Right Car, Wrong Auction

January 09, 2023

Sometimes the venue makes the sale and sometimes the venue breaks the sale. In this case, this was the wrong venue for such a historic Porsche race car. Now I’m not saying that Mecum is the wrong auction house, but the seller should have waited for Mecum Monterey if the option were there. But in this case, the 1959 RSK above was part of a greater collection and went unsold as a Star Car in Kissimmee.

The car, one of seven RSKs built to convert between a center seat configuration and a more traditional offset configuration has plenty of racing history with a 1st overall at the 1959 Leopoldville Grand Prix and a 3rd in class and 6th overall in the 1960 Buenos Aires Grand Prix. As part of the Rick Grant collection for over 30 years, the car was campaigned in vintage racing and racked up many awards including a class win at Amelia Island.

So let’s say the right venue, in the right city, what would this car bring? The most recent sale of an RSK was at $4,300,000. This was for a factory race car with Le Mans and Targa Florio history. So consider this the peak. The other car sold in the last year had a bit more of an extensive race history than our Spotlight car and sold for $2,975,000.

But since our Spotlight car is one of only 7 RSKs that were originally built for single-seater use, I’d say it would still be up there with our $2.9m car. Maybe $3.5 if there were two very enthusiastic bidders in the room, but I don’t think it would have hit the high estimate of $4m, even at the perfect venue on a perfect day. I do hope the car finds a new home with another caretaker who will continue to race it as Rick Grant did over the years.