It’s not easy to accumulate a car collection that Fox News reports is valued as much as $45 million or even more altogether, and it’s even harder to do it while keeping your identity a secret. But that’s what some unnamed collector is doing in putting his one-of-a-kind collection of 18 world-class supercars on the auction block in London.
Auction house RM Sotheby’s has christened this once-in-a-lifetime grouping of automotive excellence the Gran Turismo Collection, saying it represents 50 years of the cream of the crop in automobile design and engineering, from a 1971 Lamborghini Miura SV to a 2022 Bugatti Chiron Super Sport 300+:
“Fittingly, the collection of cars presented started 25 years ago with the acquisition of the [1991 Ferrari F40], an early indicator of the performance theme that runs through the selection of cars. The consigning collector always searched for the best examples available at the time of purchase, often retaining the cars that were ordered new from the factory. The F40 was a single-owner example at the time of purchase.”
The Gran Turismo Collection was clearly assembled by a collector for whom price was no object, with an eye for collecting some of the most coveted jewels of the automotive world. If you love Ferraris, your mouth will water at not just the aforementioned F40 but the 288 GTO, the F50, the Enzo, and the LaFerrari, a set within the larger collection that RM Sotheby’s says “is arguably the most sought-after quintet in the automotive world.”
(Photo by Martyn Lucy/Getty Images)
That’s not to sell short the Bugatti supercars represented in the collection:
“Bugatti has an extraordinary history of reaching automotive pinnacles, surpassing the realms of possibility, sometimes at the expense of its survival. The first incarnation of the marque produced design masterpieces, and its 1990s revival fulfilled this historical expectation with the EB110. The Super Sport was a model that truly achieved technical greatness, and its grandson, the Chiron Super Sport 300+, took engineering achievement to an unthinkable level of producing speeds previously reserved for jets.”
Audis, Lamborghinis, Jaguars and more make up the Gran Turismo Collection, and it’s hard to imagine that all of these cars belong to a single person – or that he’s willing to part with them all at one time. But that’s what’s going to happen on November 5th in London’s Marlborough House, when the collection hits the auction block and we’ll know for sure the true market value of this virtually priceless assemblage of automobile royalty.