UK classic car auction results 2026: 68 sales, £164 million, and a market that split in two

Table of Contents

• The year in numbers
• The national houses, sale by sale
• Who cleared the room
• The regions, where most of us actually buy
• The online platforms
• The biggest results of the year
• What went up and what went down
• Why: rates, oil, sterling, tariffs and a silent Budget
• Meanwhile, in America and on the Continent
• What I got wrong earlier this year
• What to watch before the year ends
• A note on the numbers

Back in June I wrote that 2026 was shaping up as a year for buyers, not for sellers expecting last year's estimates. Five months, 68 sales and roughly £164 million later, I would put it more bluntly than that. Britain now has two classic car auction markets, and they hardly touch.

One of them held two sales this year. RM Sotheby's offered 42 cars at Woodcote Park in July and took just under £16 million, then sold 56 of 64 lots at The Peninsula in London on Saturday for £36.6 million, on my sum of the prices it has published lot by lot. Those two days made 32% of every known saleroom pound in the country. No other house sold a single car for more than £512,500 all year.

The other market is the one most of us actually use. It held the remaining 66 sales, from Pickering to Poole, and it was busy. Mathewsons put 7,294 lots through its room and sold three quarters of them. Anglia cleared 86%. SWVA cleared 91%. What this market did not do is pay 2024 prices. Lockton's half-year survey has UK sell-through at 69.3%, down from 74.2%, with May the softest month. H&H's clearance slid from 78% in March to 56% in October. At Goodwood, Bonhams sold 77% of its Revival catalogue, and two thirds of those cars went under their low estimate.

So here is the whole year to date, month by month, house by house and region by region, with the American and European sales for comparison, because that is where the records were set. Two things to hold in mind before the numbers. Prices include buyer's premium unless I say hammer, and estimates are always hammer. And the £164 million is a floor, not a market total. It is the sum of every UK sale I could find a published or lot-by-lot result for, on whatever basis the house uses. The method is at the end.

The year in numbers

Nobody publishes UK auction turnover by month, so I have built the series myself from the 68 sales with a known total. Read it as known saleroom turnover, not the market. It leaves out every online platform, every sale without a published figure (Morris Leslie, Tennants, Charterhouse's August estate sale, Cheffins' car-level results) and every motorcycle-only sale.

The shape is lumpy for one reason. Take RM's two days out and the third quarter drops from £57.2 million to £41.2 million, and October from £44.8 million to £8.2 million. What is left is a saleroom year that ran flat to gently rising, with the busiest ordinary months being May (£17.3 million, led by Iconic at Supercar Fest and Historics at Farnborough) and September (£17.4 million, with the Revival, H&H's £3.9 million at Kelham Hall and Dore & Rees at Castle Combe).

The calendar tells you where the pressure was. July was the busiest month for the national houses, with Woodcote Park on the 8th, Historics at Windsorview Lakes on the 18th, Iconic's first BRDC Classic on the 24th and 25th and H&H at Buxton on the 29th. September was the busiest month for the regional rooms, which fitted Manor Park, Historics, Dore & Rees, Brightwells, Bonhams, Mathewsons and H&H into three weeks. And Lockton's May trough, when sell-through across the market dipped to 62%, landed in exactly the month when the premium houses asked the most of buyers: 182 cars at Supercar Fest at 70% sold, Historics at Farnborough at 69%, H&H's first Millbrook weekend at 67%.

The national houses, sale by sale

Here is every 2026 sale by the five national houses with a published or lot-by-lot result. Totals marked with an asterisk are sums of the house's own published lot prices, because the house itself has not put out a figure.

Supercar Fest's total is the one Zwischengas reported, because Iconic published none. Historics' Farnborough and September Ascot figures are floors, since 20 and 19 cars respectively sold "for an undisclosed fee". H&H never says whether its totals include premium, so I have used them as the house states them.

RM Sotheby's had the year. The Woodcote Park sale, a new fixture run with the Royal Automobile Club at its Epsom concours on a Wednesday in July, grossed £15,975,765 from 42 cars, and the house called it the best UK summer sale in its history. The Classic Valuer's count has 31% of the sold cars above high estimate and only 17% below low, which is the exact reverse of every Bonhams sale this year. The 1990 F40 made £3,605,000 and the 1993 Porsche 911 Carrera RSR 3.8 £3,492,500 after what RM described as a twenty-minute bidding battle.

Then came Saturday. RM has not published a total for its London sale, but every lot on its results grid carries a sold price or an asking price, and the sold prices add up to £36,550,950 from 56 of 64 lots. The arithmetic reconciles to RM's London premium, so the figure is premium-inclusive, but it is my sum rather than RM's statement. The Daytona SP3 took 22% of the sale on its own at £8,161,250, just under its £7.5 million to £9.5 million estimate. The 2023 Aston Martin Valkyrie made £2,761,250 against £1.8 million to £2.4 million, the 1988 F40 £2,592,500, and Ayrton Senna's 1991 Honda NSX £871,250 inside a £500,000 to £800,000 guide. Seventeen of the 21 Ferraris sold, for £22.9 million between them. Eight lots went home, among them a 2004 Carrera GT now carried at £2.25 million and a Diablo SE30 at £1.3 million. Against the £23.7 million RM made in London last year, that is up 54%.

Iconic Auctioneers was the busiest house and, until Saturday, the biggest, with about £30.3 million across five live fixtures. Race Retro in February did £7 million across both sessions, with 93% of the collectors' cars sold, though I should say now that the 93% applies to the 89-lot collectors' session and not the whole sale (the competition cars cleared 65%). The ex-Erik Comas Renault 5 Turbo Superproduction set a live-auction world record at £331,895. The March Classic Sale at the NEC made £3.6 million at 85%. Supercar Fest in May offered just over £10 million of cars and sold about £8.7 million of them, the 1988 Countach 5000 QV at £512,500 the house's best price of the year. The first BRDC Classic at Silverstone in July produced "a combined sales value of £8.2 million", four world records, and the 3,277-mile Jaguar XJ220 from the Anthony Hamilton collection at £506,250, a UK auction record. Magneto's review added the caveat that only four of the 13 cars with high estimates at £200,000 or more sold on the day. The August sale moved with CarFest to Silverstone and, on my sum of its lot pages, made £2.8 million from 137 of 199 lots.

Bonhams had its thinnest UK year on record: about £10.6 million from three car sales. It dropped the Festival of Speed auction that made £10.2 million at 80% in 2025 and folded the consignments into the Revival. The Members' Meeting sale in April grossed £3,098,705 from 56 of 75 cars, which K500 called "the smallest figure on record for motor cars" at the fixture, down from £4,884,050 a year before. The average sold price fell from £80,066 to £55,334. The Revival sold 72 of 94 for £5,356,801, against 55% and £5,041,831 in 2025, but 47 of the 72 went below low estimate, as I set out at the time. The lead car, a two-owner DB4 SS Vantage Convertible estimated at £700,000 to £900,000, went home. Bonhams' one growing UK fixture was the Golden Age of Motoring sale on Bond Street on Friday, the veteran-car curtain-raiser to the London to Brighton Run: 20 of 22 cars sold, led by a 1901 Panhard et Levassor Cab Phaeton at £460,000 and a 1904 Rochet-Schneider at £425,500. All seven cars of the Somerset Hoard, stored since 1939, found buyers for a combined £258,533 against a £215,000 to £290,000 estimate. I asked last week whether the 1902 Progress and the 1903 Swift would beat their estimates. The Progress did, at £63,250, and so did the Baker Electric at £55,200. The Swift made £43,700, which is £38,000 hammer against a £35,000 to £45,000 guide, so a pass rather than a triumph. The Rover, Humber and Belsize all went cheaply.

H&H Classics ran seven car sales for about £13.6 million and three motorcycle sales for £3.4 million, and its year has a clear shape: the clearance rate fell almost every time the doors opened. Kelham Hall in March sold 78% and nearly £2.6 million, with a no-reserve 1937 Frazer Nash-BMW 328 hammered at £360,000. Buxton in April managed 73%, the first Millbrook weekend 67%, Kelham Hall in June 60%, Buxton in July 73%, Kelham Hall in September 64%, and Buxton in October 56%, with nothing above a £50,625 Phantom VII. September was the biggest H&H sale of the year at over £3.9 million, with the 20th DB5 built at £365,625, a DB4 Series IV Vantage at £315,000 and the ex-Prince Bira Delahaye 135 MS at £286,250, but a 1939 Frazer Nash-BMW 328 at £380,000 to £440,000 and a 1928 Bentley 4½ Litre at £240,000 to £280,000 both failed. H&H has dropped its 22 November Millbrook date for a first sale at Sandown Park on 10 December.

Historics publishes neither totals nor sell-through, so everything here is counted from its lot pages or taken from third parties. Ascot in March sold 55% for £2,187,440, an average of just £11,635 a car. Farnborough in May did better, 138 of 200 sold, with a 9,700-mile Ford RS200 at £290,576 the house's best result. Windsorview Lakes in July, which clashed with England's World Cup third-place play-off, sold 102 of 183 against a £6.1 million pre-sale estimate, the lowest sell-through in the event's five editions. September at Ascot cleared 102 of 158, led by a DB6 Vantage at £205,920, while both the ex-Colin Chapman and ex-Max Mosley Escort Mexicos at £85,000 to £95,000 went unsold. One thing to know when comparing Historics with anyone else: its displayed prices are hammer plus 12% plus VAT on the 12%, a different basis from RM's premium-without-VAT figures.

Gooding Christie's held no London or Hampton Court sale in 2026 at all, so the September premium calendar in the south consisted of Bonhams at the Revival and nothing else.

Who cleared the room

Sell-through is the one number that tells you whether a room is working. Here is every house for which I could compute or find one.

The regional houses are not clearing more lots because Norfolk and Dorset are hotbeds of demand. They are clearing them because of how they build a catalogue. Anglia's results pages let you see the mechanism directly: its no-reserve lots sold 133 of 136 in January, 131 of 132 in April, 136 of 142 in June and every one of 98 in August, while its reserved lots cleared 77%, 87%, 70% and 84%. A third of a typical Mathewsons or Anglia catalogue carries no reserve, the median lot is under £5,000, and the estimates are pitched to be beaten. Brightwells, the one regional house to put its philosophy in writing, said in September that "low estimates are a far more effective way of getting the best price".

The Revival shows the same mechanism from the other end. Bonhams offered 36 cars without reserve, all 36 sold, and 31 of them went under their low estimate. Strip those out and the cars that carried a reserve sold 36 of 58, or 62%. That is the honest number for a premium room in 2026, and it is why Lockton's market-wide 69.3% sits where it does: the volume rooms pull it up and the reserved six-figure cars pull it down.

The regions, where most of us actually buy

The headline figures belong to RM, but the club-level market is where the cars most of us own change hands, and it has been in far better shape than the headlines all year. Here is how the regional houses did.

Yorkshire and the North

Mathewsons is by some distance the largest regional operation in the country, and because it publishes every result I can tell you more about it than about Bonhams. Its eight three-day sales at Thornton-le-Dale, each of about 900 lots, plus the two-day Mathewsons Live at the Great Yorkshire Showground in August, sold 5,551 of 7,294 catalogued lots for £20,547,405 hammer. Seven timed online re-offers of unsold lots added £1,010,320, which lifts the eventual clearance to about 80%. Sell-through never left a band between 74% and 79% in any month, and the hammer total grew through the year from £1.98 million in February to just under £3 million in each of July, September and October. A third of the vehicles sold for under £3,000, more than half for under £5,000, and 94% for under £20,000. Only six lots all year made £50,000 or more: an Escort RS2000 at £72,000 and an Audi Quattro at £70,500 in July, a Rolls-Royce Phantom at £65,000 in September and an Audi Quattro 20V at £65,500 in October among them. Classic Car Reviews' verdict on the October sale stands for the whole regional year: "The October results did not describe one single classic-car market. They showed several overlapping markets operating in the same catalogue."

Manor Park Classics at Runcorn ran six sales that sold 431 of 588 lots for £4.54 million, with clearance improving from 64% in May to 85% in September. The weak half of the business is the southern room at Marchwood, the former Barons operation it bought in 2025, which cleared only 55% across seven sales. Hampson in Cheshire shrank: its four sales flagged 169 of 266 lots sold with most prices undisclosed, and the Oulton Park Gold Cup sale in August listed 60 lots against 120 and "north of £1 million" in 2025. Tennants kept its single summer transport sale at Leyburn, where a 1971 Escort Mexico made £39,000 hammer against £28,000 to £32,000.

East Anglia

Anglia Car Auctions publishes lot-by-lot results but no totals, so I counted them: four two-day sales at King's Lynn sold 1,250 of 1,456 lots for £7,753,630, with the median lot between £3,240 and £3,996. January produced the year's regional time capsules, a one-owner 2,800-mile Ferrari F355 F1 at £151,200, a barn-stored 891-mile Ferrari 328 GTB at £124,200 and a one-owner 756-mile Range Rover LSE at £119,880 against a £30,000 to £50,000 estimate. June was the softest sale by every measure, 413 lots and 78.7% sold, with the failures concentrated in reserved 1990s and 2000s cars. August bounced back to 88.6% and threw up a one-owner 41,000-mile Toyota MR2 at £18,144 against £6,000 to £8,000, which is about as club as a result gets. Anglia also launched a fifth format in September, Marketplace Classics for 1980s to 2000s cars.

Cheffins at Sutton near Ely ran its two Cambridge Vintage Sales, which are mostly tractors and steam engines with a run of cars attached. April grossed £2.4 million from about 3,500 lots. October did over £2 million at more than 90% sold, with 80 classic cars clearing at 95%, a 1969 E-type coupé the best of them at £26,500, and a six-barn Bedfordshire estate of 150 cars, tractors and boats sold entirely without reserve to bidders from Australia, Ireland and the United States. I have left Cheffins out of the monthly series because the totals are mostly agricultural.

The South and the South West

Dore & Rees is the regional grower of 2026. It rebranded as Dore & Rees Motoring, moved its head office to Steyning in West Sussex and kept a car venue at Bradford-on-Avon. Its inaugural Concours des Légendes sale at Wilton House in June cleared only 21 of 43 lots, with eleven cars estimated at £45,000 or more all failing, but it made £964,713 and sold the Aston Martin Bertone Jet 2+2 at £297,440. Then at Castle Combe in September two of the Wilton failures came back and sold: the 2006 Ford GT Roush 1000RE at £375,000 hammer, £433,500 with premium, the largest single result at any regional house this year, and the 1958 AC Ace-Bristol at £180,000. That sale made £1,231,091 hammer from 26 of 41 lots, roughly four times the house's 2025 Castle Combe total.

SWVA at Poole publishes a hammer-price list and a sale rate for every auction, and those rates were 87%, 94% and 93% for January, April and July. The three sales sold 207 of 227 lots for £1,418,400 hammer, a 1958 Mercedes-Benz 190 SL at £92,500 hammer in April the biggest result. Charterhouse held two car sales at the Haynes Motor Museum, "£425,000 from 60 vehicles" in March and "nearly £400,000" in June, with the stories being a moss-covered Lotus Esprit Turbo from a Dutch barn at £20,000 and a left-hand-drive 1969 E-type roadster at £45,000 to an Australian who flew in for it. Richard Edmonds has held no car sale since July 2024, Barons' website now redirects to Manor Park, and East Bristol has rebranded as Auctioneum with cars a sideline.

The Midlands and the Welsh Marches

Brightwells at Leominster runs its classic sales as timed online auctions with viewing on site, and its house-reported totals come to roughly £7 million across seven classic sales and two vintage commercials sales, at between 65% and 79% sold. Its August commercials sale sold every lot, including a 1929 Scammell 100 Tonner, one of two built, at £138,000. A no-reserve deceased-estate 1937 Morris 8 tourer made £15,680 in February, "almost certainly a new UK auction record for the model". Brightwells is also the house that said out loud what every other room has been pricing in: 1950s and 1960s British sports cars are "trading at about two-thirds of former values". The old Classic Car Auctions business, now Iconic's Classic Sale brand, has left the Warwickshire Event Centre altogether and followed the events to the NEC, Sywell and Silverstone.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland

Morris Leslie at Errol Airfield grew through three sales, from "well over 100 lots" in February to its "most successful and longest Classic Car Auction to date" in September, when a sub-4,000-mile Ferrari 599 GTB opened at £85,000 and sold for £151,575 after 71 bids, a house record for both price and bids. Morris Leslie publishes no totals, and the figure it does publish, the share of vehicles "sold within or above their reserve guide price" (81%, over 75%, 79%), is not a sell-through rate. I found no dedicated classic sale by Wilsons in Northern Ireland or Scotland this year, and no Welsh house ran a motoring sale of its own; Rogers Jones consigned two MGs into general sales and Peter Francis ran motoring sections within general sales only.

The online platforms

The online platforms almost certainly sold more cars than the salerooms in 2026, as they do globally, but not one of them has published a UK lot count, UK value or sell-through for any period this year, so I cannot tell you the online share of the UK market and nor can anyone else. Collecting Cars reported its "busiest quarter in the platform's history" for April to June, with sold prices totalling "more than £65 million" across all its regions, a UK model record of £101,000 for a Porsche 993 Carrera 4 and a UK top car of £343,000 for a Ferrari 458 Speciale. Car & Classic, which Hagerty UK described as the biggest volume seller in the country in 2024, was unreachable for most of my research and surfaced only two sale-level claims, a Porsche-only sale that netted £1.74 million and a 996 GT2 at £154,000. The Market no longer carries Bonhams branding at all: the old Bonhams Cars Online address now redirects to themarket.co.uk, and a January trade newsletter said the platform had been bought back from Bonhams by its management.

The structural news was Bring a Trailer's UK launch in March, through Sports Purpose at Bicester Heritage and Chase Classics in Dorset, with a £79 listing fee and a 5% buyer's fee capped at £5,000 plus VAT. That is price parity with Collecting Cars rather than an undercut, and BaT has published no UK volumes since. The only hard online-versus-live data is global: CLASSIC.COM has online platforms selling 62.5% of all cars sold in the first half of the year, for $1.20 billion against $1.81 billion at live auctions.

The biggest results of the year

Every one of the fifteen highest UK auction prices of 2026 came from RM Sotheby's two sales.

The gap between RM and everybody else is the single most striking fact of the year, so here it is as a chart.

The best of the rest were Iconic's Countach at £512,500 and XJ220 at £506,250, Bonhams' two Panhards and its Rochet-Schneider, H&H's DB5 at £365,625 and its 328 at £360,000 hammer, Bonhams' Revival DB4 Series III at £370,833 and Speed Model at £345,000, and Historics' RS200 at £290,576. For context, Bonhams sold a £2.46 million Mercedes-AMG ONE and a £1.08 million DB4 GT Zagato Sanction III in Britain in 2025. This year it had no UK lot above £460,000.

The records set in British rooms were almost all at the youngtimer and two-wheeled end of the market. Iconic set world records for the Renault 5 Turbo Superproduction (£331,895), an Opel Manta 400 works car (£157,916), a David Brown Mini Remastered (£92,250), an Alpina B10 3.5 (£48,375), a Subaru Impreza S207 (£43,875) and a Golf GTI Rivage Cabriolet (£36,000), and UK records for the XJ220, a Porsche 997.1 GT3 RS (£241,875), a Mustang 'Eleanor' replica (£104,625) and a Citroën SM (£72,000). At Bonhams Stafford in April a 1965 MV Agusta 500cc Grand Prix racer made £967,000, a world record for an Italian motorcycle, and Barry Sheene's 1977 Suzuki RG500 £506,000, in a sale that made £4.2 million against a £2.2 million low estimate. The most valuable British car ever sold at auction, Nick Mason's 1996 McLaren F1 GTR, made $34,655,000 in August, in California, not Britain. Hagerty UK said last December that the top end of British sales had been "pushed overseas". The year since has proved it.

What went up and what went down

I should be straight about the index data. Hagerty UK has published no 2026 quarterly readings of its sterling indices that I could find, HAGI's monthly figures sit behind a member login, and K500's homepage shows an index number with no date on it. What we have from Hagerty UK is the baseline and the direction. Its December 2025 review had nearly 80% of UK values down or flat over twelve months, the Best of British index at its lowest since it was created in 2018, Jaguar down 21.4% on a £3.6 million cut to the XKSS mean, and only the Hot Hatch and RADwood indices growing. The one documented 2026 movement in its UK price guide is the editor's remark in May that "the prices of certain cars, exotic European ones in particular, rose very quickly" in the latest update. The Classic Valuer reckons UK prices fell 9.6% in 2025 and sit 43% below their 2020 peak. Lockton's half-year phrase was that "value must now be earned".

The cleanest sterling data set with a date on it is the five-year view behind Hagerty UK's 2026 Bull Market list, published in January, so here it is.

The dollar indices are a cross-check rather than a UK reading, but they move the same way. Hagerty's Supercar Index rose 19%, 7% and 14% in its three 2026 updates, 45% over twelve months, with the F40, F50 and McLaren F1 all up by a fifth or more. Its RADindex of 1980s and 1990s cars set a new high in every update and posted its biggest gain in four years, 6%, in October. The British Car Index fell 6% in April, then rose 2% in July, "ending six consecutive quarters of downward movement", and 1% in October, with the TR6 swinging from minus 12% to plus 15% between quarters, which reads to me as a thin, choosy market rather than a recovery. The Blue Chip Index was flat for two quarters running. At Monterey, the 1950s and 1960s were the only two decades whose median sale price came in below Hagerty's condition-appropriate values, while 1980s to 2020s cars took median premiums of 31% to 38%.

The British salerooms said the same thing, segment by segment.

Two things sit behind all of this. The first is who is buying. Hagerty UK's ownership data has 92% of Golf GTI Mk2 owners born since 1965 and 64% of Supra A80 owners since 1981, against 76% of Riley Nine Imp owners born before 1965, and the FBHVC's survey puts the average UK historic-vehicle owner at 66. The second is tax. From 1 April this year the 40-year rolling exemption admitted every car built before 1 January 1986 to the £0 VED and MOT-exempt class, which is the first wave of mid-1980s hot hatches and Group B-era cars, exactly the ones that set this year's records.

Why: rates, oil, sterling, tariffs and a silent Budget

The money behind the mid-market got no help in 2026. The Bank of England cut Bank Rate to 3.75% last December and then held it at every meeting of the year. In February the vote was 5 to 4 with four members wanting a cut. By September it was 6 to 3 with the three wanting a rise, because the Middle East conflict that began in March pushed Brent crude over $100 a barrel and inflation back above 3%. By late October average petrol was £1.74 a litre and diesel £1.99, and if your classic runs on super unleaded you were paying more than £1.90. Hagerty's reading of the same squeeze in America applies here, where most lots sit well under the equivalent of $250,000: "the lower end of the market is dropping out as those buyers get squeezed by a tightening economy, while the top-end remains unaffected".

Sterling was not a factor against the dollar, which it ended October almost exactly where it started the year, but it rose about 4.7% against the euro. A €1 million car at Zoute in October cost a British buyer about £834,000 against £872,000 for the same price in January, and a £100,000 British car cost a eurozone bidder about €119,900 instead of €114,700. That is mildly against continental buyers of our cars and mildly in favour of us buying theirs, the reverse of 2025, and it fits the pattern of strong continental totals drawing British consignments rather than British bidders.

Tariffs changed legal basis three times without changing what a 25-year-old British classic pays to enter the United States. Cars 25 years and older stayed outside the 25% Section 232 car tariff throughout. The 10% "reciprocal" tariff fell with the Supreme Court's ruling in February, a 10% surcharge under a different statute ran from late February to late July, and a 10% Section 301 duty on UK goods has applied since 24 July. The upshot is that a UK-built classic has paid about 12.5% all year, against 10% for an EU-built one since July. Churn and uncertainty rather than a step change, but the tariff bites hardest on post-2001 British supercars, which is where the money is. The latest hard export figure is still Hagerty UK's 2025 count: UK-to-US shipments of cars over six years old fell 14% to a six-year low.

The Autumn Budget on 28 October did nothing for or to historic vehicles. Fuel duty stays frozen with the 5p cut extended to July 2027, standard VED rises with RPI from April 2027, a 3p-a-mile charge for electric cars arrives in 2028, and the RAC's summary does not mention historic or classic vehicles at all. Hagerty UK's verdict: "Arguably, it was a budget that ignored classic car owners completely." Nothing touched the chattels rule that keeps private car gains free of capital gains tax, and the 40-year rolling exemption rolled on as scheduled.

Meanwhile, in America and on the Continent

The comparison with abroad is unflattering in scale and oddly reassuring in pattern. The same selectivity that produced a quiet afternoon at Goodwood produced record totals in California, because America has a deep bench of buyers for eight-figure trophies and Britain does not.

North America had the biggest year in collector car auction history. Mecum Kissimmee in January grossed $441 million at the close, double its 2025 total and the largest single collector car auction ever held, with a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO at $38.5 million. The March sales in Florida set a record $255.9 million at 92% sold. Mecum Indy set an event record of $193 million. Then Monterey made $755.6 million across five houses on Hagerty's final count, up 75% on $432.8 million in 2025, on an unchanged 76% sell-through and an average price up 64% to $866,107. The same number of cars sold for $323 million more. Eleven cars made over $10 million, more than the previous five Monterey weeks put together. The 1964 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe at $42,905,000 became the most expensive American car ever auctioned, and the McLaren F1 GTR the most expensive British one. Across CLASSIC.COM's tracked universe the year to August was $4.40 billion, up 36%, on sold listings up only 4.7%. That last pair of numbers is the whole story in one line: far more money, barely any more cars.

The Monterey chart matters to a British reader because of the one house that went the other way. Bonhams, the oldest name in the business and the one with the deepest roots here, took $11.9 million at Quail Lodge against $44.2 million in 2025, and it lost the Audrain sale in Newport to Broad Arrow, which promptly lifted it 43%. In Paris in January Bonhams halved to €8.7 million; at Zoute in October it fell by a third. Its UK year, as above, was its thinnest on record. Meanwhile RM doubled Arizona and Monterey, Christie's-owned Gooding took Artcurial's Rétromobile slot and did €50.4 million on its first visit, and Hagerty-owned Broad Arrow grew its auction sales 92% in the first half. The 2025-26 Classic Car Auction Yearbook, launched in Bologna last month, gives RM Sotheby's 28% of the year's turnover, Bring a Trailer 24%, Mecum 17%, Broad Arrow 10% and Gooding Christie's 9%, with North America at 68% of the total. It also notes that 51% of all-time model records now belong to cars built since 1990.

Europe polarised rather than rose. RM's Monaco sale in April became the largest multi-lot collector car auction ever held on the Continent at €87,967,385 and 90% sold, led by a 250 GT SWB California Spider at €16,655,000, and K500's verdict was that "there is life in the Old World yet". But Artcurial's Rétromobile sale fell to €16.5 million at 57% from €20.2 million, it sold only 40% of its Le Mans Classic catalogue, and RM's Zurich sale shrank 77% on a 23-lot catalogue. The common thread, even at the record sales, was below-estimate selling: 88% of Bonhams' Monaco cars, 67% at Villa d'Este and 63% at Broad Arrow's Zoute sale went under low estimate, and sell-through held up only because the no-reserve share rose to between 43% and 48%. Which is, almost to the percentage point, what happened at the Revival.

The rest of the world was quiet. BH Auction's Tokyo Auto Salon sale set a world record for an Alpina V8 Roadster and left several Skyline GT-Rs unsold. Shannons in Australia now says on its own website that it "will no longer be facilitating auctions as part of its core business". The Gulf held no collector car auction between January and October; its story is RM's return to Abu Dhabi on 9 December.

What I got wrong earlier this year

I said in June that you would read it here first if I was wrong, and going through every result with a fine-tooth comb has turned up several things I should correct.

• I reported Mathewsons' March sale at 98% sold on £1.79 million. The house's own results page shows 681 of 896 lots sold, which is 76%, for £2,179,316 hammer. I cannot find a source for the 98%, so treat it as my error.
• I reported Iconic's Race Retro at "93% of 150 lots". The 93% is the 89-lot collectors' session. Across all 152 cars the figure is 82%.
• I reported Bonhams' Members' Meeting at £3.06 million from 78 cars at 71%. K500's reconciled figures are £3,098,705, 75 cars offered, 56 sold, 75%.
• I presented Hagerty UK's Best of British low, its "nearly 80% of values flat or down" and Jaguar's minus 21.4% as first-half 2026 data. Hagerty dates all three to the twelve months to December 2025, and has published no 2026 reading since. The Pagoda and 911 "down 20 to 30%" claim I attributed to HAGI has no source I can find, and I withdraw it.
• The Aston Martin DB4 Series 2 I flagged for Anglia's June sale never appeared in the catalogue, and the Bonhams Bond Street sale I listed for 11 December is not on the Bonhams calendar as of today.
• In August I put Monterey at $747.9 million, which was Hagerty's running total on the Saturday. The final figure is $755.6 million, RM's own take was $336.1 million excluding the charity Ferrari rather than $380 million, and Gooding Christie's did $159 million at 94%, not $162 million at 96%.
• In September I gave the Revival's top price as the DB4 Series III at £402,500. Bonhams' site now shows the lot at £370,833.34, which looks like a post-sale renegotiation, and Goodwood's own top ten has the Speed Model at £345,000 as the day's highest.

None of these changes the argument I made at the time. All of them change the numbers, and the numbers are the point.

What to watch before the year ends

The remaining nine weeks decide whether the UK year ends on RM's high or the mid-market's low.

The first test is Iconic's sale at the NEC Classic Motor Show on 14 and 15 November, its largest ever: 160 cars on the Saturday, 217 more plus 258 motorcycles on the Sunday, and "more than £16 million" on offer against the £11 million it sold at 83% last year. The cars that will measure the autumn's appetite for reserved six-figure lots are the 1983 Countach LP5000 S from £700,000, the DB6 Mk2 Volante from the founder's own collection at £450,000 to £550,000, the Ron Dennis-ordered Porsche 911 Turbo SE Flachbau at £350,000 to £400,000, a BMW M1 at £400,000 to £500,000 and Jenson Button's CLK DTM at £400,000 to £500,000. If the NEC repeats the Silverstone pattern, where only four of 13 cars estimated over £200,000 sold on the day, the headline total will still be big because the catalogue is, but the Countach is the one to watch.

The second is H&H's first sale at Sandown Park on 10 December, after an October Buxton that cleared 56%. The third is an absence. Bonhams lists no December London car sale at all, only an online motorcycle sale and an online automobilia sale, before Paris in February with a Gullwing, a 500K, a 166 MM and an Enzo already consigned. The Bond Street December fixture, which sold a 458 Italia for £162,150 last year, appears to have gone the way of the Festival of Speed sale.

The regional calendar runs on regardless, which is rather the point of it: Anglia's two-day sale on 7 and 8 November and its second Marketplace Classics sale on 5 December, Morris Leslie at Errol on 14 November with up to 200 entries, Manor Park on 14 November and 5 and 12 December, Brightwells' commercials on 17 November and classics on 9 December, Charterhouse at Haynes on 19 November, Dore & Rees at Bradford-on-Avon on 21 November, Historics at Mercedes-Benz World on 28 November, Hampson at Northwich on 29 November and Mathewsons' final Pickering sale of the year from 2 to 4 December. All of them are on our auctions page.

Abroad, Gooding Christie's makes its Geneva debut on 8 November with a Ferrari 499P Modificata estimated above CHF 7.5 million, its first Rétromobile New York sale runs from 19 to 22 November, and RM Sotheby's returns to Abu Dhabi on 9 December. The data I am waiting for: RM's official London total, Hagerty UK's December review, which is the only place its 2026 UK index readings will appear, the Bank of England's decision on 5 November, and Lockton's second-half update.

A note on the numbers

Everything above comes from the houses' own results pages and press releases first, and from K500, The Classic Valuer, Roarington, Zwischengas, Lockton, Hagerty and Magneto where the house published nothing. Where a house publishes no total, I have summed its own published lot prices and said so. Where two sources disagree, I have used the house's figure for a sale total and K500's for lot counts and sell-through, and flagged both. The 68 sales in the monthly series mix hammer and premium-inclusive bases, because that is how the houses report; Mathewsons, SWVA and Dore & Rees publish hammer prices, which understates them against everyone else by roughly a tenth. RM London's £36,550,950 is my sum of RM's displayed sold prices and stands until RM publishes its own figure.

What I could not get: Glenmarch, which probably holds the most complete UK lot-level record, blocks automated access and I did not clear its checks; Hagerty UK has published no 2026 quarterly index readings; HAGI's figures are members-only; Car & Classic and Bring a Trailer have published no 2026 UK volumes; SWVA's 29 October results were not posted by the time I wrote this. If you run one of the houses and have a number I have missed or got wrong, tell me, and I will put it right in the next edition. This is the first of these reports. There will be a quarterly one in the new year, and a full year in January once the December sales are in.