Most Porsches remain unsold at the 2019 RM Sotheby’s Abu Dhabi auction.
The RM Sotheby’s auction at the Abu Dhabi F1 race generated total sales for $31.3 million. That is reason enough for the organizers to claim succes. However, we are a bit more sceptical. Despite the high generated total sale sum, we expected more of this auction, as we told before in our preview. Let’s take a deeper look at the results of the RM Sotheby’s Abu Dhabi auction.
The top 3 cars in the RM Sotheby’s Abu Dhabi auction.
The top 3 sellling cars where the one-off 2017 Pagani Zonda Aether, the ex Michael Schumacher 2002 Ferrari F2002 F1 and the 2015 Ferrari FXX K. The Pagani Zonda Aether found a new owner for $6,812,500. The ex Michael Schumacher Ferrrari F1 hammered at $6,643,750 and the Ferrari FXXK catched $4,281,250. That means, these 3 cars on its own generated a staggering sum of $17,737,500. You read that well. More than 50% of the total sales came from just these 3 cars.
17 of the 42 cars remain unsold
In total 42 cars crossed the block. 17 of them remained unsold. That means just over 40% of the cars did not find a new owner at the auction. It is not uncommon that cars do not fetch the minimum price. Sometimes no real interest is shown in the cars. There is nothing wrong with that. However, we are a bit surprised by the fact that some of the outstanding cars remained unsold in Abu Dhabi. The 2010 Mercedes-Benz SLR Stirling Moss, the 2005 Maserati MC12, the 2015 McLaren P1 GTR and the 2019 McLaren Senna GTR are all vey limited and exceptional cars. They all had an extreme low mileage. However none of them met reserve, despite some heavy bidding (respectively $2,150.000 for the Mercedes-Benz, $2,400,000 for the Maserati, $2,050,000 for the McPlaren P1 GTR and $1,150,000 for the McLaren Senna GTR). Ofcourse the reserve prices remain unknown for us. But they must have been real high for these cars.
From the 7 Porsches that came up for sale in Abu Dhabi, only 2 found a new caretaker. And that’s quite surprisingly, seen the rare cars that crossed the block.Just the 1993 Porsche 911 reimagined by Singer , and the 1993 Porsche 911 Carrera RSR 3.8 actually sold at the auction. A car that would have been sold easily some years ago, the 1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS Touring, had a highest bid of $700,000. And that is not exactly a very low price, seen the recent hammer-prices for similar cars. Unfortunately for the bidder, this price did not meet reserve.
We expected a higher bidding price for the Porsche 918 Spyder too. A supercar like that fitted exact in the auction but nevertheless dit not find the attention needed. These cars usually fetch well over $1mio, for this one the bidding stopped at $875,000. The 1993 Porsche 911 Carrera RSR, one of just 55 built, was hammered at $782,500. And we consider that a rather low price. Just 2 years ago, at the 2017 RM Sotheby’s auction in Villa D’este, a similar car fetched $2,700,000.
The Porsches in the RM Sotheby’s Abu Dhabi auction
1993 Porsche 911 reimagined by Singer Sold for $825,000
1973 Porsche 911 Carrera RS Touring Unsold, highest bid $700,000
1993 Porsche 911 Carrera RSR 3.8 Sold for $782,500
2019 Porsche 911 GT2 RS Clubsport Unsold, highest bid $410,000
2011 Porsche 911 Speedster Unsold, highest bid $260,000
2010 Porsche 911 Sport Classic Unsold, highest bid $400,000
2015 Porsche 918 Spyder Unsold, highest bid $875,000
Pictures courtesy RM Sotheby’s
