Bugatti most valuable in Paris

Bruno von Rotz
02/13/2018

Artcurial-Versteigerung vom 9. Februar 2018 (© Daniel Reinhard)

The three major auctions in Paris, which mark the beginning of the European auction year, are now over. We were there and waited for over 20 hours to see how the market was performing in this country. Our conclusion: no boom, but certainly no burst bubble either, and above all no price slump of the kind that can currently be observed on the stock markets.

When analyzing the figures, almost 350 cars were traded over three days (we will leave out the Artcurial auctions of museum vehicles on Saturday for this analysis).
Overall, the results were quite good, with 266 of the 342 cars auctioned being sold, which means a sales rate of 78 percent. On average, 82 percent of the estimated value was bid, which means that the average selling price was almost at the estimate level. EUR 66.5 million (CHF 76.5 million) was realized over the three days, not bad either.

However, if you look a little deeper and analyze the brands that were traded at least five times, then there is a surprise. The most valuable brand in Paris was not Ferrari or Maserati, but Bugatti. For this analysis, the maximum bids were taken into account, not the sales prices.

Brand	No.	€ HG Avg	€ HG Min	€ HG Max	Rank HG AvG
Bugatti	10	909000	190000	2950000	1
Maserati	12	728833	50000	2100000	2
Ferrari	35	621721	52000	5500000	3
Porsche	37	280889	60000	1600000	4
BMW	11	262909	15000	1575000	5
Lamborghini	15	262300	25000	1000000	6
Aston Martin	7	232857	52000	480000	7
Bentley	9	228556	30000	610000	8
Alfa Romeo	13	199800	36000	880000	9
Rolls-Royce	5	191000	120000	280000	10
Mercedes-Benz	29	167931	10000	930000	11
Minerva	11	158000	11000	525000	12
Fiat	6	154667	11000	620000	13
Lancia	9	122444	20000	450000	14
Alpine-Renault	5	119000	50000	150000	15
Citroën	22	101714	5000	330000	16
Jaguar	13	94462	9500	200000	17
Chevrolet	5	81125	27000	170000	18
Renault	8	71714	25000	137000	19

They are followed by Maserati, Ferrari and Porsche. In 12th place is Minerva, a brand that many people are not even familiar with.

However, it would be too early for the pre-war faction to rejoice. The most expensive car traded was a Bugatti Chiron from 2017 (EUR 3.3 million), followed by a Type 57C Atalante from 1938 (EUR 2.9 million). In third place was a Ferrari FXX from 2006 (EUR 2.7 million), followed by a Maserati A6 GCS/53 Spyder from 1954 (EUR 2.45 million) and a Maserati MC12 from 2005 (EUR 2.0 million). Half of the 12 most expensive cars sold were youngtimers or neoclassics; only one pre-war car made it into this top 12, although cars built before 1940 were better represented than average in Paris.

However, it would be wrong to deduce from this that new equals more expensive. And nobody brings an Audi A7 or a Porsche Cayman from the modern era to a classic car auction.

Auswertung Alter versus Höchstebot bei den Versteigerungen von Paris 2018