The Most Expensive Cars Ever Sold

On This Page

• The premium nobody has disclosed
• The public record belongs to a different car
• The results
• The car that was never sold
• A resale that is not one
• The exception in this section
• Corrections
• Top Takeaways to Success
• Frequently Asked Questions

The most expensive car ever sold was not sold at a car auction.

On 5 May 2022, RM Sotheby’s conducted a sale inside the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, for an audience Mercedes described as selected Mercedes-Benz customers and international collectors of cars and art who share the corporate values of Mercedes-Benz.

One lot. A 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé, one of two, drawn from the company’s non-public Classic collection of more than 1,100 vehicles.

It made EUR 135,000,000.

The proceeds went to establish the Mercedes-Benz Fund, a global scholarship programme in environmental science and decarbonisation. The buyer agreed the car would remain available for public display on special occasions. Mercedes kept the other coupé.

That is a remarkable event and it is not a market price. A closed room of pre-approved bidders, buying from the manufacturer, with the money going to the manufacturer’s own foundation, is a different thing from an open auction, and virtually every list reports it as “sold at auction for $143 million”.

The premium nobody has disclosed

Here is a detail that should stop anyone quoting an all-in figure.

RM Sotheby’s says the winning bid was EUR 135,000,000. Mercedes says the car sold for a record price of 135 million euros. The reported bidding ladder ran EUR 130m, 132m, 135m, which reads as hammer.

No source states whether a buyer’s premium applied, at what rate, or what the total was.

Compare the Streamliner sale below, where RM published the split cleanly: EUR 46,500,000 hammer, EUR 51,155,000 realised, exactly ten percent. For the Uhlenhaut there is no such figure, so “€135 million including premium” and “€135 million plus premium” are both inventions.

The public record belongs to a different car

Strip out the invitation-only sale and the highest price ever paid for a car at a public auction is also a Mercedes, and it is not the Ferrari that usually gets the credit.

A 1954 Mercedes-Benz W 196 R Stromlinienwagen, the streamlined Grand Prix car, sold by RM Sotheby’s in Stuttgart on 1 February 2025 for EUR 51,155,000, about $53,017,370, on a hammer of EUR 46,500,000.

That is ahead of the $51,705,000 paid for the Ferrari 330 LM in November 2023, which most lists give as the auction record.

One caveat, stated because it matters. RM describes that sale as both a standalone auction and an exclusive single-car auction, and its material mentions bidding over the phones and in person. Whether registration was open to anyone is not established. In dollars it is the higher figure either way.

The results

Prices as sold. Currency matters throughout.

#	Car	Chassis	Price	Sale
1	1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé	00008/55	EUR 135,000,000	RM Sotheby’s, 5 May 2022, invitation only
2	1963 Ferrari 250 GTO	4153GT	about $70,000,000	Private, 2018, unverified
3	1954 Mercedes-Benz W 196 R Streamliner	00009/54	EUR 51,155,000	RM Sotheby’s, 1 Feb 2025
4	1962 Ferrari 330 LM / 250 GTO	3765LM	$51,705,000	RM Sotheby’s NY, 13 Nov 2023
5	1962 Ferrari 250 GTO	3413GT	$48,405,000	RM Sotheby’s, Monterey, Aug 2018
6	1962 Ferrari 250 GTO	3387GT	about $44,000,000	Private, 2017, court-documented
7	1964 Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe	CSX2300	$42,905,000	Gooding Christie’s, 14 Aug 2026, lot 39
8	2026 Ferrari Luce Tailor Made	chassis 0	$40,000,000	RM Sotheby’s, Aug 2026, charity, premium waived
9	1962 Ferrari 250 GTO Bianco Speciale	3729GT	$38,500,000	Mecum, Jan 2026
10	1962 Ferrari 250 GTO	3851GT	$38,115,000	Bonhams, 14 Aug 2014, lot 3
11	1964 Ferrari 250 LM	5893	$36,344,960	RM Sotheby’s Paris, 5 Feb 2025
12	1957 Ferrari 335 S	0674	EUR 32,075,200	Artcurial, Paris, Feb 2016, lot 170
13	1996 McLaren F1 GTR	10R	$34,655,000	RM Sotheby’s, Monterey, Aug 2026
14	1967 Ferrari 412P	0854	$30,255,000	Bonhams, 18 Aug 2023, lot 67P
15	1954 Mercedes-Benz W196R	00006/54	£19,600,000	Bonhams Goodwood, 12 Jul 2013, lot 320
16	1956 Ferrari 290 MM	0626	$28,050,000	RM Sotheby’s NY, 10 Dec 2015, lot 124
17	1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4*S NART Spider	10709	$27,500,000	RM Auctions, 17 Aug 2013, lot 197
18	1964 Ferrari 275 GTB/C Speciale	06701	$26,400,000	RM Auctions, 16 Aug 2014, lot 239
19	1994 McLaren F1	014	$25,317,500	RM Sotheby’s Abu Dhabi, 5 Dec 2025
20	1956 Aston Martin DBR1	DBR1/1	$22,550,000	RM Sotheby’s, 19 Aug 2017, lot 159
21	1935 Duesenberg SSJ	2594	$22,000,000	Gooding, Aug 2018
22	1955 Jaguar D-Type	XKD 501	$21,780,000	RM Sotheby’s, 19 Aug 2016, lot 190
23	2025 Gordon Murray S1 LM	001	$20,630,000	RM Sotheby’s Las Vegas, 24 Nov 2025
24	1939 Alfa Romeo 8C 2900B Lungo Spider	412041	$19,800,000	RM Sotheby’s, 20 Aug 2016, lot 208

Row eight is a charity lot with the buyer’s premium waived and the proceeds going to the Ferrari Foundation. It is in the table because it gets ranked, and it should not be.

The car that was never sold

The Bugatti Type 57SC Atlantic appears near the top of most lists at $30 to $40 million.

That range comes from a single Wall Street Journal report in May 2010, covering the Williamson car’s move to the Mullin Automotive Museum. Buyer and terms were never officially disclosed. It has never been to public auction.

A range is not a price. And the Atlantic often illustrated alongside that figure, Ralph Lauren’s, is a different car that has never been sold at all.

A resale that is not one

Two Ferrari 290 MMs are regularly presented as the same car losing value: chassis 0626 at $28,050,000 in 2015, and chassis 0628 at $22,005,000 in 2018.

They are different chassis. It is not a resale and it is not a loss.

I mention it because this section has documented genuine resale losses in five other categories, and it would have been convenient to find one here. This is not it.

The exception in this section

Which brings me to what makes cars unusual.

Across this pillar, asking what happens when the same object sells twice has produced losses more often than gains: a Babe Ruth card down $3.18 million, Jordan’s sneakers down 57 percent, a blue diamond down $7 million, the world’s most valuable stamp down 12 percent.

In cars I could not find a single documented resale loss in the top thirty.

The best-evidenced repeat sale runs hard the other way. A 1955 Jaguar D-Type, chassis XKD 501, sold at Christie’s in 1999 for £1,700,000 and at RM Sotheby’s in 2016 for $21,780,000.

I would not read that as proof the car market never falls. The more likely explanation is disclosure. Where a top card or a trophy sneaker returns to a public auction with its previous price attached, a car that has fallen in value tends to be sold quietly by a dealer, and the London court case over Ferrari 3387GT exists precisely because one of those private chains went wrong.

Cars have the best public record of any category here for prices going up, and no public record at all for prices coming down.

Corrections

Wikipedia has a transposed digit on the Streamliner: $53,917,370 against RM Sotheby’s own $53,017,370, stated twice in the release Wikipedia cites.

RM’s own Streamliner release is careless, saying the hammer fell at EUR 51,155,000 when that is the premium-inclusive figure. Several outlets copied the sentence.

The $23 million Ferrari 410 Sport in 2014 was a brokered post-auction deal, reported by the auctioneer rather than hammered on the block. It is listed as an auction result in places.

For more record prices, see the most expensive things ever sold.