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Seven-figure cars highlight day one of RM's Monterey auction

RM Auctions is one of several houses holding auctions during the Monterey weekend, and Friday night's festivities got quite pricey. Seven-figure vehicles were not at all uncommon during the first day of the two-day event, with the 1953 Ferrari 375 MM Spider, seen above, crossing the block for $9,075,000.
Other big earners included a pair of rare Ferraris, a 1950 166 MM Barchetta and a 1955 750 Monza Spider, which took $3,080,000 and $4,070,000, respectively. Outside of the red Italians, a 1939 Mercedes-Benz 540K Special captured $7,480,000 while a stunning, color-appropriate 1955 Jaguar D-Type took $3,850,000. We've got images of these vehicles, and a few other stunning examples of last night's auction, in the gallery above.
Thought it seems impossible, tonight's auction is expected to see even more high-dollar action. The winner of the 2012 Pebble Beach Concours, a 1928 Mercedes-Benz 680S Torpedo Roadster is expected to command over $10 million. Also crossing the block will be a car we reported on a few weeks back - a supremely rare 1967 Ferrari 275 GTB/4 NART Spyder. One of only 10 in the world, it's expected to take anywhere from $14 to $17 million when it hits the stage tonight.

Junkyard Gem: 1997 Jaguar XK8 Convertible

Jaguar sold the mighty XJS grand tourer from the 1976 through 1996 model years, and I've documented quite a few of them in their final parking spaces. For 1997, the replacement for that legendary car finally arrived, in the form of the oft-delayed XK8. Here's one of those first-year cars, found in a self-service yard in Denver, Colorado recently. Development of this car's platform and general shape goes back to 1980, when endless prototypes were built and forgotten. Once Ford took over Jaguar in 1990, the abaondoned XJ41 project was revived and became the 1994 Aston Martin DB7. Fast-forward three years and you get a Jaguar-badged cousin of that car. The 1997 XK8 could be purchased in coupe or convertible form. The top on this car has seen better days. How much, you ask? A cool $69,900, which would be around $130,165 in 2022 dollars. If you wanted the Aston Martin DB7 Volante convertible that year, the price tag was $135,000 ($251,395 now). As we've seen in this series, sophisticated European machinery requires fastidious maintenance on the dot, or you get hit with repair bills larger than the car's value once it hits age 10 or so. Once a car like this reaches its fourth or fifth owner, the Clock of Doom starts ticking very loudly if it was ever neglected prior to that. It appears that preparation for body and paint work took place but was never completed. The engine is a 4.0-liter Jaguar DOHC V8 rated at 290 horsepower, same as the one in the XJ8. In 1998, a 370-horse supercharged version known as the XKR became available. The Lincoln LS and 2002-2005 Ford Thunderbird got a de-bored 3.9-liter version of this engine. The transmission in 1997 was a mandatory five-speed ZF automatic, regardless of which side of the Atlantic you lived on. In fact, every street XK8 ever built had an automatic when it left the assembly line (though I'm sure some three-pedal swaps have been performed by now). These cars aren't exactly common in your local Ewe Pullet, but they are out there.  This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. As some 24 Hours of Lemons racers in Texas discovered, you can buy a DB7 shell cheap at auction and then bolt in everything you need to make it a runner by stripping an even cheaper XK8 donor car.  This content is hosted by a third party. To view it, please update your privacy preferences. Manage Settings. A new breed of Jaguar. This content is hosted by a third party.

Jaguar working on 600-hp F-Type SVR

Thinking about buying a new Jaguar F-Type? You've got a number of supercharged engine options to choose from... and soon you'll have one more. According to Motor Trend, Jaguar and its Special Vehicle Operations unit are working on a new SVR version of the F-Type, and it's tipped to pack 600 or more horsepower. That's more than anything Jaguar (or for that matter Land Rover) has offered for public consumption to date, but follows a delineated progression of output. As it is, the 5.0-liter supercharged V8 offered at launch in the F-Type convertible was already churning out 500 metric horsepower. Then came the F-Type R coupe that bumped output up to 550, followed by the limited-edition Project 7 roadster with 575. Topping 600 would only follow naturally, then, but would give the F-Type a broad range of outputs, starting at 335 hp and nearly doubling once it hits the top. It would also handsomely eclipse the Mercedes-AMG GT S (503 hp) and Porsche 911 Turbo S (552 hp), rival the Aston Martin Vantage GT12 (592 hp), and give even the new Audi R8 V10 Plus (610 hp) a run for its money. The bigger question is what form the SVR model will take, and with what other equipment. Coupe or convertible, rear-drive or all-wheel drive, automatic or manual... it's too early to say at this point. But we can probably expect much of the equipment from Project 7 – active diff, carbon-ceramic brakes... the works – to reappear in the SVR as well.