Seasonal Previews

The Festival of Speed ran 9–12 July — CCI's full report is in the Calendar desk — but the auction story of Goodwood 2026 is structural.

New for this year, Bonhams has combined its previous Festival of Speed and Revival sales into a single auction at the Goodwood Revival on 19 September, ending the two-sale pattern that produced last year's £10.2 million Festival result, with its Veyron 16.4 world record and the £608,600 'JB 1' registration. At the Festival itself, Bonhams instead ran 'The World's Smallest Car Auction' — a twice-daily charity sale of scale models aimed at first-time bidders — alongside a preview display of Revival consignments, led by a 1925 Bugatti Type 35C offered without reserve at an estimate of £500,000–700,000 and a 1936 Aston Martin 2-Litre Speed Competition at £500,000–600,000. The consolidation concentrates a season's worth of Goodwood consignments into one September sale under Bonhams' 2026–2030 partnership — which makes the Revival Sale a materially bigger market event this year than in any previous season, and the clearest UK read on collector car health before the autumn. CCI will preview the consignment list in full as it builds.

Monterey Car Week remains the single biggest week on the collector car calendar, and the first major consignment news for 2026 has already landed: RM Sotheby's will offer the Sam and Emily Mann Collection at its Monterey sale, headlined by a Duesenberg once owned by Clark Gable and including past Pebble Beach Best of Show winners. A collection of that calibre anchoring the week's flagship sale is a strong early signal — houses don't lead with their best material unless they expect the room to be there for it.

The structural picture around the week has shifted too. Bonhams|Cars has extended its Laguna Seca partnership into a new multi-year agreement, continuing a 15-year relationship and moving its sale to the heart of the Rolex Monterey Motorsports Reunion — the same pattern of long-term institutional commitment CCI noted around Bonhams' renewed Goodwood partnership earlier this year.

Last year's Monterey week is the benchmark 2026 needs to clear. The five houses — Bonhams, Broad Arrow, Gooding Christie's, Mecum and RM Sotheby's — combined for $432.8 million across 1,078 cars in 2025, the strongest result since the 2022 record. Strip out one outlier — a charity Ferrari Daytona SP3 RM Sotheby's sold commission-free for $26 million — and the comparable figure was $397.2 million, still four percent ahead of the year before. The vintage Ferrari market told the more interesting story underneath the headline total: sell-through on pre-modern Ferraris had fallen from an 84% average between 2021 and 2023 to just 51% the following year, before recovering to 64% in 2025 — a genuine, if partial, repricing rather than a full recovery.

That's the context CCI's own 2026 season has been building toward all year. The Bachman Collection at Kissimmee, the California Spider's four eight-figure results across Paris, Amelia Island, Monaco and Indianapolis, and the Porsche Carrera GT's run from a $2.2 million benchmark to a $6.7 million record have all pointed toward genuine market strength rather than isolated results. Monterey is where that thesis gets tested against the deepest, broadest field of the year. If the momentum holds, expect a result that meaningfully exceeds 2025's $432.8 million; if it cools, the gap between this year's H1 numbers and what Monterey actually delivers will be the story.

Full details on RM Sotheby's, Gooding Christie's, Broad Arrow, Bonhams and Mecum's individual Monterey sales — dates, venues and consignments as they're confirmed — are tracked in The Calendar.