Retromobile 2026: The Auctions That Moved the Market
Gooding and Christie's replaced Artcurial as the official Retromobile auctioneer and topped the week with a record 9.1 million euro Ferrari 288 GTO. The message from Paris: the market has moved on, and it is choosing its icons carefully.
Retromobile week in Paris is the collector car market's annual health check, and the 2026 edition delivered its most pointed results in years. The headline change came before a single lot was sold: Gooding and Christie's replaced Artcurial as the official auction house of Retromobile, with Christie's returning to a role it last held from 2002 to 2007. Across the week, the sales told a consistent story about where the market's confidence now sits.
Paris did not signal a downturn. It signalled a changing of the guard.
Gooding and Christie's: the official sale
The official Retromobile sale offered 83 lots, 64 of which sold at a 77 percent sell-through rate for a 50.36 million euro total, per Hagerty's post-sale count. The top lot set the tone: a two-owner 1984 Ferrari 288 GTO sold for 9,117,500 euros, a world record for the model. It was joined at the top by a 2018 Ferrari FXX K Evo at 6,980,000 euros, a 1938 Talbot-Lago T150-C-SS Teardrop Coupe at 6,755,000 euros, and a Giallo Fly 1971 Lamborghini Miura P400 SV at 3,380,000 euros. A 1912 Bedelia cyclecar more than doubled its high estimate. Notably, several traditional blue-chip lots, including Ferraris of the 250 GT family, went unsold.
RM Sotheby's and Bonhams: the rest of the week
RM Sotheby's, selling at the Carrousel du Louvre, grossed over 80 million euros by the auction house's own count, led by a 1960 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spider at 14,067,500 euros, from nearly three decades of single ownership. Bonhams moved its sale from the Grand Palais to the Polo de Paris, offering 95 vehicles with 75 sold for a 79 percent sell-through rate and 9.3 million euros in total. Its top lot, a matching-numbers 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing, made 1,299,500 euros, while a no-reserve 1934 Mercedes-Benz 500K, one of 18 built, sold for 862,500 euros against a 1.5 to 2.5 million euro estimate.
The analysis: selectivity is the market
Read together, the week describes a market that has stopped buying broadly and started buying precisely. A record for a 288 GTO, the defining supercar of the 1980s generation now entering its prime collecting years, sits alongside softness for pre-war cars that missed their estimates and a 42 percent unsold rate reported for Artcurial's separate sale. The generational handover is the story: the cars that topped the week were built within living memory of the bidders now writing the cheques. Paris did not signal a downturn. It signalled a changing of the guard.
