GT40 Fetches $11 Million At Monterey Auction

MONTEREY, CA - Monterey weekend has come and gone, and with it, a few record breaking auctions.  At RM Auctions, a 1968 Ford GT40 sold for a whopping $11,000,000 dollars – yes, that’ six-zeroes!  Chassis P/1074 was a Gulf Livery car that had a strong racing history and was actually a camera car in Steve McQueen’s epic movie, Le Mans.  The GT40 broke the record for the highest price paid for an American car.  The highest priced car to sell at Monterey was at the auction house of Gooding & Co, where $11.1 million dollars bought a magnificent Mercedes 540K Special Roadster.  Gooding’s also sold a Ferrari California Spyder for $6 million dollars.  The total take at Gooding was $133 million and $94.5 million at RM.  Mecum also sold $33 million dollars worth of cars.  The number of cars sold was down, but the dollars were easily an all-time record.

Also at Monterey was a tribute to Carroll Shelby, Ford assembled a collection of Cobras at Laguna Seca.  There were 12 historically significant cars on display in a special tent at Laguna Seca.  Included in the collection was CSX2000, the very first Cobra built powered by a 289 small block.  CSX2196, the first big-block, 427-powered Cobra was also on display with its innovative “flip-top” body. 

One of our favorite cars of all-time, the Cobra Daytona Coupe was on display as well.  The car was the first Coupe ever-built, owned by the Simeone Automotive Museum, and the only one still in the US.  The elegant lines of the Coupe were penned by Peter Brock for the sole purpose of beating Ferrari.  “We went to Daytona in 1964 and just smoked the Ferraris,” said Brock.  “Unfortunately we had a fire in the pits and didn't finish the race.  The next race was the 12 Hours of Sebring, and we annihilated everybody there and won the race.  We then took the car to Le Mans and set the lap record there and then the same thing at Spa, but the car still had some teething problems, because it was so new, but it was fast right out of the box.” Shelby won the World Manufacturer’s Championship as well as consecutive wins at Sebring and Spa.