There are certain events that every petrolhead should try to attend at least once in their lives. This is our selection of the best: Hagerty’s Bucket List. This month, Angus Forsyth explains why he thinks Scottsdale Week should be included.
It is a cold wet January in the UK as I board a plane bound for sunnier climes in Scottsdale, Arizona. This is my annual pilgrimage to what is commonly referred to as ‘Scottsdale Collector Car Auction week.’
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This is an absolute must for any collector car nut and I guarantee it will blow your mind, if for no other reason, the sheer enormity of the event. The week begins on Monday with American auction giant Barrett-Jackson kicking off proceedings. Their chosen venue is West World, a gigantic facility with 300,000 square feet of exhibition space sitting on 386 acres of desert. The main auction tent (if you can call it that) is the largest clear-span tent structure in North America and over the next 8 days will host over 300,000 visitors and sell 1,721 vehicles with a combined value of over $106m.
Alone, this would be a huge event but at Scottsdale, the fun has only just started. There are auctions by Bonhams, downtown Gooding & Co runs another show, and at the landmark Frank Lloyd Wright-designed Biltmore Hotel, RM Sotheby’s hosts two days of sales. At the same time over at the Talking Stick resort, Russo & Steele hold a four-day auction bonanza and there are smaller sales by Woldwide Auctions and Silver. In total, 3,176 lots with a total value of $247.8m changed hands this year alone.
Once you get past the eye-watering figures, the sheer size of the event and the fantastically-American pageantry and drama of the drive-on rostrum, the next thing to hit you is the diversity of vehicles on offer. This year lots included a stunning 1965 Ferrari 275 GTB Speciale which topped the bill at Gooding selling for $8.085m and a very pretty 1958 Porsche 550A Spyder sold at Bonhams for a cool $5.17m. Elsewhere there were other fascinating vehicles: Gooding sold a wonderful Tuscan blue two door 1976 Classic Range Rover at $68,200, Bonhams a 1957 Lamborghini DL30 tractor for $40,700 and RM Sotheby’s sold a wonderful 1/5th scale child’s Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR in full Mille Miglia ‘722’ livery for $25,200. Strangest lot of the week went to a 1974 Harley Davidson three-wheel golf buggy that changed hands for $4,400.
We judge the Hagerty Bucket List on three criteria: Size, Excitement and Diversity, all ranked out of five. Here are the scores for Scottsdale:
SIZE: XXXXX Scottsdale is vast, whichever way you look at it.
EXCITEMENT: XX American razzmatazz makes this the most exciting auction event out there.
DIVERSITY: XXXX A huge range of cars is on offer.
With a total of 11/15 we say Scottsdale deserves a place on the Hagerty Bucket List.