A 1903 Mercedes-Simplex 60HP “Roi des Belges” fetched $12.1m (R228m) at Gooding & Company’s Amelia Island sale last weekend, becoming the most expensive pre-1930s antique car yet sold on auction. 

The well-preserved automotive artefact was the first antique car to surpass $10m, said Gooding & Company. The car was bought new in 1903 by Alfred Harmsworth, founder of the Daily Mail newspaper.

The Mercedes was owned for 121 years by the same family and is one of only five original 60 HP Mercedes cars known to still exist. It is powered by a 9.2l four-cylinder engine that produces 45kW sent to the rear wheels via a four-speed manual transmission. It was a speedster in its time and set the fastest times at Nice Speed Week and Castlewellan Hill Climb in 1903, according to the auctioneers.

Roi-des-Belges (King of the Belgians) or tulip phaeton was a car body style used on luxury cabriolets in the early 1900s, featuring exaggerated bulges “suggestive of a tulip”.

Other notable classics sold at last weekend’s US auction in Florida included a 1954 Ferrari 500 Mondial Series I Spider, which was knocked down for R75.7m, and a 1961 Porsche RS61 for R58.7m. A 1972 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 Daytona Spider set a new record for the model with R68.8m.

Modern classics also performed well, including a 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder Weissach finished in factory-applied Gulf Oil livery that sold for R66.7m after a spirited in-room bidding war. 

All three lots from the Porsche 991 Motorsport Collection were sold, led by the as-new condition 2019 Porsche 935, which fetched R28.7m.

In the course of its two-day sale, Gooding & Company grossed R1.27bn, achieving an 87% sell-through rate with 111 of 127 lots sold. The average price per lot sold was R11.5m.

“Amid a market seemingly in flux ... the collector car trade is very much alive and well, and there is certainly much more to look forward to in 2024,” said Gooding & Company president David Gooding.