Wanna Buy a Car? The Boss at RM Sotheby's Auctions Has Some Advice

The specter of tariffs has new automobile manufacturers bracing for the worst, but for the collecting side of the business, recent auctions indicate quite the opposite of doom and gloom. RM Sotheby's will sell almost $1 billion in cars this year, about the same as 2024, says Rob Myers, the chairman and chief executive officer of the RM Group of Companies.
He's off to a blistering start. On Feb. 1, at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, RM Sotheby's sold a 1954 Mercedes-Benz W 196 R Streamliner for $53 million.Four days later, at the Retromobile auto show in Paris, it sold a 1965 Ferrari 250 LM for $36 million. On Feb. 27 it sold a 1966 Ford GT40 Mk II for $13.2 million, one of 86 cars that totaled $74.4 million during two days of sales at the company's ModaMiami automotive festival in Coral Gables, Florida. In April it will sell two Fiats and one Lancia once owned by the Italian industrialist and style icon Gianni Agnelli.
Myers, a Canadian entrepreneur with a reputation for being as shrewd as he is mercurial, has earned his current position in the industry with his relentless drive at the company he founded as RM Auto Restoration in 1976. Sotheby's took a minority stake in 2015 and a majority in 2022; offices now span almost a dozen cities including Dubai, London and Los Angeles.

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