Why Modern Hypercars Are Suddenly Worth Millions at Auction

We’ve all heard the cliche about teenagers with supercar posters crowding bedroom walls. Some of those kids, having grown into fabulously wealthy adults, are filling garages with the real thing. They’re collecting late-model supercars and hypercars like so many Hot Wheels—classic Alfas or Deusenbergs be damned—and driving values to unprecedented and perhaps irrational highs.

In the past eight to 12 months, auction prices for some showroom-fresh machines have doubled or even tripled.

A stunning 2023 Ferrari SP3 Daytona, already on its second owner, fetched $17.8 million during Car Week in Monterey. Ferrari built just 599 units of the V-12-powered SP3, all allocated to favored collectors and insiders. Yet that’s dizzying appreciation for a Ferrari that sold new for less than $3 million.

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The 2023 Ferrari SP3 Daytona that sold for $17.8 million during Monterey Car Week.

At Broad Arrow’s first-ever auction at The Quail, a 2003 Ferrari Enzo, a relatively newborn colt in collecting terms, claimed the highest auction price at $10.7 million. Second place? A 3-year-old Bugatti Mistral traded hands for $8.8 million.

“It’s insane,” said Nick Schorsch, the entrepreneur, car collector, and founder of the Audrain Newport Concours, held last week in Rhode Island. “You drive a Bugatti Mistral off the lot, and it doubles in value. It’s all being driven by demand.”

The other driver is an unprecedented transfer of generational wealth from boomers to children and other family members, said Kenneth Ahn, founder and president of Broad Arrow Group, which includes Broad Arrow Auctions. That includes what experts call “liquidity events.” Think windfalls from inheritances and trusts. Or for more bootstrapping types, a successful IPO. The 30-something CEO who sells a startup may head straight to a boutique showroom. He wants what he wants. Availability may be the only negotiating barrier, not sticker price.

Younger Buyers, Bigger Bids

The trend’s runaway momentum was confirmed at Car Week in Monterey. A McLaren F1 GTR—the “Pop Art” F1 originally owned by Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason—fetched $34.6 million at auction. That set a historic high for both McLaren and British automobiles. A collection of 17 era-defining supercars amassed $53.3 million in bids. The first Ferrari Luce ever built was sold for charity, not a true picture of real-world value. Still, a $40 million sale made the Luce the most valuable new car ever sold at auction.

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The McLaren F1 GTR originally owned by Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason that sold for $34.6 million at auction.

If the in-demand cars are getting younger, it’s because buyers are, as well. In addition to redoubtable prewar classics—cars a Gen X or Gen Z fan may view as stuffy antiques—this Audrain Motor Week staged a first for any major concours: a full-day judged concours exclusively for supercars and hypercars. The Schorsch family’s goal is to make the Audrain a more inclusive gathering and bring new blood to a collecting hobby that has skewed older. Sometimes much, much older.

“People want to see cars from the ’80s, ’90s, or later,” Schorsch says. “And that’s great, to be able to bring in new generations.”

On a perfect autumn Saturday at the Audrain, pioneers such as a 1966 Lamborghini Miura remind us some supercars are now seven decades old. That Miura, along with generational faves like a 1988 Porsche 959 owned by Bruce Canepa, seem to hail from another planet than modern hypercars, for better or worse.

The Supercar Concours Is Having a Moment

As traditional auto shows have waned, concours have filled the vacuum for today’s fantasy models, along with the Goodwood Festival of Speed. These concours lawns are now the billionaire’s bazaar, waist-deep in new cars with interstellar styling, four-figure horsepower, and eight-figure price tags. It’s a striking change from the days when a McLaren F1 or Bugatti Veyron were virtual unicorns. In our latest Gilded Age, akin to the rarefied coachbuilders of old, a raft of relative newcomers have sprung up to take advantage of a booming market. Czinger (pronounced “zinger”) and Singer. Hennessey, Kimera, and Zenvo. Gordon Murray Special Vehicles, benefiting from Murray’s legendary name and status among cognoscenti.

“We’re all having to learn the names of new brands,” said McKeel Hagerty, chief executive of classic car insurer Hagerty, which also owns the Amelia and Greenwich Concours.

“We’re selling some cars barely out of warranty for multiples of their original price,” Hagerty says.

Many wealthy collectors, experts say, are selling off some older classics and rotating new models into garages. These more contemporary machines can be more practical to drive and engage with than, say, a hulking prewar classic. They’re also where the action is, catnip to people who live for the hobby.

“Even the older collectors still want a seat at the table,” Hagerty said. “They don’t want the music to stop.”

The Billionaire’s New Car Showroom

At The Quail during Monterey Car Week, a pair of Hennessey employees stood just offstage. Their latest model flashed a design inspired by the Lockheed SR71 Blackbird, the top-secret, Cold War–era spy plane. Hennessey’s $2.5 million Blackbird might not do 2,100 mph at over 85,000 feet, but employees did have some hush-hush documents. Their red folders contained signed sales agreements for the Blackbird, whose 71 sales slots had dwindled to six prior to its reveal. Make that four.

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Hennessey’s $2.5 million Blackbird at The Quail during Monterey Car Week.

“We’ve sold two cars in just a few minutes since the unveiling,” Nathan Malinick, the Texas-based automaker’s vice president of design, said. “One customer saw the car for the first time and decided on the spot to buy one.”

Shortly after The Quail, Hennessey announced that all 71 cars were spoken for. That underscores how concours have become a swanky new sales floor, where companies schmooze favored clients, offer intimate access to executives, and even help prospects work with designers to create personalized models.

Venerable brands, once content with selling $200,000 or $300,000 cars, aren’t about to let the upstarts have this lucrative business to themselves. Aston Martin recently unveiled the Valen, which rhymes with the “Halen” in Van Halen. And the Aston takes a classic rock approach, with an 838-hp front-engine V-12 versus a mid-engine layout. The elegant Valen is limited to 150 copies, priced from $2 million.

The Market Is Being Lifted by the Very Top

A look at the global auction market shows median prices have only climbed about 4 percent over the past year. But the average transaction price has skyrocketed by 32 percent, which shows how big-ticket cars are driving the action.

“The high end of the market is really driving the average up,” Ahn said.

At shows and auctions around the world, the Cristal corks may be popping over the latest record-setting sale, which can help set the market like a contract for a star NFL quarterback. Yet Ahn, a former Goldman Sachs investment banker, says the market is still cyclical. What goes up must eventually come down.

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Aston Martin unveiled the $2-million Valen at The Quail.

“I can tell you with a high degree of certainly that this can’t continue forever,” Ahn said.

Ahn cautions against recency bias and fallacies that can afflict nearly any investor, whether in the stock market, cars, or art. Just because a Ferrari doubles in value doesn’t mean it’s about to double again.

“This growth is unsustainable over a long period,” Ahn said. “We just don’t know what the top will be or when that [correction] will happen.”

The Hypercar Gold Rush Has a Catch

Today’s digital-based design and testing, component sharing, and electrification have lowered the barrier to entry for boutique manufacturers, Ahn said. Selling a handful of eight-figure cars is one thing. The trick is to build a sustainable long-term business beyond that first batch of cars.

At the Audrain, Czinger put a pair of fantastical 21Cs on display. Co-founder Lukas Czinger says the company waited patiently to enter the market, until the time was right and its technology truly ready.

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The 1,250-horsepower, $2.4-million Czinger 21C tested by MotorTrend in 2026.

“We studied the numbers and saw there are thousands of people willing to spend millions per vehicle,” he said. “But we also felt we needed a reason to exist, so we could stand out in a crowded field.”

To help separate its car from the herd, Czinger was determined to offer both unique technology and a fully homologated car—something no hypercar rival offers in the U.S.—that meets federal safety standards and California emissions rules.

Ahn adds that no one is more nail-bitingly nervous than a hypercar company when its machines first reach the secondary market. Will buyers affirm their ongoing desirability, or will their values plummet?

“If the secondary market doesn’t do well, then good luck trying to sell more cars for the price you’re charging the first time around,” Ahn said.

Even a rich brand legacy is no guarantee of success in this rarefied realm, Ahn said—as evidenced by dispiriting residual values that have plagued Aston and McLaren.

Building a Hypercar That Holds Its Value

Czinger says only one owner has sold his car so far, which Lukas considers a positive sign of the 21C’s appeal. The car brought $300,000 over its original sticker price at auction, a number the company was pleased with.

“People want to feel smart,” Czinger said. “Customers are willing to spend, but they also want to know their car’s value will stay neutral or go up.”

With so many companies fighting over a relatively tiny audience of eight-figure buyers, Czinger says hypercar makers need a compelling story to win customers and keep them coming back. For Czinger, the story includes innovative 3D additive manufacturing and tools that had never before been attempted at scale in a production car. At the Audrain, attendees of all ages leaned into the 21C’s Spyder’s impossibly slender cockpit, redolent of Le Mans prototypes and fighter jets. They oohed and ahhed over its novel 1 + 1 tandem seating arrangement and snapped more photos than red-carpet paparazzi. Even this jaded journalist fell hard for the Spyder’s striking Signature Brown metallic paint and chocolate interior in Bridge of Weir leather.

Production car lap records at Laguna Seca and other prominent tracks bring Czinger bragging rights, backed by an intriguing in-house 2.88-liter V-8 with three electric motors and 1,250 hybrid horsepower.

Sure, most human beings will never sit in one of these fanciful cars, let alone own one. But that doesn’t make them irrelevant to people who love cars, even as they make monthly payments on workaday Toyotas or Chevys. Czinger says hypercars, done right, can be NASA-style projects that advance design and tech to benefit the entire industry. As ever, dream machines can build a community of passionate fans, including impressionable young people. They bring fresh energy to an SUV-obsessed automotive world that can definitely use some excitement.

Somewhere, surely, a future billionaire is taping a picture of a Czinger to a bedroom wall and vowing to own one someday—price no object.