If you're wondering what the sale of $475m worth of classic metal last week at Monterey meant for the price of your 1964 EH Holden then let's separate the fake news, spin, dissimulations, misinformation, lies and taradiddles and focus on the real facts.
For a start, Monterey Car Week is actually two weeks. Second, for all the talk of records, the reality is that while a few cars, like the 1995 McLaren F1, did bring $30m (at today's woeful exchange rates), most of the top 20 highest sellers went at or below reserve.
What Monterey did show, apart from the fact that even reasonably rich persons of mainly the white persuasion can still enjoy the over 100 events in the capital of John Steinbeck (book writer and serious petrol head) land, good cars are going to sell better at a live event. It also, hopefully, signalled the end of flipping cars from auction to auction.
Given the bull (in all senses of the word) market in classic cars, paintings, watches, houses, dogs and toothbrush holders, dealers have been able to buy, say, an old Maser, for a million in April and sell for $1.5m in September. Those cars didn't sell last week.
But the bottom line is that the same brands bring the same big prices in the same auctions wherever in the world you are. The 10 biggest sales were five Fezzers, the Macca, an Aston Martin DB4, a lovely 1929 Bugatti, a 1963 Cobra and a 1928 Merc.
Talking of Maccas, a special deal for you from the Macca factory. Two (or more depending on the state of your cunning kick) days driving for two people in a $400k McLaren GT, 300km from the Arctic Circle on one of Finland's famous frozen lakes, transformed into a vast ice-driving circuit with a Macca driver coach (probably Lando or Danny), three nights in an igloo with ice pool and sauna, husky sledding and gourmet reindeer dinners, all for $45k no more to pay. All this happens in February when the air temp is a balmy -27C.
The exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art addresses the conflicted feelings – compulsion, fixation, desire, and rage – that developed in response to cars and car culture in the 20th century. In other words, MOMA have put some cars in the sculpture garden and asks patrons to consider the complicated love affair we have with our metal. Naturally there's a 1965 Porker, a phallic 1963 E-Type, a love on the bonnet 1959 Beetle and an achingly sensual 1948 Cisitalia 202 GT.