RM Sotheby’s Consigns $100 Million Car Collection, Biggest Ever

(Bloomberg) -- One of the most valuable car collections ever amassed will be sold on Aug. 19 during the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance auctions in Carmel, Calif.

RM Sotheby's has secured the rights to sell 27 vehicles from the Oscar Davis Collection, a spokesman confirms. The group of classic cars—which includes a 1937 BMW 328 and a 1937 Talbot-Lago T150-C SS Teardrop Coupe, each valued at as much as $10 million—is worth an estimated $100 million. The deal to sell the Davis group is a big get for the Ontario-based auction house; previous collections sold by RM Sotheby's reached highs of $50 million to $70 million.

“It is unquestionably one of the finest private collections of automobiles gathered by a single owner,” says Gord Duff, RM Sotheby's global head of actions.

The sale comes in a red-hot collector car market both in online and live auctions. In January in Scottsdale, Ariz., total sales across the five major auction houses hit $266.7 million, up 22% over those in 2020, though fewer cars sold.

The collection's primary focus is the greatest examples of Italian marques. Highlights include a 1953 Ferrari 375MM Spider valued as high as $12 million and a 1936 Lancia Astura Cabriolet Series III valued at up to $2 million. Two Maseratis—a 1955 Maserati A6G/54 2000 Spyder and a 1957 Maserati 450S Spider—are expected to draw as much as $5 million and $13 million, respectively.

Davis, the chairman and owner of Hayward Industries, died in 2021 in New York at the age of 95. A Hungarian immigrant who arrived at Ellis Island in 1928 at the age of 3, Davis acquired the small metal fabrication company that became Hayward Industries in 1964 and then built it into a global supplier of swimming pool equipment. He exhibited multiple prize-winning cars at the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance and the Amelia Island Concours d'Elegance for more than three decades and was a longtime friend of RM Group Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Rob Myer.

Robert Davis, son of Oscar Davis and a trustee of the Davis estate, is offering part of the collection for sale. “Six or so” of the cars from the group of 27 will be sold to private buyers, says Ethan Gibson, a spokesman for RM Sotheby's. The rest will go on sale to the public, along with other cars RM Sotheby's will sell in Monterey, Calif. Reserves have yet to be determined.