Barrett-Jackson, Scottsdale
For millions in the collector-car community, for tens of thousands of locals, and for a shocking number of people on the ground in the Desert Southwest in January, Scottsdale car-auction season is Barrett-Jackson. It’s the one that advertises on local TV, has dozens of hours of cable programming across the History and FYI channels, and is the anchor, the backbone, the 900-pound gorilla of the season. For 2022, after a couple of years of COVIDinduced hiccups moving the schedule around, Barrett-Jackson was back to full strength in Scottsdale. The big dog of January’s auction season in town was as huge a deal as ever.
How huge? A company record $203 million worth of cars and merchandise sold across 10 days, which included $7.3 million in automobilia and $8.8 million for charity. (VIN 001 2023 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 alone sold for $3.6 million, benefitting Operation Homefront.) Removing memorabilia and charity from the equation, that’s a $187.1 million haul for the 1,857 cars available — an average sale north of $100,000, fully $10,000 more than last year. Only two cars from the 20th century made it into the non-charity-vehicle top 10 for the event: a red 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL gullwing for $1.87 million, and a ’67 Shelby Cobra 427, CSX3356,?” number disparity between hammer price and the published average wasn’t as great as we remembered in years previous. We even saw a few cars sell in the four-figure range. For a complete list of results from the Scottsdale sale, and a current event calendar, visit .
