Bonhams' Goodwood Revival Catalogue Has a Strong Top and a Thin Middle

Bonhams sells at the Goodwood Motor Circuit on Saturday 19 September 2026, and the catalogue is top-heavy in a way that tells you something about the market. A 1962 Aston Martin DB4 SS Vantage Convertible carries a £700,000 to £900,000 estimate. Behind it sit three cars estimated between £350,000 and £600,000. What is absent is the middle.

What is catalogued

The Nissan is the one worth a second look for readers of this publication. A Japanese factory Group C prototype with a naturally aspirated V12 is not the kind of car that turns up at a British circuit sale, and its estimate range sits above what most road-going Japanese performance cars have ever achieved at auction. It is a reminder that Japanese collector interest has moved well past the Skyline.

What last year’s sale did

Bonhams sold 154 lots at the 2025 Goodwood Revival sale on 13 September 2025. The top result was an Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato Sanction III Coupé at £1,079,000 including premium. Below it, the next four results were a 1977 TOJ SC302 at £356,500, a 1951 Jaguar XK120 Competition Roadster at £316,250, a 1973 Ferrari 365 GTB/4 ‘Daytona’ at £309,350, and a 1954 Aston Martin DB2/4 Drophead Coupé at £207,000.

The gap between first and second place in 2025 was more than £700,000. If the 2026 estimates hold, the same shape repeats: one car doing most of the work, a cluster in the mid-hundreds, and a long tail. That is what a market with a strong top end and a soft underbelly looks like from the auctioneer’s side of the rostrum.

What a Goodwood result costs to land

Hammer price is not what you pay, and it is a long way from what a car costs on your driveway. Three additions apply before a single mile of ocean.

• Buyer’s premium is charged on top of the hammer, on a published scale. The 2025 results above are stated including premium; the 2026 estimates are not. Do not compare the two as though they were the same number.
• UK VAT treatment varies by lot. Some cars are sold under a margin scheme, some carry VAT on the premium only, some are fully taxable. It is stated per lot and it changes the total by thousands.
• Your destination then applies its own regime. Ireland assesses VRT on Revenue’s own open market selling price rather than on your invoice. Hong Kong applies first registration tax on the Customs and Excise Department’s determination. Neither cares what you paid at Goodwood.

Converted at the European Central Bank’s reference rates for 9 September 2026, an implied sterling-dollar cross of about 1.356 puts the DB4’s £900,000 top estimate a little above US$1.2 million, and its £700,000 lower estimate just under US$950,000. Whether the car crosses the million-dollar line therefore depends on the currency as much as on the bidding.

Does this apply to you?

Directly, only if you buy historic cars. Indirectly, to any dealer using classic values as a read on where discretionary money is going: a catalogue with four lots above £350,000 and little underneath them is consistent with what the broader indices have been reporting all year — strength at the very top, and weakness in the middle where most people actually transact.

The superlative check

Bonhams’ material describes the DB4 Convertible as the rarest Aston Martin road car of the David Brown era apart from the Zagato, on the basis of a stated production run of 70 convertibles between 1961 and 1963. We have not independently verified that production total against a factory record, and we are attributing the claim rather than repeating it as established fact. Rarity claims in auction catalogues are marketing until somebody checks them.

Move now or wait?

If you intend to bid, the work that matters happens before 19 September and none of it is about price. Confirm the VAT status of the specific lot. Confirm your destination will register the car, and on what evidence. Confirm who is moving it out of Chichester and under what insurance, because a car bought at a circuit sale does not leave on a transporter you have not booked.

If you do not intend to bid, there is nothing here to act on, and the results will tell you more in ten days than the estimates do now.

Estimates are published by Bonhams and do not include buyer’s premium or applicable taxes. Details above were checked on 10 September 2026 against Bonhams’ press material. Nothing in this article is a valuation, a result, or advice to bid.