At the last moment, at the last minute ....
Wow, it remained exciting right to the end. But the professionals at RM/Sotheby's just managed to turn the corner. At the last auction of the year (held this night until 03:40 in New York), they catapulted two cars into the top 20 auction results of the year (only vehicles with an age of at least 20 years are taken into account here).
The Ferrari 250 GT LWB California Spider from 1959 , which finished fifth overall at Le Mans in 1959, moved up to second place. The buyer paid USD 17.99 million (EUR 15.3 million, CHF 17.8 million) including surcharge for the car (picture above).
The 1952 Jaguar C-Type, which RM/Sotheby's was able to sell for USD 5.3 million (EUR 4.5 million, CHF 5.2 million), displaced a Ferrari in 18th place.
Perhaps the biggest surprise last night, however, was not a car, but a racing suit and helmet.
These items came from Steve McQueen, who wore them in the movie "Le Mans". The lucky buyer paid USD 336,000 (EUR 285,000, CHF 332,000) for it. For an old overall and a helmet, which in the meantime served a German as scooter head protection. But perhaps this highest bidder had convincing reasons to buy the two items. Perhaps he had already bought the McQueen-917K for EUR 12 million (CHF 13.7 million) in August 2017.
We naturally followed the entire auction live from New York and reported on it( including the unsold 25% of the cars).
