In recent years, collectable car auctions have been dominated by classic Ferraris. Newer examples of the Maranello marque have been fetching big dollars, too, along with post-war exotics from other Italian manufacturers, Mercedes-Benz and Aston Martin. In the pre-war sphere, vintage Bentleys, Duesenbergs and Mercedes dominate, with Alfa Romeo and various coachbuilt specials up there, too.
Cars from the past thirty years, however, rarely achieve the eight-figure sums that their predecessors from the classic era do. That changed in 2021 when a “modern” automobile sold for a record and achieved the highest price for any car publicly auctioned in the calendar year.
That car was a McLaren F1.
RACETRACK TO ROAD
The F1 has its roots in the late 1980s, when key members of the McLaren Formula One team decided to transfer their race car expertise to a road car. The initial sketches were done by McLaren’s chief engineer, Gordon Murray, who had joined
