Monterey Car Week’s 2026 auctions pulled in $747.9 million combined across five major auction houses, according to AutoGuide — nearly double the $432.8 million the same week generated in 2025, and a new all-time record for the collector car market.

Key Points

• Total sales across the week hit $747.9 million, up from $432.8 million in 2025.
• RM Sotheby’s led all houses with $370.3 million; Gooding & Christie’s took in $158.0 million; Mecum brought in $110.9 million; Broad Arrow Auctions $96.8 million; Bonhams $11.9 million.
• The average sale price nearly doubled year over year, from $529,034 to $866,107.
• 844 of 1,124 lots sold, a 75% sell-through rate.

The single biggest sale of the week wasn’t a car built for the road at all. Gooding & Christie’s sold the 1964 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe once personally owned by Carroll Shelby for $42.9 million, making it the most expensive American car ever sold at auction. RM Sotheby’s had the next two biggest results: a 2026 Ferrari Luce Tailor Made sedan brought $40 million, and a 1996 McLaren F1 Coupe sold for $34.7 million.

Records fell well outside the top three lots, too. Broad Arrow Auctions, the youngest of the major houses at Monterey, posted its highest-grossing Monterey Car Week to date at $97 million on an 85% sell-through rate, topped by a 2003 Ferrari Enzo that sold for $10,675,000. That result beat a comparable Enzo sold the same week at a rival house by roughly $1.3 million — a rare head-to-head pricing comparison that underscored just how deep demand ran this year, not just at the very top of the market.

What’s driving the number isn’t just a handful of headline cars. Modern supercars accounted for more than half of all sales across the week, according to AutoGuide’s breakdown, a sign that money once concentrated in prewar classics and postwar sports cars is spreading into newer collectibles. Auction houses also reported strong bidding activity across the board this year, part of why the sell-through rate held at 75% even as total volume roughly doubled.

For a market that’s spent the past couple of years absorbing softer results at the very top end, the 2026 numbers are a reset. A single week in Monterey now moves more money than most car companies make in quarterly profit, and the depth of this year’s results — five separate houses each posting eight-figure totals — suggests the strength wasn’t limited to one or two marquee lots carrying the whole week.