What's going on here?
McLaren Speedtails. Labeled "the spiritual successor to the legendary F1". Heck, they even produced 106 units, just like the F1.
And, yet people are taking £1,000,000 baths on the purchase price when they come to sell.
Tell me more
A Speedtail, should you have got an allocation, started at £2.1million.
That's before you start working through the option list, which many people did with ease.
Not long after that, the first cars started coming to auction.
In 2021 and the beginning of 2022 the cars were selling at £2.2 million plus.
Since then it's been one way traffic.
Down.
RM sold a car in August last year for £1.85m, with only 177 miles on the clock.
RM found a home for another Speedtail at their Arizona sale in January.
Just 54 miles on the clock and options totalling just shy of £350,000.
That’s a purchase price of c. £2,450,00.
It sold for… £1,614,000.
That’s a cost per mile of £15,000
But that's not even the biggest price drop.
Broad Arrow found a home for chassis #020 with 917 miles and over $670,000 of options. Putting it in £ that's over £500,000 at the historic exchange rate.
So, someone is in for north of £2.6 million.
They sold the car in March '24 for £1.65 million - a near £1,000,000 bath.
Even more recently prices continue to slide.
Bring a Trailer had a 426 mile car with a limited options list not sell twice in short succession at the end of March.
Both times the high bid was sub-£1.4 million.
Why should I care?
Take a step back.
In a previous post we highlighted the plight of the Valkyrie which among other challenges hasn't been seen selling at overs on the resale market, yet.
The Speedtail is another example of just that.
You've got highly limited, 1000+ bhp monsters here, the automotive high-point (when it comes to stats) in both Aston and McLaren's recent history.
If ever there was a formula for a car to sell at overs, this is it.
And yet, not only are they not selling at overs they're selling at significant discounts.
Once again, this episode is reflective of a market for new collector vehicles that has well and truly moved on from even a few years ago where if you were lucky enough to be allowed to purchase a limited-run vehicle you'd be fairly sure its value in the short-term would only head North.Â
That's no longer the case.