Monterey Car Week closed its 2026 auction cycle with Mecum and RM Sotheby's alone accounting for 162 confirmed sales and $213.5 million in combined volume. The week's defining number is a $34,655,000 hammer for a 1996 McLaren F1 GTR at RM Sotheby's — the single highest price Motivyn tracked at either house all week — but the more useful story is what surrounded it: two separate Ferrari F50s, two separate Enzos, and a market that priced a $9,350 driver-quality Mercedes SL500 at the same event as an eight-figure hypercar.
The Eight-Figure Tier
Six cars cleared $7 million this week, all at RM Sotheby's except one:
The two F50 results are the cleanest comparison of the week: both closed within roughly 20% of each other despite selling at different houses on different days, which is about as tight as you'd expect two similarly specified examples of a 349-unit-production car to land. The two Enzo results show more spread — $12.1M against $9.41M — pointing to a real gap in mileage, service history, or color/interior specification between the two cars rather than any softness in the model itself; Enzo demand across the week was clearly not the constraint.
The Modern Hypercar Bench
Below the eight-figure tier, the current generation of hypercars did the heaviest lifting. A 2024 Ferrari 812 Competizione A "Tailor Made" brought $4,845,000 at RM Sotheby's — a bespoke commission premium over the standard car that's difficult to benchmark against anything but itself. Mecum's own 812 Competizione (hardtop, non-Tailor Made) closed at $3,355,000, giving a real data point for what the open-top, one-off-spec version is worth over a standard car from the same production run.
The Porsche Carrera GT — the car most likely to get name-checked as "the" Monterey hypercar story this year — sold for $3,575,000 at Mecum, tying exactly with a McLaren P1 HDK at the same house. RM Sotheby's own McLaren, a P1 GT by Lanzante, brought $3,195,000. Three different manufacturers' flagship hypercars landing within 12% of each other in the same week is a market that's currently pricing this tier as a single competitive set rather than rewarding one marque over another.
Two Diablos, One Lesson
The week's clearest condition-over-spec lesson came from Lamborghini. A 1991 Diablo — the earliest, least powerful version of the car — sold for $802,500 at RM Sotheby's. A 1998 Diablo SV, nominally the faster, more desirable variant, brought $533,500 at Mecum, a full third less. On paper the SV should win; in practice, first-year originality and rarity outbid a later, more powerful trim. It's the same pattern Motivyn has flagged before in other segments: buyers are paying for story and originality first, spec sheet second.
Lamborghini's range across the week told a fuller story on its own: a 1967 Miura P400 by Bertone at $3,030,000, a Murciélago LP 670-4 SV at $3,140,000, a Murciélago 40th Anniversary at $1,105,000, and Mecum's own Murciélago LP640 at $522,500 — four decades of the marque, four very different price points, all trading in the same week.
The Other Monterey
The eight-figure lots get the headlines, but Mecum's 113 lots alone ran from $14.575M all the way down to a $9,350 1998 Mercedes-Benz SL500 and an $11,550 Chevrolet C10 pickup. In between: a 1988 BMW M6 at $38,500, a 1972 Porsche 914 at $99,000, a 1972 Datsun 240Z at $93,500, and a pair of Shelby Cobra roadsters at $1,072,500 and $1,980,000. Monterey's reputation is built on the top of the market, but the volume — and the bulk of the 162 lots — is ordinary collector cars trading at ordinary collector-car money in the same tent as a $34.655M McLaren.
By the Numbers
RM Sotheby's sold roughly a third as many cars as Mecum but out-grossed them by nearly $42 million — a straightforward reflection of the two houses' different Monterey strategies: Mecum runs volume across a broad price range, RM Sotheby's concentrates on the top of the market. Both approaches cleared this week; neither house showed signs of the current cycle's high end losing steam.
*This roundup covers confirmed Mecum and RM Sotheby's results from Monterey Car Week 2026 as tracked in Motivyn's database. It does not currently include Gooding & Company, Bonhams, or Broad Arrow — coverage of those houses is on our roadmap.*