The world’s most expensive cars
It’s a discussion topic that often comes up among motoring enthusiasts: “What car would you buy if money was no object?”
Most of us will only ever dream about bullishly buying a $400,000 Lamborghini or rolling up to Rolls-Royce and rolling out with a new Phantom for a million bucks plus change. But even these price tags pale in comparison to the crazy cash paid for these motor vehicles.
1982 HDT VH Commodore
In the broader scheme of things, classic Aussie cars are downright affordable, although they do go for sky high prices sometimes. The holy grail of Australian classics is a genuine Ford Falcon GTHO ‘Phase’ car, a series of homologation specials Ford produced for the Australian Touring Car Championship. These often go for well over $1 million, but the record figure paid for an Aussie car remains with Peter Brock’s 1982 HDT VH Commodore race car, which changed hands for $2.1 million at auction in 2018.
1995 McLaren F1
While you sometimes see a McLaren doing the rounds in Sydney – the range starts at $350,000 if you’re interested – the one and only McLaren F1 extant in Australia left our shores back in August, destined to return home and join the collection of exotic car dealer, Tom Hartley Junior, in England. Word has it Tom parted with a cool $37 million for the privilege, about what you’d expect for one of just 64 road-going F1s worldwide – albeit one that was crashed and repaired twice!
2025 Ferrari Daytona SP3
While the 2025 Ferrari Monza SP2 is one of the most expensive new cars in Australia at $3,295,947, it was another Ferrari making headlines recently when it went up for auction at the famous Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in America. Dubbed the Ferrari Daytona SP3+1 this ultra-rare supercar was donated by Ferrari itself with all proceeds of its sale going to charity. How much did it sell for? A cool $26,000,000 USD. That’s close to AUD $40 million at today’s exchange rate.
1956 Aston Martin DBR1
Many of the most expensive cars ever sold have motor racing heritage – they’re desirable because they’re part of history and very few examples were produced, making survivors rare. Ferrari and Mercedes-Benz dominate this space (see below), but in August 2017 a British brand joined their hallowed company when a 1956 Aston Martin DBR1 race car sold for $22.5 million USD – narrowly pipping a 1955 Jaguar D-Type that sold for $21.7 million the previous year.
2025 Rolls-Royce La Rose Noire Droptail
Any list of outrageously expensive cars will inevitably feature a Rolls-Royce. The most expensive Roller you can buy brand new today is the La Rose Noire Droptail, a drop-top coupé with suicide doors and ‘True Love’ paintwork based on the deep red seen in the petals of a ‘Black Baccara’ rose. The parquetry on the dashboard alone takes nine months to create by hand. The asking price? About $32 million USD.
1962 Ferrari 250 GTO
Exclusivity has been baked into the Ferrari brand almost since its inception and it says a lot that three of the top five highest car auction sale prices belong to a single Ferrari model – the 250 GTO. This V12 icon was race bred to compete in touring car racing against the likes of the Jaguar E-type and Shelby Cobra. Between 2014 and 2023, three different 1962 Ferrari 250 GTOs sold for $38.1 million, $48.4 million and $51.7 million USD respectively.
1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR
No car in history has ever amalgamated style, sophistication, class and desirability in the same way as the Mercedes-Benz 300 SL coupé. With its long bonnet, huge grille badge, and instantly recognisable gullwing doors, it rewrote the book on what a sports car should be. It wasn’t cheap, though, retailing for US$6820 when the average yearly wage in Australia was about half that.
That seems positively bargain-basement compared to this racing variant, the 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut, which set a new record when it went under the hammer at a 2022 auction for $135 million EUR.
