Gordon Murray Automotive’s S1 LM sold for $20,630,000 at a Las Vegas auction last November, and ten months later it still stands as the most expensive new car ever sold at a public auction, excluding charity sales.

Key Points

• The sale closed on November 24, 2025, when Gordon Murray Automotive’s own press release confirmed chassis #1 of the S1 LM had sold for a record hammer price at an event tied to the Las Vegas Grand Prix weekend.
• The auction was run by RM Sotheby’s at Wynn Las Vegas, as part of an amfAR charity gala partnership, according to Hagerty’s market analysis.
• The previous record for a new car at public auction belonged to a McLaren F1, which sold for $20,465,000 in 2021 — a car also designed by Gordon Murray decades earlier, per Hagerty’s reporting.
• Only five S1 LM units will ever be built, and the winning bidder doesn’t just receive a car: they get a personal specification session with Professor Gordon Murray himself and development drives alongside racing driver Dario Franchitti, according to Forbes’s coverage of the sale.

The Car Behind the Number

The S1 LM is Gordon Murray’s own homage to the 1995 Le Mans-winning McLaren F1 GTR, built with a naked carbon fiber body and interior and powered by a 4.3-liter V12 that produces roughly 710 horsepower and spins to 12,100 rpm, paired exclusively to a 6-speed manual transmission. There’s no dual-clutch gearbox, no turbo, and no attempt to chase a Nurburgring lap record. Murray has said publicly he never wanted to “join the race to make the most outrageous looking supercar,” a philosophy that runs through the S1 LM’s design.

Why the Price Makes Sense to Collectors

Hagerty’s analysis frames the $20.6 million price less as a bet on outright performance and more as a bet on access and provenance. At roughly half the price of Murray’s own F1 LM tribute, which trades in the $40 million range, the S1 LM positions itself as a comparatively accessible entry point into ultra-rare Murray-designed hypercars, while still delivering the bespoke-commission experience collectors are increasingly paying for. The buyer isn’t purchasing existing inventory off a showroom floor. They’re buying a seat at the table with one of the most influential designers in motorsport history, plus a car with a direct engineering lineage to a Le Mans-winning race car.

Gordon Murray called the sale “a defining moment for our entire team and for the automotive world” in the company’s own statement, and the market appears to agree. The S1 LM didn’t just break a record, it broke one held by another Gordon Murray creation, in a hypercar segment where exclusivity and price are increasingly measured less by lap times than by proximity to the person who drew the car in the first place.