Consistency and intelligence: Bonhams becomes Boomans…
10 March 2020 3 min read 5 images
From the area around New Bond Street, the Bonhams team will have started to smile.
After the excellent sale in Paris, they had a stunning encore at Amelia Island.
In 2019, total sales from 90 cars was $16,097,787. This year that number jumped to $21,011,940 (+ 30.5%), from 85 cars. Hence, the average per car went up from $178,856 to $247,199 (+ 38%).
A great deal of the credit for this feat goes to the sale of the top lot, the Bugatti Tipo 55 Super Sport, straight from the Dean Edmonds collection. The first owner of this 1932 example was Baron Victor Rothschild (also a well-known City banker) and of the 11 specimens still believed to be in existence, this would appear to be one of the best. An interesting curiosity: a section of the catalogue was dedicated to when Edmonds bought the car in 1985, at an auction. It says that, at the time, it was estimated at £70-100,000 and was finally sold for £440,000 eclipsing the previous record for a car sold in the UK. In 2010 that investment most certainly paid off. Not only 35 years of pure driving pleasure, but with an estimate of $6.5-7.5 million, also the bank gets to smile. It was sold for $7,100,000 a 12-fold increase (roughly) over the price paid by Edmonds.
This car is very significant for various reasons.
The first is extremely important: cars worth more than 5 million are still being sold, it is not an orphan market. The second reason is that Bonhams appears to be specializing in high-end 1930s cars. After the (albeit unsuccessful) sale of the Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 in Arizona, the sale of another Bugatti 55 in Paris, this is the third pre-war top lot they have offered in three auctions. A third reason could demonstrate that the pre-war market is slightly more immune to the ups and downs of fashions and one cannot dismiss the idea that those cars which had previously made way for the records set by Ferraris and Porsches of the 50s and 60s are today raising their heads.
It wasn't all that surprising that the other top lot from Bonhams went unsold. The 1952 Jaguar C-Type chassis “XKC014” was one of the very best known examples; owned by Commander John “Jack” Rutherford, it has a somewhat interesting sporting history, mostly at an amateur level but with an appearance at the 1953 Daytona speed Week. Why then, weren’t we surprised by the result? Because it was estimated at $6.5-7.5 million and if we consider that last month a Jaguar D-Type (from RM in Paris) went unsold for $6 million – it seemed clear that the estimate was too high. Every collector is on the lookout for the iconic tail of the D-type and the C-type rarely overtakes it. In fact, the offers dried up at $5,400,000, about 10% less than its D-Type equivalent.
The second-highest sale price was achieved by a 1907 Renault: the AI 35/45hp Vanderbilt racer owned by the Indianapolis Speedway Museum (which had held it for over 60 years) and which previously belonged to the famous 24 hour Le Mans driver, William Spear Jr. It is one of the 4 remaining out of the 10 commissioned by the rail transport magnate Willie Vanderbilt. Allow me to add that it was my favourite car at the sale. The price of $3,332,500 is, therefore, more than justified, although undoubtedly surprising: at the liquidation of the Otis Chandler collection in 2006 a similar model set the record for a Renault at $1,100,000, a record that had remained unbeaten until this sale. And this brings to the fore another interesting aspect of this sale: the offer of many cars that were not “benchmarks” to understand how the market is doing.
Pre-war cars, in particular, are really peculiar in this sense: the various pre-war cars from Rolls-Royce, Mercedes and Alfa Romeo differ greatly according to the coachbuilder and originality. Therefore, the fact that 35% of the cars on offer at Bonhams were pre-war examples, compared with 27.5% at RM and just 4.5% at Gooding, shows that it offered cars that are difficult to compare. If this makes it difficult to know if a sale went well or not, the overall result of the auction is far clearer.
Let's make a comparison: the 1967 Ferrari 330 GTS sounded an alarm bell. In its original “Gold” colour and Ferrari Classiche certified, it was estimated at $1.8-2.2 million. Correctly, I would dare to say as recently one was sold by RM for $1,710,000 (also Ferrari Classiche but Smoke Gray in colour) and from Gooding one went for $1.98 million. And yet, perhaps because all eyes were focused on the prewar models and maybe also because Bonhams is more specialized in high level prewar cars, the sale stalled at $1,475,000 and from there it didn't move, and it was sold after the auction as the owner accepted the offer.
The deal of the day? The 1934 Mercedes-Benz 500K Four Passenger Tourer by Mayfair. Sure, the bodywork design was very unattractive, moreover a Mercedes bodied by an Englishman would have made many people turn up their noses. But the car was estimated at $600-800,000, about a third of a Roadster, so one can pass over certain things. But in the end it felt like being run over since it was sold for $362,500.
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