The 2023 collector car auction season got off to a roaring start in January. The Bonhams Scottsdale auction reached $30M in sales, and RM Sotheby’s reported $44M. The big surprise came from Bonhams, where a 1912 Simplex brought $4.8M, a record for a pre-WWI car. Supercars were still supreme, though, with a Ferrari LaFerrari getting $4.075M at RM Sotheby’s and, earlier in the month, a Ferrari F40 topping the Mecum sale in Kissimmee, Florida at $3.135M.
BMW’s Z8 is the kind of car that many wish BMW would build again. Two of those cars – a standard BMW Z8 and the Alpina version, called the BMW Alpina Roadster V8 – recently sold earlier this month at RM Sotheby’s Miami auction. Offered by two different owners, and both with under 23,000 miles, each car sold for exactly the same price: $229,600. Read the backstory on the Z8 and the Alpina Roadster.
The BMW 507 roadster, introduced at the 1955 Frankfurt Auto Show, is recognized as one of the most beautiful models that BMW ever produced. Only 252 hand-built 507s were produced, and despite their curb appeal, they were money losers that nearly sank BMW as a company. A 1957 BMW 507, discovered in a Philadelphia garage, sold last month at the Bonhams Audrain Concours Auction in Newport, R.I. for $2.1 million. Read the backstory on this historic BMW.