List of most expensive cars sold at auction

This article needs to be updated. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (May 2022)

This is a list of the most expensive cars sold in public auto auctions through the traditional bidding process, that of those that attracted headline grabbing publicity, mainly for the high price their new owners have paid.

On May 5, 2022, in a secret auction at the brand's museum in Germany, Mercedes-Benz sold one of just two 1955 300 SLR Uhlenhaut coupes from its extensive collection of historical automobiles—which dates back to the earliest days of the car in the late 19th century. The sale, to a private buyer, was for 135 million euros ($142,769,250). It handily outstripped the previous record-setting $48.4-million sale of a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO at a 2018 auction to become the most expensive car ever sold at auction. Both of these high-dollar sales were brokered by RM Sotheby's.^[1]

On June 1, 2018, it was announced that a 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO had sold for $70 million at a private auction, at the time a world record.^[2]

The 1904 Rolls-Royce 10 hp Two-Seater is currently listed on the Guinness World Records as the most expensive veteran car to be sold, at the price of US$7,254,290 (equivalent to $10,660,000 in 2023), on a Bonhams auction held at Olympia in London on December 3, 2007.^[3]

This list only consists of those sold for at least $4 million in auction sales during a traditional bidding process, inclusive of the mandatory buyers premium and does not include private, unsuccessful (failing to reach its reserve price, incomplete) and out of auction sales.