Monterey Auctions 2021: Notes on Value, and Whether It Matters

It's been awhile since we started this run of essays with a look at the Monterey Car Weekend auction results in 2015*. For our 6th anniversary we're having another look. There have, after all, been some changes in the state of the world in the last six years. Indeed, the very weekend that the auctions were held, a powerful earthquake racked Haiti, the Taliban moved on Kabul, and the largest single fire in California history continued to threaten wild lands and firefighters. You could be forgiven for failing to notice that somebody paid $20.4 million for a car on that weekend, or if you noticed, for forgetting about it almost immediately…

The pricey car in question was a 1995 McLaren F1 with just over 240 miles on the clock. Built from 1992 into 1998, Gordon Murray's concept for the F1 was a tidy package, with the central driver position ahead of the BMW V12 flanked by two passenger seats. Stylist Peter Stevens put the driver's seat a bit ahead of the passengers, and provided access through dihedral doors with indented air extractors. McLaren built 65 road-going F1s and another 41 racers, including the car that won Le Mans in 1995.  Structured with a carbon-fiber monocoque and weighing only a couple hundred pounds more than the original Mazda Miata, the F1 was famed for a kind of minimalism, eschewing trendy features like anti-lock brakes, traction control, and all-wheel drive. Sticker price (a cool million bucks) and power (5.5 times that early Miata) were non-minimal, though. It was a car designed to be driven…too bad, then, that the auction car almost never was. 242 miles in 26 years places it in the category of rolling sculpture, not car. The auction F1 was metallic brown, but we're showing you a green one because it's prettier.  For twenty million you should get whatever color you like...

Back in 2015 we selected 4 cars that said something about this trend toward valuing production cars as rolling art.  These included a late Series 1 E-Type Jaguar coupe from 1967 in excellent condition that sold for $80,000; this prompted a comment that this price might seem like a bargain in a few years.  The wait wasn't that long, but the $318,500 bid that took home this pristine '64 coupe (3.8 liter engine, upgrade from grumpy Moss 4-speed to 5 speed Tremec) nearly doubled Gooding's top estimate of $160,000, and was a surprise.  Rarity cannot be the explanation; Jaguar built 7,669 of the 3.8 liter coupes.

                           

Another car of interest was a 1973 BMW 3.0 CS; collectors were just beginning to notice these six years ago.  Our 2015 auction example sold for $32,500; we wondered if the non-original 3.5 liter engine and 5 speed transmission helped or hurt.  For this year's auction CS the 3.8 liter engine upgrade and 5 speed cannot have hurt; the Karmann-bodied Bimmer crossed RM Sotheby's auction block for $201,600. The catalog helpfully notes that a tool kit went with it.  One hopes the new owner won't need it anytime soon...

We move on to land yachts.  The '48 Chrysler Town & Country convertible came close to defining the term, and its well-varnished condition made it seem a decent purchase, if not a surprising bargain, at $95,200.  Back in 2015 the '64 Imperial convertible below seemed a deal at $42K, a rarity in fine condition.  We couldn't find one listed this year, however, and recent auction prices show a price slide, while the similar Continental 4-door convertibles, also styled by Elwood Engel, are finally attracting some interest; 2 examples went for around $50k. By the way, if you guessed the old wood-panelled ragtop rarer than the blue Imperial, you were wrong.  Chrysler built 3,309 of the '48 T & C convertibles, and only 922 Imperial convertibles for 1964.

After the 2015 Monterey auctions one big surprise was that a 1937 Cord 812*, a sedan cousin to the open Sportsman below, sold for $42,000, a lot less than one of the old Toyota Land Cruisers on offer. If there was a bargain at the 2015 Monterey weekend, the Cord was it. It may be that though there are even fewer people around now that remember these cars when new, collectors are doing a reappraisal of Gordon Buehrig's design for these front-drive V8s...

Mecum's red Sportsman is still the subject of post-auction negotiations with the price now at $250k, while someone took home their black '37 Westchester sedan for $71,500.  It's one of 125 unsold '36 model 810s renumbered as 812s.  For some reason, Mecum chose to photograph the car only with the retractable headlights (a unique feature in 1936) in the up position.  The car looks much cleaner with the lights retracted, as on the Sportsman above.

The Westchester sedan with the fastback design was the most popular of the Cords and one of the cleanest. Lacking the external chromed exhausts of the supercharged cars and bustle trunk of some Cord Beverly sedans, it has a simplicity that appealed to designers, and curator Arthur Drexler selected one for MOMA's groundbreaking Eight Automobiles show in 1951. This show was the first time series-produced cars were displayed as art.  But even Arthur Drexler might be surprised at the prospect of a twenty-million dollar, perhaps never-to-be-driven car...

No tour of a Buehrig Cord would be complete without a view of the interior.  The dash design, with its full complement of instruments in an engine-turned stainless panel, remains one of the most memorable of any car.  The cranks at each end of the dash operate the retractable headlights, and the tiny chromed levers on the stalk extending from the wheel operates the 4-speed Bendix pre-selector transmission.

Another car built by one of the Indiana independents*, the 1931 Stutz MB at Gooding seemed like a good deal at $78.4K.  All Stutz* cars are rare enough to be special, and the condition of this specimen was convincing.  Most convincing, though, was the comparison with Gooding's other Stutz, a '31 SV-16 that was essentially a bare chassis with engine, gearbox, radiator and wheels. This went for $134.4K... 

But the best deal at these auctions was likely this 1949 Salmson S4-61.  Fully restored in a cheery egg yolk yellow over cream, and with a bright red interior, it's a reminder that French car makers are unafraid of color, and unafraid of expensive engineering...

The view under the hood offers a surprise to the uninitiated; twin overhead cams operate inclined valves in hemispherical combustion chambers on the inline four.  This is a 1.7 liter engine, but Salmson also built the same design in a 2.3 liter for S4-E sedans and their 2300S* GT car, a contemporary of the Alfa 1900.  Salmson pioneered dual overhead cam engines in the upper medium price class in 1932, over a decade and a half earlier than that four-cylinder Alfa Romeo, or the Jaguar XK120.  Shifting was by a 4-speed manual on the column; many Salmsons featured the Cotal pre-selector transmission, optional from 1934 on.  Like Delage and unlike Bugatti, Salmson was an early adopter of independent front suspension and hydraulic brakes. There was briefly a six-cylinder twin cam, and one was also offered by Salmson's British affiliate, but the Depression killed these off.

Like British cars in this class, including the Salmsons built by a British offshoot before the war, French Salmson interiors were lined with leather, elegant fabrics and wood. And most upper-class French cars retained right-hand drive into the Fifties, when all the old-line French luxury makes disappeared. For racers, RHD made sense on clockwise courses. On chauffeur-driven cars, the idea was that the chauffeur could exit at the curb to serve the passengers. But this compact Salmson wasn't intended for racers of chauffeurs.  It was just part of a tradition...

Compared with a nice '60 VW Beetle auctioned at Monterey, then, this little Salmson was a stunning deal. That Beetle featured a tidy repaint and fresh-looking vinyl interior.  But for $9,900 it was like the millions (21 million, really) of other Beetles that once chugged down the world's roads. For $7,700 the savvy buyer of this yellow Salmson got a fully restored, handmade car (one of around 2,000 built) with a Deco lounge interior, and powered by a jewel of a twin-cam engine. For comparison, a non-drivable, rusty 4-cylinder Talbot Lago from this era sold for just under $40K. For the price difference, the Salmson's new owner can afford a color change if yellow on red isn't soothing enough. If this little gem ever shows up at a Cars & Coffee in Silicon Valley or Beverly Hills, it's just about guaranteed to be the only one there. That's not a certainty that even the winning bidder on the McLaren F1 can take to the bank... 

*Footnote:  Our first post covered "A Review of the Monterey Auction Weekend, August 14-16, 2015" and appeared on Aug. 25, 2015.  Gordon Buehrig's pioneering design for Cord's 810 & 812 was featured in these posts in "The First Modern Car? Round Up the Usual Suspects…" from Sept. 26, 2020, and in  "Looking Back: When Indy Was Indie", a profile of Indiana's independent car makers, from Sept. 1, 2015.  Stutz was featured in the same post, and got a retrospective in "Stutz: The Car that Made Good in a Day", from Dec. 30, 2019.  Sports cars from the undeservedly obscure Salmson concern received a profile in "Forgotten Classic: Salmson 2300S", posted June 18, 2016.

Photo Credits:
Top:  the author 

2nd:  Gooding & Company

3rd:  bringatrailer.com

11th (Stutz):  Gooding & Company 

All other photos: Mecum Auctions