_Art and wine overtake classic cars as top luxury investments
This sharp deceleration from the double-digit growth of recent years is largely because speculative investors have left the market, says HAGI’s Dietrich Hatlapa. “The most active buyers are the really knowledgeable collectors and enthusiasts who know what they are doing and exactly what they want.”
Such buyers won’t pay over the odds for cars that don’t have a great pedigree or aren’t in the right condition, but they are still prepared to dig deep when they find a car they really want to buy.
Credit: llxcarrental
Auctioneer Bonhams is hoping that will be the case when it puts an extremely rare lightweight 1961 Aston Martin DB4 GT under the hammer at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in July. No guide price has been released for the car, which was raced by F1 legend Jim Clark, but Bonhams expects it to break the £10m barrier, making it the most expensive car to be auctioned in the UK.
The Aston was famously involved in a crash with a Ferrari 250 GTO and 250 GT SWB at Le Mans in 1962. Only 39 250 GTOs were ever made and the US floor-mat magnate David MacNeil has just paid a reported $70m for a well-known 1963 model.
If accurate, it makes the Ferrari, known by its chassis number 4153 GT, in all probability the most expensive car to sell ever. Such is the car’s pedigree - as well as winning the Tour de France it finished overall fourth at Le Mans – an entire book has been written about its history. Ownership also provides entry to exclusive events held solely for 250 GTO owners.
Access to such rarefied events is a big driver for specific segments of the market, points out Mr Hatlapa. “We’ve seen very strong prices paid for cars that are eligible for the legendary Monaco Historic Grand Prix, which is open only to cars that raced there in period,” he explains.
A Mclaren-Cosworth car driven to victory at the 1993 Monaco Grand Prix by Ayrton Senna was the star of Bonhams’ recent auction at Monaco where it was brought by former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone for €4.2m (about $5m).
Art, meanwhile, continues to top KFLII with annual growth of 21%, having almost been at the pack of the pack this time last year.
Salvator Mundi, a work by the Old Master Leonardo da Vinci, turbo charged the headlines when it was sold for a staggering $450m last year, but paintings by less well-known artists have also been notching up multi-million dollar results, says Sebastian Duthy, of Art Market Research.
“Prices for works by Impressionists and post-war artists have dominated auction sales for the past two decades. But this picture has been changing, with works by some contemporary artists appreciating rapidly in the last few years.
“In March, artist Mark Bradford hit the headlines when his painting 'Helter Skelter I' was sold by ex-tennis star John McEnroe for a record $10.4m at Phillips in London. In May, rapper Sean Combs, aka P Diddy, paid $21.1m at Sotheby’s for a painting by artist Kerry James Marshall. The figure represents an 800-fold increase on the $25,000 paid for the same work in 1997.”
The Knight Frank Fine Wine Icons Index, compiled for us by Wine Owners, recorded overall growth of 9% over the same period, but the various sectors of the market are running at different speeds, says Nick Martin of Wine Owners. “The very top of the Burgundy market is on fire, with growth of between 20% and 70%, but Bordeaux is more of a mixed bag.”