Five highlights from London’s amazing £16.6m RM auction

This week in London, some old cars were sold. Nothing of huge note there: old cars change hands in London nearly every night, many of them in questionable states of repair, too. Sometimes the owners aren’t even aware of them changing hands…

This exchange, however, was of note because it was RM Sotheby’s annual London sale, which took place in Battersea Park and hosted a sea of rather lovely, well-maintained motors that went for much money.

We’ve picked out five highlights from the sale, which includes a not-very-surprising entry into the top spot...

Perhaps the only surprise was that it didn’t fetch the estimated sale price. Because there is little left to shock when yet another Ferrari 250 resumes its place as the most expensive car sold in a particular auction.

The car in question this time is the lovely Ferrari 250 GT Tour de France. It was given a recent rebuild by GTO Engineering, is reported to be in excellent driving condition and was expected to go for £5.5m.

In the end, £4,760,000 was the price, but that’s still a considerable amount of money for a car that develops 263bhp from a 3.0-litre V12, and is well over half a century old...

With less than 3,000 miles on the clock from a single owner, this is surely one of the world’s most pampered F40s. You know the story: the last car to be built under Enzo’s stewardship of the good ship Ferrari, it featured a twin-turbo 2.9-litre V8 with 478bhp and the ability to turn any car aficionado into a gibbering mess.

This particular example was delivered box-fresh to its owner in ’92, in Rome, where it remained until now.

RM proudly tells us “not even James Bond had the Vantage model”. This particular car, then, is one of 40 right-hand-drive Vantage saloons ever built.

The DB5 Vantages were treated to an upgraded 4.0-litre straight-six engine – high-compression cylinder head, new cam timing, and triple twin-choke Weber carbs. Power rose 40bhp over the regular DB5 to 325bhp, while 0-60mph was completed in 6.5 seconds.

Still a beauty after all these years, too.

It’s the Veyron’s daddy, featuring as it does a quad-turbocharged 3.5-litre V12 with 603bhp, rather than the ‘standard’ GT’s 550. And with some aluminium and carbon fibre panels, the Super Sport was lighter too.

So 0-60mph took 3.2 seconds, and it’d top out at 216mph. This yellow car is one of the last SS examples ever built, with less than 10,100km on the clock.

While poor old Bertone is being put through the mill, here’s an example of why we love the Italian design house so: the Stratos. This particular racer, body number 445, was first registered in Italy in October ’75, and now, after more than 20 years of continuous ownership, has been sold in London.

“Owning this Stratos will bring a huge smile to the face of not only its driver,” says RM Sotheby’s, “but also everyone who sees and hears the car go by… usually sideways.”

Quite.