Ever wonder what the most expensive car in the world is? This question can be answered in two different ways, depending on whether we’re talking about new cars or collector cars. While there are plenty of new vehicles on sale today that cost over $1 million, the most expensive vehicles are historically significant, collectible cars that offer ultra-exclusive provenance, luxury, performance and features. While many of these vehicles have shown to be good investments, many have not, as even the greatest classic cars haven’t matched the returns of more down-to-earth asset classes over time.
What is the Most Expensive Car in the World?
- How Much Does the Most Expensive Car in the World Cost?
- Features of the 2023 Rolls Royce Arcadia Droptail
- Features of the 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe
- Factors Affecting the Price of Ultra-Luxury Cars
- Historic Record-Breaking Prices for Supercars
- Exquisite Features of High-End Luxury Vehicles
- Collectibility and Investment Value of Luxury Cars
How Much Does the Most Expensive Car in the World Cost?
The most expensive new car sold today is the bespoke 2024 Rolls Royce Droptail, more specifically, the Droptail Arcadia, the third in a series of four Droptail custom-built roadsters assembled by Rolls Royce for an unnamed buyer in Singapore. It reportedly costs $30 million.
The second-most expensive car behind the Rolls Royce is a hypercar—the $7 million Pagani Huayra Codalunga. The Bugatti Mistral comes in third at $5 million. Below that, expect a price tag from $360,000 to $430,000 for the Lamborghini Temerario.
These prices change if we’re talking about collector cars, however. In that case, the most expensive car in the world is over half a century old. The 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe was sold by Sotheby’s at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart on May 5, 2022, for an astounding €135 million, which is equivalent to over $150 million in late September 2024.
The purchase price of this 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe, one of only two prototypes, broke the previous record for the most expensive car ever purchased by more than double. The previous record transactions were for a pair of Italian legends. A 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO featuring coachwork by Scaglietti exchanged hands for $51.7 million on November 13, 2023, and prior to that, the most expensive ever sold was on August 25, 2018, another 1962 Ferrari GTO that traded hands at $48.4 million.
Features of the 2023 Rolls Royce Arcadia Droptail
Designed to harken back to the glory days of European, pre-war custom luxury coachbuilding, the Rolls Royce is a one-off, fully customized drophead (i.e. convertible) coupe. As such, the interior was designed around the extensive use of a very particular subtropical hardwood Rolls Royce calls “Santos Straight Grain,” which is really a kind of rosewood. Once the buyer selected the wood species, Rolls Royce’s designers color-matched other interior materials to complement the stunning open-pore, furniture-grade wood.
The 6.75-liter V12 engine is largely based on the Rolls Royce Phantom and produces 593 horsepower and 620 pound-feet of torque.
Features of the 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe
At nearly five times the cost of the Rolls Royce, the Mercedes Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe remains pricey because of its Mercedes’ Formula One engineering and because it comes from a critical inflection point in the German manufacturer’s racing history.
The 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupes—named after long-time Mercedes-Benz designer and engineer Rudolph Uhlenhaut—was based on the W196 platform that Mercedes successfully used in its 1954 and 1955 Formula One and endurance car racing campaigns. You could consider it the grandfather of today’s modern Mercedes-AMG vehicles.
The car featured aerodynamic coupe bodywork, inboard drum brakes, a leather accelerator pedal and a huge fuel tank that took up much of the trunk, along with space for two spare tires. Due in part to the use of magnesium alloy bodywork over a steel tubular chassis, the vehicle weighed just 2,200 pounds. It was powered by a 3.0-liter inline eight-cylinder engine that made roughly 310 horsepower and pushed the sports car to a top speed of 300 kilometers per hour.
Factors Affecting the Price of Ultra-Luxury Cars
All of these cars come with top-shelf engineering, luxury materials, craftsmanship and pedigree. Above all, these are exceedingly rare road cars—not track-only vehicles—that typically offer some combination of ultra-bespoke, highly customizable luxury (many are one-of-a-kind) and otherworldly on-road performance.
Historic Record-Breaking Prices for Supercars
The prices of supercars continue to show few limits for the most well-heeled buyers. Of the Robb Report’s 50 Most Expensive New Cars on sale today, only 12 of 50 have prices that start below $1 million. The most recent Monterey Car Week (late summer 2024) auctions, among the most prestigious in the world, showed the wealthy were continuing to buy cars at exorbitant prices.
The 1976 Porsche 935 (chassis 935-001, the very first very built) that was reportedly the only Works Martini Racing 935 privately owned, recently fetched $4.3 million, which approaches the selling price of the 935 previously owned by Paul Newman that sold for $4.84 million back in 2016.
A 1995 Ferrari 333 SP Evoluzione race car sold for $5.1 million in the same auction. A 1995 Ferrari F50, which sold for roughly $500,000 new, was just sold for over 10 times that amount ($5.5 million, a new record for the Pininfarina-designed F50). Speaking of Ferrari, guess which American manufacturer beat Ferrari at LeMans four years straight in the late 1960s? If you guessed correctly, you might not be shocked at the $7.87 million sales price of the 1969 Ford GT40 Lightweight sold at Monterey this summer.
Exquisite Features of High-End Luxury Vehicles
One example of the exquisite features you can get on high-end luxury vehicles is, of course, Bugatti. The French automaker offers interiors with hyper-customizable options, where customers can work with designers to specify nearly everything (materials, trim, colors) via custom order and delivery.
British car-maker Rolls Royce offers a champagne chiller option with accompanying glasses on its RR Cullinan SUV. For a mere $13,354 (£10,0000 in Rolls’ hometown of Goodwood, England), you can tell Rolls Royce designers which part of the night sky or which constellation is your favorite, and they’ll custom make a fine leather headliner with up to 1,600 individual fiber-optic lights that faithfully recreate your favorite view of intergalactic nigh splendor. Stablemate Bentley has an option for thick, luxurious lambswool “rugs” (not sure if you can buy mere “floor mats” on the Flying Spur).
What fewer non-car people understand or possibly appreciate is the powertrain engineering that is the beating heart and soul of ultra-luxury makes. With power being the ultimate luxury, no expense is spared on truly extravagant powertrains for Bugattis, McLarens, Koenigseggs and Paganis.
The limited-edition Bugatti Tourbillon, for instance, uses a non-forced induction V16 gasoline engine combined with three electric motors to produce a peak power of 1,800 horsepower. Most other Bugattis, including the Bugatti Chiron and Bugatti Divo, use a four-turbo W16 engine.
Collectibility and Investment Value of Luxury Cars
Trying to predict the future value of many cars is a all-but impossible, as all but the most exclusive, historically significant or rare will depreciate like other cars, if not more. Even some extremely rare, extremely expensive luxury vehicles aren’t guaranteed to show fabulous returns as automotive investments.
Take the Mercedes-Benz Maybach 57 ultra-luxury sedan, which cost $311,700 in 2003. In 2024 dollars, that would be roughly $528,000. It oozed luxury and offered a twin-turbocharged V12 engine, yet that same engine was more or less the same as the less expensive Mercedes-Benz S600 luxury sedan. On CarGurus today, you can pick up a Mercedes-Benz Maybach 57 for less than $60,000.
However, it’s clear that in the last few decades, many collectible vintage cars have proven very good investments. Take that Ferrari F50, which cost $500,000 when new and recently sold for $5.5 million. That 10-fold increase in value sounds great until you compare it to returns on other potential investments you could have made. But racing through the gears on your favorite two-lane road may very well be immeasurable, if not priceless.
