RM Sotheby's London Auction, held at The Peninsula on Saturday 31 October, sold 56 of the 64 lots it offered, for £36,550,950 including buyer's premium. One lot, a Volkswagen Golf R32, was withdrawn before the sale. The headline was a Ferrari Daytona SP3 at £8,161,250, inside its estimate. The story underneath it was more interesting: among the big lots, the clearest wins over estimate were modern limited-run Ferraris and Porsches, while three of the most ambitious estimates in the catalogue, including the 550 Barchetta we previewed, found no buyer.
The ten highest prices
Three stories behind the prices
The top lot was not a customer car. The Daytona SP3 was built in June 2022 as a development car, specified by Ferrari itself in Giallo Triplo Strato and kept by the factory as a press car; its first private owner bought it in 2025. It sold for £8,161,250, inside its £7.5 million to £9.5 million estimate.
The most unusual pair in the room were two 458 Speciales, a coupé and an Aperta, ordered together through Ferrari's Tailor Made programme with sequential chassis numbers. Both are finished in Alluminio Grezzo Opaco, which RM describes as a satin silver treatment over exposed aluminium under clear lacquer, with Blu NART stripes, and both had covered under 2,000 miles. They were sold as separate lots. The Aperta, one of 499 built, made £1,861,250; the coupé £792,500. Together, £2,653,750.
The F40 is the one to think about. It was modified, most likely in Japan, to look like the racing F40 LM: RM's catalogue lists replacement clamshells not made by Michelotto, non-original doors and floor sections, and a MoTeC engine management system, and calls it a prime candidate to be restored to road specification. It still sold above its estimate. The name carried the car.
Where the room went past the estimate
Among the lots that made more than half a million pounds, the ones that beat their estimates most clearly were limited-run Ferraris and Porsches of the last thirty years, along with a Valkyrie. The F40 made £2,592,500, above a £1.8 million to £2.4 million estimate. The 458 Speciale Aperta, a roadster built in small numbers, made £1,861,250 against £1.2 million to £1.5 million, and the 458 Speciale coupé £792,500 against £500,000 to £700,000. The 964 Carrera RS 3.8 reached £1,242,500 against £800,000 to £1 million, and the Valkyrie sold for £2,761,250 against £1.8 million to £2.4 million. A one-off F12berlinetta 70th Anniversary "Tailor Made" made £511,250 against £300,000 to £350,000.
Lower down, a 599 GTB Fiorano made £149,500 against an estimate of £90,000 to £110,000, and a 550 Maranello £286,250, just above its £230,000 to £280,000 estimate. Not every modern special went past its estimate: the 430 Scuderia (£477,500) and the 911 GT3 RS 3.8 (£455,000) sold inside theirs, the 575M sold below, and a Carrera GT and a 360 Challenge Stradale did not sell at all. Away from the cars, the registration number RAF 1 sold for £216,000, nearly double its top estimate.
The older cars were steadier. The 275 GTB alloy and the Lusso went a little past their estimates; the 275 GTS sold inside its range; the 300 SL Roadster, at £1,045,625, sold just below. The market for the established 1950s and 1960s classics looked firm but not heated. The heat was in the newer cars.
The modern limited editions are where the money moved. The established classics held their ground.
Senna's NSX: ten times the going rate
Lot 155 was the 1991 Honda NSX, chassis T000233, that Honda provided for Ayrton Senna's personal use in Portugal. Under an agreement with the driver, it was one of three NSXs Honda provided, alongside two black cars; it was stored in Lisbon and delivered to him when he arrived. He drove this one to the 1991 Portuguese Grand Prix, where he finished second. It sold for £871,250, above its £500,000 to £800,000 estimate.
A normal first-generation NSX is worth about £85,000 on our NSX page, so the provenance multiplied the car's value roughly ten times. Senna's link to the NSX runs deeper than this one car: testing a prototype, he called the chassis "a little fragile", and Honda stiffened the frame by 50 per cent before production. That history is part of why his personal-use car commanded what it did. It says nothing about ordinary NSX values, which this sale does not move.
What did not sell
Eight lots went unsold, among them several of the sale's most ambitious estimates: a Porsche Carrera GT (£2 million to £2.5 million), a Lamborghini Diablo SE30 (£1.2 million to £1.6 million), a 360 Challenge Stradale (£500,000 to £600,000), a Ferrari Superamerica, a 1931 Invicta S-Type and the 550 Barchetta. Of the two Scuderia Spider 16Ms in the sale, one sold for £668,750 and the other did not. An unsold car is not a price, and none of these results tells us what the car is worth; it tells us the estimate was more than any bidder in the room would pay on the night. Some may yet sell privately after the sale.
Our preview: what the two Ferraris told us
Our preview asked whether two Ferraris would earn their specification premiums. The answer was no, twice, and it is worth being plain about it. The 550 Barchetta with 571 km, estimated at £725,000 to £825,000, did not sell. The near-new US Barchettas that made £939,000 and £1.2 million in August did not translate to a right-hand-drive car in London; UK Barchetta sales this year have run from about £300,000 to £438,000, and the room would not bridge the gap to RM's estimate.
The 575M with the rare HGTC pack, offered without reserve, sold for £103,500, below its £120,000 to £140,000 estimate and below the £116,132 another HGTC car made at Broad Arrow on 14 October. Against our £80,000 value for a standard 575M, the pack was worth about £23,500 on the night. Our preview put it at £35,000 to £60,000. One sale is one sale, but on this evidence the HGTC premium is real and smaller than the estimates suggested.
What it means for our values
Several of these results sit far from our current values, and we would rather say so than wait for someone else to. The 550 Maranello sold at £286,250 against our £120,000. The 430 Scuderia made £477,500 against £200,000, the 458 Speciale £792,500 against £360,000, the F40 £2,592,500 against £1,700,000 and the 599 GTB £149,500 against £110,000. Some lots carry their own explanations, such as very low mileage or a rare body style. But for the modern limited-run Ferraris and Porsches the direction is consistent: our values look too low. For two older cars it ran the other way: a 365 GTB/4 Daytona made £522,500 against our £700,000, and a Bentley R-Type Continental £320,000 against our £800,000.
One auction is not the market, and a single sale never moves an AutoIndex value on its own. Every sold car from this auction goes into Monday's value review, where it is weighed against every other dated sale of the same model, and any value that the evidence says is wrong will change, with the evidence recorded. The car pages show the current values and a free check for any asking price; the auction calendar lists the next sales.
Update, 2 November: the review. Five values moved, each weighed against every dated sale of the same car this year rather than this auction alone, and in capped steps. The Daytona SP3 went from £3,200,000 to £4,160,000 and the F40 from £1,700,000 to £2,210,000; both are now marked as fast-moving on their pages and may move again. The 430 Scuderia went from £200,000 to £260,000 and the 458 Speciale from £360,000 to £420,000. In the other direction, the Bentley R-Type Continental came down from £800,000 to £585,000. Held: the 550 Maranello, because this year's European sales sit between about £108,000 and £161,000 and the London car had 7,336 miles and the rare Fiorano handling pack; the 575M, where the HGTC pack explains the gap; the 599 GTB, the 365 GTB/4 Daytona and the 911 GT3 RS 3.8, until a second dated source can be read; and the cars whose price came from their history or specification, such as Senna's NSX and the 70th-anniversary F12.
