Economy Drives Down Auction Bids at Concours d’Elegance
The 51st Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance--and the attendant frenzied weekend of classic and collector car auctions, parties, vintage car racing and auto manufacturer news making--is history, although a goodly number of the 100,000 or so souls who crowded the Monterey Peninsula may still be wending their ways home.
Sylmar car collector and auto museum benefactor J.B. Nethercutt, who entered a 1913 Mercedes touring car that his staff painstakingly restored over the last year, is coming home with a blue ribbon for “Best of Class” in the early Mercedes-Benz competition.
But he lost his bid for a seventh “Best of Show” trophy to Petaluma collectors Arturo and Deborah Keller, who drove off with the Waterford crystal bowl in their custom-bodied 1930 Mercedes-Benz SS roadster.
Nethercutt, chairman of Merle Norman Cosmetics and founder of the Nethercutt Collection auto museum in Sylmar, also took third-place honors in a special preservation class for pre-World War I vehicles with a 1911 Franklin limousine.
A complete list of Concours results is scheduled to be available today on the event’s Web site, https://pebblebeachconcours.net.
On the auction front, early results from the weekend’s four events show that a softening economy is having an effect on once-soaring prices--good news to would-be collectors put off by bidding wars that were boosting values beyond the credible.
Although final results won’t be available for a few days, the top car of the weekend appears to have been a 1956 Ferrari 410 Sport Spyder, which brought $3.8 million at the RM Sports Car Auction in Monterey.
The RM auction, spread over two nights, sold about $14 million worth of collector cars and motorcycles.
The top ticket item at London-based Bonhams & Brooks Auctions’ sale in Carmel Valley on Saturday was a 1937 Bugatti Type 57S Atalante Coupe, which fetched $1.7 million.
A pair of world-record prices were established at the weekend’s newest sale, the Russo & Steele Muscle Car Auction in Monterey. A 1969 Ford Mustang Trans-Am race car went for $319,680--the auction’s highest price and the highest ever fetched for a Trans-Am race car, the company said. A 1965 Shelby GT350 Mustang went for a record $85,320. Overall, Russo & Steele sold 19 American muscle cars for a total of $1.3 million.
Beverly Hills-based Christie’s International Motor Cars, which last year auctioned a 1966 Ferrari 330 P3 for $5.6 million, said its top seller Sunday was a 1937 Mercedes-Benz 540K Supercharged Sport Cabriolet, which fetched $1.05 million and was Christie’s only million-dollar seller of the evening. In all, the auction house moved an estimated $11.1 million worth of cars--less than half the $26 million in sales it posted last year.
“We have to be realistic that the market is not as strong as a year ago,” said Miles Morris, director of Christie’s International Motor Cars. But “Pebble Beach is still the preeminent location for motor car sales,” he said.
It also has become a choice locale for contemporary auto makers to show off their luxury lines. Bentley Motorcars, the honored vintage marque at the Concours, was there with a fleet of new cars, as was Chrysler--whose 1940s-era wood-bodied Town & Country cars were a featured class at the show on the 18th fairway of the Pebble Beach Golf Links.
Others in attendance with new cars to augment the vintage models in competition were Cadillac, Lincoln and Mercedes-Benz. Japanese luxury brand Lexus--which doesn’t have anything old enough to make it into a show of classic cars--was there as well, hoping like the others to attract the attention of a crowd that oozes wealth.
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The huge conglomeration of fine autos--old and new--can make for some interesting sights as everyone tries to get home. Many auto collectors actually drive their prizes, and it is common along scenic Highway 1 south of Carmel to spot vintage Cadillacs, Auburns and LaSalles parked in the shade as their drivers and passengers, often dressed in period costume, take a break.
It also is common to be passed--on the coast or in the coastal mountains--by a snarling Ferrari or Lamborghini impatiently trying to break out of the pack.
One of the most interesting sights this year, though, was on the scenic Coast Highway just south of Big Sur about 2 p.m Monday. Motorists were treated to the afternoon teatime spectacle of half a dozen 2001 Bentleys--about $3 million on the hoof, so to speak--parked in a dusty roadside turnout, their casually dressed drivers sitting on rocks and munching sandwiches as the sun glistened off the Pacific in the background.
