Other rare sports cars changed hands as well.
Thanks to a handful of forbidden-fruit sports cars, we had a close eye on the BH Auction in Tokyo over the weekend. Less than half of the auction's 22 lots ended up selling at the event, but the selling lots do include some of the ultra-rare vehicles that were up for grabs such as the 1969 Toyota 2000GT prototype and the first production 1982 Lancia 037 Rally Stradale as well as a handful of cool Porsches.
There were some cool cars at this auction, but the 1969 Toyota 2000GT "MF12L" was probably the most exciting and significant car there. The 2000GT is already an extremely rare car with just 337 units ever made, and this car is the first of nine prototypes built with a bigger 2.3-liter inline-six instead of the 2.0-liter engine the production car came with. The bigger engine was never produced, which makes this car exceptionally special, and the auction house estimates that it is worth between ¥65 million and ¥80 million (about $600,000 to $750,000 USD). Even though this car exceeded expectations selling for ¥88 million ($821,000 USD), this price is still considerably less than the $1.16 million someone paid for a 2000GT in 2013 in the U.S.
Another significant vehicle at the auction was this 1982 Lancia 037 Rally Stradale – a road-going version of the Lancia Rally Group B racercar. This is the first of these homologation cars (VIN: 001), and overall production was limited to just 217 units between 1982 and 1984. With such low production numbers, it's easy to see why restoration of this car took 18 years! This rally-bred Lancia was expected to be worth between ¥60 million and ¥70 million (about $561,000 to $655,000 USD), and it sold for ¥70.4 million ($657,000 USD).
Here's a list of the other vehicles that sold over the weekend:
- 1989 Porsche 911 Speedster - ¥26.62 million (about $248,000 USD)
- 1965 Alfa Romeo Giulia Sprint GTA - ¥24.75 million (about $231,000 USD)
- 1989 Porsche 911 Turbo - ¥24.53 million (about $228,000 USD)
- 1992 Porsche 911 Carrera RS Clubsport - ¥24.2 million (about $225,000 USD)
- 2008 Lamborghini Murcielago LP640 - ¥21.45 million (about $200,000 USD)
- 1976 Porsche 911 Turbo - ¥18.26 million (about $170,000 USD)
- 1993 Porsche 911 Carrera 2 - ¥7.7 million (about $72,000 USD)
- 2012 Fisker Karma - ¥2.6 million (about $24,000 USD)
Some of the key vehicles that didn't sell include the 2004 Porsche Carrera GT, 2016 Mercedes-Benz G500 4x4², 2001 Lamborghini Diablo and the 1964 Prince Skyline Sport.