Gooding and Company

There weren’t just records being set for individual cars at Gooding’s Monterey sale as the company managed to sell machinery worth £72.1 million in two days — the highest such total ever for an automotive auction house. What’s more, 110 of the 123 lots sold and the average price per lot exceeded $1m (£636,780).

On day one a 1960 Ferrari 250GT LWB California Spider Competizione sold for £7.2m (a new record for a LWB California Spider), a 1928 Bentley 41/2-litre with Le Mans ‘Bobtail’ bodywork (above) for £3.9m and a 1953 Ferrari 340 MM Spider for £3m.

Day two produced more of the same, with the 1964 Ford GT40 prototype selling for slightly more than £3m and the 1919 Miller TNT (mentioned in our August issue) for £767,670. The records kept falling when the highly anticipated 1936 Mercedes-Benz 540K von Krieger Special Roadster went for £7.5m (the most for a Mercedes-Benz at auction).