Monterey Car Week has a reputation problem, and it is the opposite of the one people assume. The week is reported as a place where eight-figure cars trade between people who do not check prices. The Shelby Cobra Daytona Coupe at $42.9 million, the McLaren F1 GTR at $34.7 million and the Corvette Grand Sport at $18.7 million did nothing to change that this year.
The catalogues tell another story. We matched every sold lot we could verify against the estimate the house published before the sale, across Gooding Christie's, Broad Arrow, Bonhams and Mecum. That is 467 cars. Of those, 241 sold below the low estimate. The median miss was 19 percent. Ninety-seven lots went 25 percent or more under, and 43 went 40 percent or more under.
RM Sotheby's is not in the table. The house does not leave estimates on its lot pages after the sale, so its 185 cars could not be checked the same way. That is a gap in the data, not a comment on the results.
House by house
| House | Sale | Lots checked | Below estimate | Share |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gooding Christie's | Pebble Beach | 135 | 65 | 48% |
| Broad Arrow | The Quail | 138 | 58 | 42% |
| Bonhams | Laguna Seca | 35 | 25 | 71% |
| Mecum | Monterey | 159 | 93 | 58% |
| Total | 467 | 241 | 52% |
Gooding Christie's deserves a note. It appears 65 times on the below-estimate list and still closed at a 94 percent sell-through. Cars found buyers; they found them under the number in the book. That is a house managing consignors' expectations in the room rather than carrying lots home, and it is a healthier outcome than the raw count suggests.
Where the misses were
The shortfalls clustered in the middle of the market and in the middle of the century. Of the 241 lots that missed, 148 sold for under $150,000, with a median hammer of $63,560. Fifty-four sold for under $50,000. By era, the 1960s contributed 70 cars and the 1950s another 44, so mid-century cars account for 114 of the 241. Prewar and interwar cars added 43, a large share given how few were offered.
The names on that list are not obscure. E-Types, 356s, XK120s, a 3.0 CSL, a Lotus Eleven Le Mans and a Meyers Manx all sold under estimate. These are the cars that fill the Peninsula's parking lots, and this year they were bought for less than the catalogue suggested.
The deepest discounts
| Car | Sold | Estimate | Below low |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1932 MG J2 Roadster | $16,500 | $75,000 to $85,000 | 78% |
| 1957 MV Agusta 1100 D2 | $44,800 | $175,000 to $200,000 | 74% |
| 1924 Chenard & Walcker T5 | $70,000 | $250,000 to $350,000 | 72% |
| 1973 Citroën GS Birotor | $5,600 | $20,000 to $30,000 | 72% |
| 1936 Mercedes-Benz 500K | $1,265,000 | $2,500,000 to $3,000,000 | 49% |
Two markets under one tent
While the middle softened, the top did the opposite. At RM Sotheby's, the 288 GTO sold for $11.56 million against a $9 to $11 million estimate. The F40 made $8.37 million against $4 to $5 million. The 812 Competizione A brought $4.85 million against $2.5 to $2.9 million. The same week produced a Citroën rotary at 72 percent under and a Ferrari at nearly double its high estimate. Anyone describing Monterey as a single market is reading the press release.
For a buyer, the practical read is simple. The cars that sold below estimate were the cars a working collector actually drives, and the misses were concentrated in the $50,000 to $150,000 band. The eight-figure results are real, and they are also irrelevant to almost everyone who was there.
How the numbers were built
Each sold lot was matched to the estimate recoverable from the house's own record: Gooding Christie's public lot pages, Broad Arrow's bidding platform, Bonhams' lot pages and Mecum's catalogue search index. Reported prices include buyer's premium; estimates exclude it. That makes every discount above understated, since the hammer price sits further below the estimate than the all-in figure shows. Lots with no recoverable estimate were left out rather than guessed.