads, to me, like a nod to that cross-plane V8, though Bentley leaves you to draw your own conclusion. The Design Theme makes its public debut at the Goodwood Festival of Speed as one of three specially painted Mulliner cars on the stand, diagonally opposite Goodwood House. If you've got a Supersports allocation and a taste for being looked at, this is the box to tick. Just keep the number of your nearest coachbuilding-grade paint shop handy.

Images Via: Bentley

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Bugatti has built its modern reputation on doing absurdly difficult things and then acting like they were easy. The W16 Mistral 'Blanc Éternel' is the latest one-off to come out of Molsheim's Sur Mesure bespoke shop, and it manages to be simultaneously a design flex, an engineering headache, and a farewell card to the engine that defined the company for two decades. It's a lot to hang on one roadster. Somehow it works.

Here's the short version: it's a single W16 Mistral finished in white, wearing a lattice of hand-painted black lines, trimmed with real porcelain, and built in partnership with Berlin's centuries-old Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur, better known as KPM. But the interesting part isn't the "porcelain on a supercar" novelty. It's what those black lines actually are.

You're looking at the car's own blueprint

Modern cars aren't sculpted in clay anymore, and the Mistral never was. Bugatti says the roadster's entire body was developed digitally, its surfaces built from a mesh of mathematically defined patches called NURBS, or Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines. If that sounds like alphabet soup, think of it this way: every smooth curve on a computer-modeled car is actually a quilt of individual surface panels stitched together, each one governed by control points that let designers bend and tension the shape with real precision. Normally that underlying grid is invisible on the finished car. It's the scaffolding you're not supposed to see.

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For 'Blanc Éternel,' Bugatti took that hidden patch layout and painted it onto the outside of the car in black. So the livery isn't decorative in the usual sense. It's the geometric logic of the bodywork made visible, the digital seams that define the Mistral's shape dragged out into daylight. It's a car wearing its own construction diagram, which is either pretentious or brilliant depending on your mood, and I lean brilliant.

There's a lineage here. Fifteen years ago Bugatti and KPM built the Veyron Grand Sport 'L'Or Blanc,' whose flowing blue-on-white lines were inspired by an Enzo Mari porcelain vase and by the "light lines" designers reflect across a body to hunt for surface imperfections. Frank Heyl, now Bugatti's design director, hand-applied those lines himself back then. 'Blanc Éternel' is the sequel, except instead of celebrating reflections it exposes the digital skeleton, which is a neat way of saying "look how much the process has changed in fifteen years."

The painting is where it gets masochistic

Digital origins or not, nothing about the execution is automated. Bugatti finishes the body in white, sands it, then hand-tapes every single black line into position before counter-masking the surrounding area, pulling the original tape to expose the channels, and spraying them black. That's an enormous amount of masking for a livery that has to flow correctly across a compound-curved three-dimensional shape. Tape a line a couple millimeters off across a fender and the whole "surface geometry" conceit falls apart, because the line no longer follows the actual patch edge. This is genuinely fussy work.

The same graphic gets carried inside, hand-painted directly onto white leather, which forced Bugatti to develop a new process entirely, because paint on leather has to survive flexing, UV, body oils, and years of someone climbing in and out without cracking or transferring. That's not a trivial materials problem.

Porcelain that you actually touch

The KPM porcelain isn't just badge jewelry. Yes, it shows up outside on the EB emblem, the fuel and oil caps, and two engine-cover inlays stamped with KPM's royal scepter. But inside, Bugatti made it functional: the gear-shifter shells, the window switches, the speaker cover, kneepad inlays, and the center-console armrest inlay are all real fired porcelain. You operate porcelain every time you select a gear or drop a window.

That's a flex with consequences. Porcelain shrinks roughly 17% as it's fired in the kiln, so every piece has to be modeled oversized with that shrinkage calculated in advance, or it won't fit its mounting point when it comes out. Now put that brittle, precisely-sized ceramic into a roadster with no roof, subject to vibration, thermal cycling, and the occasional slammed door. Getting porcelain to live in that environment without cracking is the actual engineering story here, and it's harder than the horsepower ever was.

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Which raises the practical question nobody in the press release wants to touch: what happens when you chip a porcelain window switch? On a normal car, that's a parts-counter shrug. On a one-of-one collaboration between a hypercar maker and a 260-plus-year-old porcelain house, a replacement means going back to the artisans who fired the original, recalculating the shrinkage, and hoping the color and glaze match. For anyone insuring one of these, this is exactly the kind of car that lives on an agreed-value policy with a specialist underwriter, because there is no book value and no meaningful repair network. The livery has the same problem: a stone chip on the front clip isn't a spot-repair, it's a re-tape-and-respray of a mathematically precise pattern.

Why the name matters

'Blanc Éternel' is doing double duty. It nods to the timeless white of porcelain, but it's also a headstone for the W16. Bugatti is blunt that the Mistral is the final road-going car to carry the quad-turbo 8.0-liter sixteen, the engine the original Veyron used to turn Bugatti from a historical footnote back into the benchmark. The Veyron made the W16 an icon; the Mistral is its last roadster. What comes next in Molsheim is a completely different animal, a hybridized naturally aspirated V16, so this really is the end of the turbocharged-sixteen bloodline rather than marketing sentiment dressed up as an occasion.

For the collector market, that context is the whole ballgame. One-offs from Sur Mesure already occupy the rarefied air where cars are bought as appreciating assets rather than transport, and a documented "last of the W16 lineage" provenance is precisely the sort of story that auction catalogs are built around a couple of decades from now. It's worth noting the original 'L'Or Blanc' it descends from remains a coveted piece for exactly the same reason.

If you want a consolation prize, there's a matching KPM porcelain collection, the To-Drive Cup and the Aviator Cup in two sizes, capped at 1,000 handmade pieces. It is, as far as I can tell, the only part of this project you have any realistic chance of owning. The car itself already belongs to someone with taste, patience, and a frankly heroic tolerance for fragile trim.

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Porsche has never been shy about reminding people that it went racing roughly ten minutes after figuring out how to build a car at all. Now the Porsche Museum in Zuffenhausen is turning that reminder into a full-blown special exhibition, and the framing is refreshingly un-corporate: instead of the usual march-of-time trophy parade, it's built around ideas.

The show is called "Raceborn – 75 Years of Porsche Motorsport," and it runs until 17 January 2027. There are 31 cars spanning 1951 to the present, but the museum made a deliberate choice not to line them up chronologically. Curator Tanja Schleicher says they "deliberately move away from a linear timeline and present motorsport as an identity-defining mindset." In practice, that means the building is threaded with a red ribbon that follows the architecture like a racing line and drops visitors into six thematic zones: racing classes, diversity, innovations, milestones, people, and regulations. porsche

That last one is where "Raceborn" gets genuinely interesting for anyone who actually follows racing rather than just admiring shiny fenders.

The regulations angle is the smart part

Most brand museums treat rulebooks as an inconvenience. Porsche is doing the opposite, arguing that regulations drive engineering forward rather than just boxing it in. There's a whole zone dedicated to it, plus a lenticular installation that literally shifts the image depending on where you stand, to show how the same set of rules pushes different cars toward different solutions.

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They even build out "Balance of Performance" as a concept for visitors. If you're new to it: BoP is the mechanism sanctioning bodies use in GT and prototype racing to equalize wildly different cars, adjusting weight, power via air-restrictors or boost, and fuel capacity so a mid-engine flat-six and a front-engine V8 can theoretically finish on the same lap. It's also one of the most quietly contentious topics in the paddock, because every manufacturer believes it's being sandbagged and says so loudly. Explaining it to the general public is a genuinely useful thing to do, and I'd wager most casual visitors leave understanding motorsport better than a lot of people who watch it on Sundays.

The cars doing the storytelling

The bookends tell you the thesis. The 356 SL represents the origin point: it's the aluminum-bodied, aerodynamically closed version of the early 356, and the works-supported car that scored Porsche's first class victory at the 24 Hours of Le Mans, launching a habit the company never kicked. From there the exhibition jumps straight into the modern spread rather than crawling through the decades. porsche

On the current end you get the 99X Electric, Porsche's Formula E challenger, standing in for how the sport mutates when the technical rulebook changes underneath it. The 963 represents the here-and-now of top-flight endurance racing. Worth knowing if you don't follow prototypes closely: the 963 is an LMDh car, meaning it uses a spec hybrid system and a chassis from an approved constructor, which lets Porsche race essentially the same machine in both IMSA in the States and the World Endurance Championship in Europe, including at Le Mans. It's a cost-control formula dressed up as a spectacle, and it's the reason the grids have gotten deep again.

Then there's the Cayman GT4 e-Performance study, which is Porsche using a race car as a rolling laboratory for electric performance questions it hasn't answered for the street yet. Schleicher's line is that these cars aren't meant as past-versus-future opposites but as each offering its own answer to the demands of its time. porsche

Don't overlook the customer-racing thread

The exhibition leans hard on customer racing, and that's not just sentiment. Cars like the 911 GT3 R and the Cayman GT4 Clubsport exist because selling race cars to private teams is a real, sustained business for Porsche, not a hobby. This is the part of the operation that keeps grids full at club and national level, feeds the one-make Carrera Cup ladder, and, frankly, funds a lot of the fun. The museum treats customer racing as a load-bearing pillar of the brand's identity, which is more honest than most manufacturers are willing to be about where their motorsport money actually comes from.

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For owners and prospective buyers, there's a practical thread buried in here too: the same lightweight-construction and durability engineering the exhibition celebrates is exactly what filters down into the GT3 and GT4 road cars people actually shell out for. The racing isn't marketing garnish; it's the R&D department.

Practical notes if you're going

The opening was stacked with the expected legends, Hans-Joachim Stuck, Walter Röhrl, and two-time-plus Le Mans winners Marc Lieb and Timo Bernhard among them, alongside motorsport boss Thomas Laudenbach. The supporting program includes "Raceborn Kids," an age-appropriate track through the same material for younger visitors, built around genuinely good questions like why weight matters and how a team functions across a 24-hour race.

One caveat for international visitors: the museum runs a series of motorsport talks on five evenings a year, but those are held in German, so plan accordingly if your Deutsch is rusty. The exhibition itself closes 17 January 2027, which gives you a comfortable runway, though if you've ever meant to make the Zuffenhausen pilgrimage, pairing it with the permanent collection and a factory tour is the move.

The through-line here is that Porsche isn't just showing you what it won. It's showing you why the winning happened, which is a rarer and more useful thing.

Images Via: Porsche

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Looking for Ford Mustangs for sale that stand out from the crowd? The used and collector market is packed with them right now, from numbers-matching '60s fastbacks to supercharged modern Shelbys. We combed current listings and live auctions to round up ten of the most interesting Ford Mustangs for sale today, spanning six decades of pony car history. Prices and bids reflect the market at the time of writing and may change as these listings progress.

1. 2007 Ford Mustang Shelby GT500 Super Snake — 2,800 Miles

This Super Snake pairs Shelby American's cooling, handling, and interior upgrades with a Kenne Bell-supercharged 5.4-liter V8 and a six-speed manual, and it shows just 2,800 miles. Finished in Torch Red over black leather with a limited-slip differential, it's one of the lowest-mile Super Snakes to surface in a while. Currently bidding at $58,500 in a no-reserve Bring a Trailer auction.

View the listing on Bring a Trailer

2. 2019 Ford Mustang Bullitt — 870 Miles

Ordered new by its original owner from Mac Haik Ford in Texas, this Bullitt has covered just 870 miles. It pairs the 5.0-liter V8 and six-speed manual with a limited-slip differential, 19-inch Heritage wheels, and the correct Dark Highland Green over Ebony leather look that makes the Bullitt edition so desirable. Currently bidding at $37,500 on Bring a Trailer.

View the listing on Bring a Trailer

3. 2012 Ford Mustang Boss 302 — 6k Miles

Delivered new to Dannemora Ford in New York and sold to its current owner in 2015, this Laguna Seca-worthy Boss 302 now shows just 6,000 miles. It's finished in Race Red with black stripes over Charcoal Black cloth, powered by the naturally aspirated 5.0-liter V8 that made the reborn Boss 302 an instant modern classic. Currently bidding at $25,250 on Bring a Trailer.

View the listing on Bring a Trailer

4. Coyote-Powered 1967 Ford Mustang Convertible

This first-generation convertible was treated to a modern resto-mod build around a Gen II 5.0-liter Coyote crate V8 and a Tremec TKO 600 five-speed manual. Finished in gray with black over-the-top stripes and a GT500E-style body kit, it blends 1960s style with the drivability of a current Mustang GT. Currently bidding at $30,000 on Bring a Trailer.

View the listing on Bring a Trailer

5. 1969 Ford Boss 302 — One of 194 in Wimbledon White

Just 194 Boss 302s left the factory in Wimbledon White, and this Canadian example has been treated to a comprehensive restoration. It retains the Boss 302's high-revving small-block V8, close-ratio four-speed, and functional hood scoop, with correct trim and stripe details throughout. Listed with an asking price of $94,500.

View the listing on Hemmings

6. 1969 Ford Mustang Mach 1 — Original R-Code 428 Cobra Jet

This Mach 1 carries its numbers-matching R-code 428 Cobra Jet V8, a factory rarity that puts it near the top of the Mach 1 hierarchy. The car has picked up show awards following a documented restoration and presents with correct Mach 1 stripe graphics, a shaker-style hood, and factory sport interior appointments. Listed with an asking price of $159,900.

View the listing on Hemmings

7. 1967 Mustang Fastback "Lightning" — 600 HP Custom Build

Nicknamed "Lightning," this one-off fastback build packs roughly 600 horsepower into a classic 1967 shell, blending vintage sheet metal with a thoroughly modern powertrain and chassis upgrades. It's built for drivers who want fastback looks with genuinely quick acceleration, not just a garage queen. Listed with an asking price of $235,995.

View the listing on Hemmings

8. 1967 Ford Mustang GT350 Tribute Restomod — 535 HP Shafiroff V8

This restomod wears classic GT350 livery over a chassis built to handle real power, with a 535-horsepower Shafiroff-built V8 under the hood. It's the kind of build that lets an owner enjoy vintage Shelby style with modern reliability and grip. Listed with an asking price of $109,500.

View the listing on Hemmings

9. 2006 Ford Mustang Saleen Extreme — 1 of 35

Saleen built only 35 examples of the Extreme package on the S197-generation Mustang, and this low-mileage example shows why the package remains a sleeper among enthusiasts. It combines Saleen's aggressive aero and suspension upgrades with the rarity of a limited production run. Listed with an asking price of $64,995.

View the listing on Hemmings

10. 2005 Ford Mustang Roush 427R "STRETCH" — 1 of 1

Billed as a genuine 1-of-1, this Roush 427R "Stretch" build takes the already-rare 427R package and pushes it further into custom territory with a lengthened, highly modified body and chassis. It's the rare kind of Mustang where "one of one" is a literal, not marketing, claim. Listed with an asking price of $69,995.

View the listing on Hemmings

Whether you're after a numbers-matching Boss 302, a documented Cobra Jet Mach 1, or a resto-mod built for back-road speed, these Ford Mustangs for sale show there's something for nearly every taste and budget right now. As always with auctions, bids shown above will keep climbing until each sale closes, so check the individual listings for the latest numbers.

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The restomod market is on fire right now, and a scroll through Bring a Trailer, Cars & Bids, and eBay Motors turns up an incredible range of builds — from six-figure Bronco resurrections to a Hellcat-swapped Road Runner. Here are ten of the coolest restomods currently up for sale, in no particular order.

1. Coyote-Powered 1970 Ford Bronco

Built by Underdog Kustomz over a multi-year process, this early Bronco pairs a replacement steel tub finished in moody Nardo Gray with a 5.0-liter Coyote V8, a six-speed automatic, and a Dana 20 transfer case with front and rear lockers — a bulletproof modern-meets-vintage combo that's made short-wheelbase Broncos the hottest restomod platform going. Bidding is at $75,000 with a few days left.

View listing on Bring a Trailer →

2. 347-Powered 1974 Ford Bronco

Illinois shop Maxlider Brothers built this later, roomier Bronco around a 347ci Blueprint Engines V8, a rebuilt three-speed automatic, and a twin-stick dual-range transfer case feeding Dana 44 and 9-inch axles packed with Yukon gears. Serious hardware, wrapped in clean, classic sheetmetal. Current bid: $60,000.

View listing on Bring a Trailer →

3. Coyote-Powered 1972 Ford Bronco

This '72 wears a Winter Green repaint over a Rawhide leather interior and hides a 5.0-liter Coyote V8 backed by a four-speed automatic and a freshened Dana 20 transfer case. Proof the Bronco restomod craze shows no signs of slowing — it's currently bid to $65,000.

View listing on Bring a Trailer →

4. 6.0L Vortec-Powered 1960 GMC 1000 Fenderside Pickup

Not every restomod starts life as the truck it becomes. This 1960 GMC had its grille, hood, and front sheetmetal reworked to resemble a later Chevy C10, then received a 6.0-liter Vortec V8, a 4L60E automatic, and an Air Lift bagged suspension for a stance-ready daily driver. It's a no-reserve auction currently bid to $29,500.

View listing on Bring a Trailer →

5. 1999 Chevrolet Suburban K2500 LS 4x4

Squarebody-era Suburbans are having a moment, and this GMT400-generation 2500 shows why: the seller reports a top-to-bottom driveline and powerplant refresh plus a solid-axle swap, all wrapped in unmolested original paint. Bidding on Cars & Bids is at $14,014.

View listing on Cars & Bids →

6. 1966 Chevrolet C10

A clean, no-drama entry point into the C10 restomod world — this '66 recently had its mechanicals gone through and now runs a rebuilt 327ci small-block sourced from a Camaro. Currently bid to $5,000 on Cars & Bids.

View listing on Cars & Bids →

7. 1987 BMW 325is Coupe “Schneller M335”

Proof restomods aren't just an American muscle-and-truck game: boutique builder Schneller Performance dropped the 3.5-liter S38 straight-six from an E34 M5 into this E30 325is coupe and backed it with a five-speed manual, creating one of the sharper sleeper builds around. It's bid to $13,000 on Cars & Bids.

View listing on Cars & Bids →

8. 1988 Jeep Grand Wagoneer 505HP V8 Restomod

SoFlo Customs 4x4 gave this woody-paneled icon a 6.4-liter “392” HEMI V8 rated at 505 horsepower, a lift, and a set of aggressive wheels and off-road tires — a full-send take on a family hauler. Listed on eBay as a Buy It Now at $106,000.

View listing on eBay →

9. 1987 Buick Regal Grand National GNX LS3 Restomod

A tribute to Buick's legendary turbocharged GNX, this blacked-out coupe swaps in an LS3 V8 and shows just 1,111 miles, blending '80s icon looks with modern V8 reliability. Listed on eBay at $189,900 or best offer.

View listing on eBay →

10. 1968 Plymouth Road Runner Hellcat Redeye Restomod

The showstopper of the bunch: a 1968 Road Runner finished in a striking violet metallic paint and fitted with a supercharged Hellcat Redeye V8, described by the seller as a no-expense-spared build. Listed on eBay at $299,840 or best offer.

View listing on eBay →

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There may be no more American way to spend the Fourth of July than surrounded by roaring V8s, gleaming muscle cars, and a packed arena erupting as the auctioneer's hammer drops. The collector car auction is a homegrown spectacle — part championship sport, part county fair, part high-stakes theater — and a handful of houses have turned it into a national institution. As you fire up the grill this Independence Day, here are the auctions that best capture the red-white-and-blue spirit of the hobby.

Barrett-Jackson: "The World's Greatest Collector Car Auction"

If any single event embodies the American collector car auction, it's Barrett-Jackson. The company traces its roots to an unlikely friendship: Russ Jackson answered Tom Barrett's ad for a 1933 Cadillac Town Car once owned by movie star Joan Crawford. Jackson never bought the car, but he found a lifelong friend and future business partner. By 1971, the two Arizona car enthusiasts staged their first collector car auction in Scottsdale, seeded with 75 vehicles from their personal collections — and it was covered live on the national weekend news right out of the gate.

More than five decades later, Barrett-Jackson has become a cultural phenomenon staged in Scottsdale, Palm Beach, Las Vegas, and Columbus. It helped pioneer the "No Reserve" format, where every car sells to the highest bidder no matter the price — and in 2005, all 871 vehicles crossed the block with No Reserve for the first time. The theater of it all has drawn crowds well over 100,000 and even a former president: George W. Bush appeared on the block in 2018 to help sell a Corvette for his Military Service Initiative. Speaking of good causes, the company waives all fees on charity cars so that 100% of the hammer price goes to the cause, and it has raised more than $150 million for charity over the years. The 2024 Scottsdale sale set a company record with over 2,000 vehicles and more than $200 million in sales.

Mecum Auctions: The Heartland Powerhouse

Billing itself as the world's largest collector car auction, Mecum is the beating heart of the American muscle car world. Family-run and proudly Midwestern in its roots, Mecum describes itself as "family-run, family-friendly," and its events are staged as genuine live-TV spectacles — burnouts in the parking lot included. Its calendar reads like a road trip across the country, with massive events in Harrisburg, Monterey, Dallas/Fort Worth, and a new inaugural sale at Nashville Superspeedway, some featuring well over a thousand vehicles.

What makes Mecum feel so American is its sheer democratic range. As the company puts it, it caters to "every budget and every individual taste" — from entry-level project cars to investment-grade classics, foreign and domestic. Its flagship Kissimmee auction in Florida is widely regarded as the single largest collector car event on earth, a January institution that draws bidders from every corner of the country. If you want a sense of how strong today's market really is, our look at the two-speed collector car market shows where the money is flowing.

The Blue-Chip and the Grassroots

Beyond the two giants, the American auction landscape is delightfully varied. RM Sotheby's, Gooding & Company, and Bonhams bring white-glove sophistication to the marquee events of Monterey Car Week and Amelia Island, where prewar Duesenbergs and rare Ferraris routinely command seven and eight figures — as when a one-of-a-kind Ferrari Enzo set a record as the most expensive car ever sold online. On the more accessible end, Bring a Trailer has revolutionized the hobby with its online, enthusiast-driven format and hundreds of listings weekly; the platform recently marked its 250,000th auction lot with a rare 1985 Ferrari 288 GTO. Meanwhile, Hemmings and Carlisle keep the grassroots, get-your-hands-dirty spirit of American car culture alive.

Why It Feels So American

The collector car auction is, at its core, a celebration of the same things we toast on the Fourth: freedom, individuality, craftsmanship, and the open road. From a 1966 Shelby Cobra Super Snake that hammered for $5.5 million to a barn-find project someone drives home with a grin, these events prove that the automobile remains one of America's great obsessions. If you're wondering what's crossing the block right now, don't miss our global auction roundup for the July 4th weekend and the story behind Jeremy Clarkson's personal 2006 Ford GT heading to sale. So this Independence Day, whether you're a serious bidder or an armchair enthusiast, raise a glass to the auctioneers, the gearheads, and the machines that make the American dream run on eight cylinders.

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Bugatti's latest one-off is a hypercar wearing its own CAD wireframe, trimmed with porcelain you actually shift gears through. That sentence sounds like a fever dream, but the W16 Mistral "Blanc Éternel" is a real, single-example roadster from Bugatti's Sur Mesure personalization arm, and the story behind it is more interesting than the usual "we painted it a special color" one-off.

Start with the paint job, because it's the cleverest part and everyone will misread it as decoration. Those crisp black lines threading across the white bodywork aren't a random pattern. According to Bugatti, they trace the Mistral's NURBS patch layout—the network of Non-Uniform Rational B-Spline surfaces that designers use to build a car's shape digitally. Every curved panel on a modern car is a quilt of mathematically-defined surface patches stitched together, and the boundaries between those patches are normally invisible on the finished product. Bugatti made them visible. In effect, the car is showing you the engineering scaffolding underneath its own skin. If you've ever heard surface designers talk about "lines of light" or zebra analysis—reflected stripes they use to hunt for imperfections in a surface—this is the same idea turned into art. The earlier L'Or Blanc Veyron from 2011, Bugatti's first collaboration with Berlin porcelain house KPM, used those reflection lines; this one exposes the digital mesh beneath. It's a genuinely smart evolution of the concept rather than a rerun.

And it's paint, not a wrap. Bugatti says the white body was laid down first, then every black line was positioned by hand with tape, counter-masked, and sprayed—the same laborious multi-stage masking repeated on white leather inside, which required developing a new leather-finishing process so the painted lines wouldn't crack or wear. That distinction matters if you care about these things: sprayed-and-masked graphics have depth and durability a vinyl wrap can't touch, and on a car like this they're part of why it's a one-off and not a configurator option.

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Now the porcelain, which is where the skeptic in me perks up. KPM has been firing porcelain since 1763, and here it's not confined to a display cabinet—it's on the EB emblem, the fuel and oil caps, and inlays in the engine cover outside, and inside it forms the speaker cover, kneepad inlays, gear-shifter shells, the center-console armrest, and the window-lifter buttons. In other words, the brittle material lives exactly where your hands go, in a car whose 8.0-liter quad-turbo W16 vibrates and whose performance is violent. The manufacturing detail Bugatti volunteers is the good one: porcelain shrinks roughly 17 percent as it's fired, so every piece has to be modeled substantially oversized to end up the correct dimension after the kiln. Get the math wrong and the part won't seat. KPM's creative director calls refining the material for this use "a remarkable achievement in craftsmanship," and for once the PR line undersells the problem—putting fired porcelain where a driver grabs a gear selector at speed is either mad or magnificent, and Bugatti has decided it's both.

Underneath the artwork sits a standard-issue Mistral, which is to say anything but standard. The official specs list the 7,993cc W16 with four turbochargers running Bugatti's two-stage sequential boost and water-to-air intercooling, making 1,600 PS (1,578 hp) at 7,050 rpm and 1,600 Nm of torque, sent through a seven-speed dual-clutch to all four wheels. Zero to 100 km/h takes 2.4 seconds; the run to 300 km/h is done in a little over 12. Worth knowing if you ever meet one: the customer car's top speed is electronically capped at 420 km/h (273 mph) in Top Speed mode. The famous 453.91 km/h (282 mph) open-top world record set at Papenburg in November 2024 was run by a separate one-off World Record Car on bespoke high-performance tires, with Le Mans winner Andy Wallace driving. That governor isn't Bugatti being timid—it's tire physics. Production rubber has a speed rating, and no manufacturer lets a customer chase a number the tires aren't certified to survive.

The context that makes Blanc Éternel more than a rich person's science project is timing. The Mistral is the final road-going car to use the W16, the engine that launched with the 2005 Veyron. Bugatti's future is the Tourbillon and its new hybrid V16, which means every W16 Mistral is a closing-credits car for a 20-year engine era, and the market treats last-of-the-line hardware accordingly. A one-off within that already sold-out final roadster run is about as scarce as modern collector cars get, and scarcity plus documented uniqueness is exactly what drives the Sur Mesure and one-off segment—the apex of Bugatti's business precisely because no two cars can be compared on price. To ride the collaboration further, KPM is also making a 1,000-piece porcelain set of cups themed to the car, which is the sort of thing that sounds silly until you notice how quickly Bugatti-adjacent collectibles vanish.

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A couple of honest ownership notes. Porcelain isn't paint—you can't buff out a chip. Damage a porcelain window button and you're waiting on KPM to hand-make and re-fire a replacement, kiln shrinkage and all, which is a very different repair conversation than ordering a trim piece. Insure it on an agreed-value basis, because there's no book price for a one-off, and understand that this is a car built to be looked at more than driven hard. One regulatory footnote for the road-legal purists: like every W16 Mistral, it carries a combined CO2 figure of 495 g/km and lands in efficiency class G, the worst rung on the EU scale—an amusingly honest reminder that no amount of porcelain makes a quad-turbo sixteen anything but thirsty.

That's the real appeal here. Blanc Éternel isn't a faster Mistral or a lighter one. It's a farewell letter to an engine, written in the design language that engine was born from, and finished by hand in a material older than the automobile itself. Gimmick or masterpiece depends on your temperament—but it's a smarter object than the porcelain-in-a-hypercar headline suggests.

Images Via: Bugatti Automobiles S.A.S.

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The headline writes itself, so let me spoil the fun first: the famous "race against a plane" wasn't a drag race. It was a 300-mile point-to-point dash across Kenya, car versus twin-engine Douglas DC-3, and it's arguably only the third or fourth most interesting thing about this particular Ferrari. That's how loaded chassis 09261 is. London dealer Fiskens has the silver 1966 275 GTB/4 up for grabs at £2.95 million, a hair under $4 million, and the Eric Clapton line on the ownership card is the part you'll see in every headline and the part that matters least.

Start with what the car actually is, because the "/4" is doing real engineering work. The 275 GTB was already a landmark: Ferrari's first road car with all-independent suspension and a five-speed transaxle mounted at the rear axle for near-even weight distribution, as Fiskens itself notes on other 275s it has sold. The GTB/4, launched in 1966, was the first "production" Ferrari to get the four-cam engine—two overhead camshafts per cylinder bank instead of one, which is where the "four cam" nickname comes from. More cams meant tighter valve control at high rpm and a genuinely racier top end from the 3.3-liter Colombo V12. The four-cam also brought dry-sump lubrication borrowed from competition practice. And by this point in the run, Ferrari had bolted the engine to the transaxle via a rigid torque tube, specifically to kill the noise and vibration that plagued earlier cars whose separate driveshaft and gearbox could drift out of alignment. In other words, the GTB/4 is the sorted, fully-developed version of the shape—the one you actually want to drive across a continent.

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Which brings us back to Kenya. Per the history Fiskens has assembled, the first owner, a businessman named Houry with interests in East Africa, tried a classic bit of tax engineering: take UK delivery, then re-export the car to Kenya as "used" to sidestep a punishing new-car import duty. The factory, apparently not briefed on the scheme, simply shipped it straight to Mombasa and blew the whole plan up. Houry kept it anyway and raced it with the East African Motor Sports Club—early enough, Fiskens reckons, that 09261 may be among the very first 275 GTB/4s ever raced anywhere. In 1968 it passed to his business partner Brian Lees, who bet a DC-3 pilot he could beat the aircraft from Nairobi to Mombasa by road and won, averaging north of 80 mph on barely-paved roads. Do that math and it's a genuinely unhinged thing to attempt in a brand-new V12 Ferrari.

The car's middle years are a comedy of repaints. British illustrator James Allington bought it in the early 1970s, took the entire thing apart to produce one of his famous cutaway drawings, then reassembled it and painted it red to match the artwork. It failed to sell at a Christie's auction in December 2002, and a few months later Clapton bought it and handed it to marque specialist DK Engineering for a year-long restoration back to its original Grigio Argento silver. He sold it in 2005. By 2010 it had reached collector Niall Holden, who secured the one document that genuinely moves the needle—Ferrari Classiche certification confirming the chassis, engine and gearbox are the numbers-matching originals—and then, naturally, repainted it dark blue. Current owner Terence Disdale, the yacht designer behind Roman Abramovich's Eclipse, bought it in January 2022 and spent two years and roughly $250,000 taking it back to silver in a bare-metal respray, plus about $33,000 retrimming the interior. Disdale calls the 275 GTB "the most beautiful car ever designed," which explains the checkbook.

Here's the part worth internalizing if you ever buy at this level: that paint merry-go-round isn't just trivia. Returning a car to its factory-original color and holding Classiche certification are what protect the value, because the collector market pays for originality and documentation above almost everything else. A gorgeous non-original-color car with a murky engine history is worth meaningfully less than a correct one, full stop.

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So is the Clapton name the reason it's nearly $4 million? Not really, and any dealer being straight with you will say so. A right-hand-drive 275 GTB/4 is blue-chip on its own merits—only around 31 of the roughly 300 cars built left Maranello in right-hand drive, and this is a numbers-matching, freshly and expensively restored, factory-color example with a documented racing life and a Classiche book. Clapton owned it briefly, two decades ago, and to his credit paid for a proper restoration. But he's the garnish. The RHD rarity, the fresh money spent, and that thick history file are the actual value. The ask sits at the strong end of where clean four-cams trade, and the premium is the provenance stack, not the guitar.

For a prospective buyer, a few practical notes. The four-cam engine is more complex and more expensive to service than the two-cam—more valve gear, dry-sump plumbing, and belts that need a specialist and a schedule tied to the calendar, not just the odometer. Budget accordingly, and use the established names who know these cars. Insure it on an agreed-value classic policy, because there's no book value on a $4 million one-off history. And whatever you do, don't repaint it. This one has finally, after five decades, ended up the right color.

Images Via: James Brown, courtesy of Fiskens

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Modifying a blue-chip Ferrari is usually a fast way to torch its value. Weld in a roll cage, swap the exhaust, add a splitter the factory never sanctioned, and you've turned a collectible into a used car with a story nobody at the auction house wants to hear. And then there's chassis 84642, a 1990 F40 that got substantially reworked in period and is estimated at £2.7–£3.2 million ($3.65–$4.35 million) precisely because of what was done to it. The difference between those two outcomes is entirely about who held the wrenches and who signed the work order.

The car crosses the block as Lot 136 at RM Sotheby's Woodcote Park sale in Epsom, Surrey, on 8 July 2026. On paper it's a 527-horsepower F40 with roughly 14,105 miles on it. In practice it's one of the more interesting F40s to surface in a while, and the reasons are worth unpacking because they teach you how the top of the collector market actually assigns value.

Start with the name on the logbook. Jean Sage wasn't a wealthy dentist who liked Ferraris. He ran Renault's turbo-era Formula 1 program in the late 1970s and early '80s, then moved to Ferrari France, operating as Charles Pozzi SA, where he ran the F40 IMSA campaign in the United States. This matters because when Sage sent his own F40 to a specialist for modifications in 1994, he was one of the few people on earth who understood exactly what the car could take and where to find the parts. That's the crucial distinction. Most modified exotics get devalued because the changes are somebody's guess. Sage's changes were an insider's blueprint, documented and period-correct.

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The specialist was Michelotto, and that single word is doing most of the heavy lifting on the estimate. Giuliano Michelotto's shop in Padua is the outfit Ferrari sanctioned to build the F40 LM competition cars for Le Mans and the IMSA series—18 of them, all told. When Michelotto touched an F40, it wasn't tuning; it was factory-adjacent race engineering. For chassis 84642, the shop rebuilt the original engine with a pair of I.H.I. special turbochargers and a lightweight exhaust, pushing output to 527 hp, up 49 from stock, and torque to a genuinely absurd 626 lb-ft—a 200 lb-ft jump over the factory figure. Then came the weight loss: lightweight front and rear clamshells and sliding windows shed 30 kg, the air conditioning came out, and F40 LM-style carbon-fiber buckets went in. Total savings came to 136 kg, which, as the build documentation points out, left this car both lighter and more powerful than either a standard F40 or an F50.

The listing describes the car as "non-cat, non-adjust," and if you don't speak F40, here's why that phrase adds money. Later F40s got catalytic converters for tightening emissions rules, which choked the engine's breathing, and an optional self-leveling adjustable suspension so owners could clear steep driveways. That hydraulic ride-height system was heavier, more complex, and notoriously troublesome. A car built without either is the leaner, sharper, purer specification collectors chase—so Sage started with the version enthusiasts already prize, then had Michelotto sharpen it further.

Did it work? In March 1995 the car ran official qualifying for the BPR Global Endurance round at Paul Ricard, up against four McLaren F1 GTRs, posted the quickest time in its GT4 class, and landed within six seconds of a full-house F40 LM. For something still registered for the road, that's a serious result.

Now the skeptic's paragraph, because a buyer at this level needs one. The car isn't in exactly the trim Michelotto delivered. When it was imported into the UK and sold to its second owner in 1996, the Maurice Chabord exhaust and the roller-bearing turbos were pulled to make it more streetable, and it currently wears a Tubi exhaust. The air conditioning Michelotto removed is still gone. Anyone hoping to return the car to full 1994 competition specification would need to source those original pieces, so factor that into the fantasy. What survives, and what the auction house leans on, is the matching-numbers engine and gearbox plus the carbon buckets, Koni adjustables, F40 LM braking setup, twin-master-cylinder pedal box, and US-spec splitter.

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There's a maintenance lesson buried in the service history, too. In October 2025 the car received new aluminum fuel tanks from Maranello Classic Parts at a cost of £37,000. That's not a typo. F40 fuel cells are a known, expensive perishable—the rubber bladders age out whether you drive the car or not—and replacing them is one of the ownership costs nobody mentions in the brochure. The February 2025 service also covered new cambelts, which on any older Ferrari V8 are an interval item tied to the calendar, not the odometer, because the rubber degrades with time. Translation: an F40 is not a car you park and forget.

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As for the money, the estimate sits above where a clean standard non-cat F40 typically trades, and the premium is the provenance stack: a motorsport-insider owner, a Ferrari-sanctioned builder, matching numbers, and a fat documentation folio including a Marcel Massini history report and the original Schedoni leather book. The market has been rewarding "story cars" over plain examples for years now, and this is about as strong a story as an F40 can carry without becoming a full LM—which trades in another postcode entirely. Whether it lands mid-estimate or blows through the top depends on how many bidders in the room value the Michelotto name the way Maranello once did.

For the eventual buyer, the practical takeaway is simple: this is a documented, sorted, recently serviced car with a paper trail that justifies the ask—but budget for the ongoing F40 tax, and decide before the hammer whether you're buying it to preserve as-is or to chase the original Michelotto spec. Those are very different, and very expensive, ambitions.

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The exotic-car landscape of the Carolinas just got rearranged, and it happened with a handshake instead of a bidding war. Charlotte's own Hendrick Automotive Group — the largest privately held auto retailer in the United States — has acquired Foreign Cars Italia, the Ferrari-anchored luxury operation that Benny Yount's Paramount Automotive has run for years. Terms weren't disclosed, which is standard for deals like this, but the shape of it is clear enough.

The purchase brings eight franchises across two cities under the Hendrick umbrella. The Charlotte store on Tyvola Road carries Ferrari, Alfa Romeo, Aston Martin, Bentley, and Maserati; the Greensboro location adds Ferrari, Maserati, and Porsche. For Hendrick, that means five nameplates it had never held before, plus a third Porsche franchise to go with the two it already operated. Yount's Paramount group keeps its stores in Asheville, Hickory, and Valdese and walks away from the exotic business entirely.

Here's the part that matters if you actually care about the cars. Foreign Cars Italia has been the exclusive Ferrari retailer for both North and South Carolina since 1993, serving a combined market north of 16 million people. Ferrari doesn't hand out franchises like Honda does. The company deliberately starves its dealer network to protect scarcity and brand control, which means a Ferrari store almost never changes hands — and when it does, the manufacturer has to bless the transfer. Every one of these franchise agreements gives the OEM approval rights over a sale, and Ferrari's are among the most restrictive in the business. So while the press release makes this look like a tidy signing, the deal only closed because Maranello, Stuttgart, Crewe, and the rest signed off on Hendrick as the new steward.

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If you own one of these cars, or you're chasing one, the practical questions come down to service and allocations. Your factory warranty is backed by the manufacturer, not the dealer, so a change in ownership doesn't touch your coverage — the warranty follows the car, not the sign out front. What does live at the dealer is everything that makes exotic ownership work: factory-trained technicians, brand-specific diagnostic equipment, Ferrari Genuine parts, and Ferrari Classiche certification for older cars. A well-capitalized owner can pour money into technician training and facilities, which is generally good news for the service bay. The more delicate issue is allocations. Ferrari controls who gets to buy its limited models, and those decisions run through the authorized dealer based on your ownership history and relationship. Anyone who spent years building standing at Foreign Cars Italia to earn a shot at a special-series car will want to confirm that history carries forward. It usually does, since Ferrari — not the dealer — ultimately holds the allocation, but this is the moment to ask rather than assume.

There's also a quieter reason this deal is notable: it landed cleanly. Because Hendrick held no Ferrari franchise before, there's no market overlap to raise regulatory eyebrows. Instead, the group simply inherits Ferrari exclusivity across two states — a rare thing to acquire in a single transaction.

Zoom out and this fits a trend that's been building for a while. The dealership buy-sell market has been running at record volume, and luxury and exotic franchises command the richest valuations of anything on the block. In dealer terms, the goodwill premium above a store's hard assets is called "blue sky," and top-tier luxury brands carry the highest blue-sky multiples in retail. Ferrari sits at the very top, partly because the franchises essentially never come up. When one does, the buyers are a short list of the largest, best-run groups in the country — exactly the pool Hendrick swims in. Consolidation has been squeezing the independent single-store owner for a decade; watching a family-built exotic platform get absorbed by a 100-plus-store organization is that story in miniature.

The Hendrick name will be familiar to anyone who's watched a NASCAR race, since Rick Hendrick's retail fortune and his Hendrick Motorsports operation grew up alongside each other. On the retail side, the group's own materials put it above $13.6 billion in revenue for 2025 across more than 100 dealerships in 13 states. Adding Ferrari and Bentley to a portfolio already thick with mainstream and premium brands is less about volume than prestige — these stores move a fraction of the metal a Chevrolet dealership does, but they anchor the top of the luxury pyramid.

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The human footnote is the best part. Yount noted that Rick Hendrick had been "a long-time customer and a good friend" before becoming the buyer — meaning the man who now owns the only Ferrari store in the Carolinas was shopping there first. In a business built on relationships and allocations, that's not a bad way to end up with the keys.

The takeaway for owners: nothing about your coverage or your car changes today, but if you've got a deposit down, a service appointment booked, or an allocation in progress, confirm it in writing during the handoff. Transitions are exactly when paperwork slips through the cracks.

Images Via: Hendrick Automotive Group

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