We previewed last week the annual Pebble Beach, California, festival of concours and historic racing with a thousand cars up for auction between half a dozen different auction houses - and as expected, some phenomenal results were realised.

The oldest motor vehicles don't always raise the highest prices, due to their sheer impracticality, but Gooding & Co broke all records with their sale of the world's oldest running motor vehicle, the 1884 steam-powered De Dion Bouton et Trepardoux - perhaps helped by their clever inclusion on their website of a video of it driving happily along a country lane. It sold for $3,520,000, over 1.75 million.

But even that phemonenal sale was beaten by two others selling for over 2 million each the 1931 Gurney-Nutting boat tail-bodied Blower Bentley in wonderfully original condition fetched a staggering $4,510,000 and the 1959 Ferrari 250GT California raised $4,455,000. Wow!

And Richard J Solove's donation of his entire collection to charity? Well, the nine Rolls-Royce Silver Ghosts, valued at five million pounds, raised exactly that - slightly over $10 million. Cheapest car sold was 'just'  $28,600 - for a BMW Isetta! More on www.goodingco.com..

Bonhams www.bonhams.com was happy to realise $337,000 for the oldest known Cadillac, shown at the 1903 New York Auto Show and estimated at 150-175,000. Bonhams also blew its pre-sale estimate of 62,500-75,000 for the best Corvette L88 Coupe in the world, selling it for a stonking $252,500.

Looking further ahead, Bonhams has already consigned for sale in London on December 3 the world's oldest surviving Rolls-Royce and is hoping to raise over a million pounds for it - the car will be on show at Pebble Beach, but viewers will have to wait to buy it. Shown at the Paris Salon in Autumn 1904, it's the only Rolls-Royce eligible for the London-Brighton Veteran Car Run.
Malcolm McKay, Motorbase News Editor