📊If anyone was waiting for the collector-car market to collapse, Monterey has been rather unhelpful.
The 2026 auctions produced extraordinary headline numbers, including a record result for a British car.
But underneath the fireworks, the more interesting message remains unchanged:
The market isn’t buying everything. It is buying the right things.
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▪️Market temperature: Selectively very strong.
▪️Monterey 2026 provided an unusually clear demonstration of where serious collector money is moving.
▪️RM Sotheby’s alone recorded $380 million in sales, its most successful auction ever, with 90% of lots sold and bidders participating from 39 countries.
▪️The headline traditional auction result was Nick Mason’s 1996 McLaren F1 GTR, sold for $34.655 million — a record for both a McLaren F1 and a British car at auction.
▪️Modern halo Ferraris demonstrated formidable demand. Ferrari accounted for six of RM’s ten highest sales, including the Daytona SP3, F50, 288 GTO, Enzo and LaFerrari.
▪️But Fisherley’s interest isn’t simply in spectacular prices.
♔ The signal: Buyers appear increasingly willing to pay exceptional money for exceptional specification, provenance, originality and rarity.
▪️That doesn’t automatically lift the merely good car sitting beside it.
▪️This remains a discriminating market.
▪️For collectors, that distinction matters more than any auction headline.
♔ Fisherley view:
We continue to favour culturally important cars with limited supply, strong provenance and genuine enthusiast appeal over cars whose investment case depends primarily upon scarcity manufactured by the producer.
♔ Bottom line: Monterey didn’t prove that everything is going up.
It demonstrated something healthier:
📍’ Great cars still have serious buyers.’
