Nobody warns you about the scale of it.
You arrive at the Paris Expo Porte de Versailles expecting a classic car show — the name Rétromobile suggests something specific, something preserved and a bit dusty. What you find instead is 181,000 people packed into a venue where the hallways smell like rubber and old leather and something electric you can't quite name. The 50th edition broke every attendance record the show had ever set, a 24 percent jump on the year before. You could feel it. The queues, the noise, the mix of people — older collectors who've been coming for decades standing next to twenty-year-olds who found this world through Instagram and clearly have no intention of leaving it.
That tension — between old and new, between the past and whatever comes next — turned out to be the whole point of this edition.
Because alongside Rétromobile, in Hall 4 just through a curtain from the classic machinery, something entirely new opened its doors for the first time. The Ultimate Supercar Garage — the USG — was a brand new event, co-located and co-timed with Rétromobile's anniversary year, dedicated entirely to modern supercars. Bugatti, Koenigsegg, Ferrari through the Charles Pozzi group, Pagani, Alfa Romeo, Maserati. More than 63,000 people came specifically for it. The queues in front of some stands were so bad the organisers have already promised to rethink the layout for 2027.
The pairing wasn't accidental. It was the show's directors making a point — that the collectors buying a Miura and the collectors buying a new Huracán are increasingly the same person, or at least sitting at the same dinner table. Modern supercars are still hand-built in small workshops, the same way pre-war cars were. The bridge between eras is shorter than it looks.
Among the centrepiece reveals of the USG was the Bugatti F.K.P. Hommage — a one-of-one creation named after Ferdinand K. Piëch, unveiled here at its world debut. Red over exposed carbon, the proportions of a Chiron pushed to their absolute limit. The kind of car that stops a room.
The auctions confirmed it in numbers.
Five sales ran simultaneously across the week — an unprecedented density for European collector car week. The headline act was Gooding Christie's, which staged its first-ever European auction as the new official auction partner of Rétromobile, replacing Artcurial in that role after decades. Held in Pavilion 7.1 with 83 lots, it brought €50.4 million at an 80 percent sell-through rate. The room favourite was a 1984 Ferrari 288 GTO — a two-owner car with coachwork by Scaglietti, German registration, offered for the first time in decades — which sold for €9,117,500. A world record, the third time in a single month that a 288 GTO had broken its own ceiling. A 2018 Ferrari FXX K Evo went for €6,980,000, another record, the kind of number that would have seemed impossible for a track-only car a few years ago. Several of the big classics — a 1960 Ferrari 250 California Spider, a 1962 Ferrari 400 Superamerica — didn't make reserve. The market knows exactly what it wants right now.
RM Sotheby's staged its sale at the Salles du Carrousel inside the Louvre, which is its own sentence. The highest total of the week, €68.8 million, led by a 1960 Ferrari 250 GT SWB California Spider at €14,067,500. The first Lancia Stratos HF Stradale to ever sell for over a million dollars crossed the block here too — quietly notable for anyone paying attention to where the market is moving beyond Ferrari.
Artcurial, having broken from Rétromobile's footprint, moved to the Peninsula Paris hotel and had a harder week — 58 percent sell-through — though a single car saved the numbers. An unrestored 1956 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing, dust on the paintwork and bought new by a two-time Olympian, sold for €4,407,800. A record for the model, and it wasn't even clean.
Bonhams moved to the Polo de Paris — the historic polo club in the Bois de Boulogne — where a Swiss collection called Les Belles Endormies, the sleeping beauties, crossed the block. Pre-war cars that had been sitting undisturbed for years, sold at no reserve. A 1934 Mercedes-Benz 500K, one of 18 built with Vanvooren coachwork, estimated at €1.5–2.5 million, sold for €862,500. The kind of result that makes you pay attention.
Then there was Broad Arrow.
Broad Arrow did something different. No live sale — instead a three-part online auction called Global Icons that ran across the week, with physical previews staged at both Rétromobile itself and at Roland-Garros Stadium across town. 72 lots, mostly vintage European sports cars sourced from France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. Nearly 800 registered bidders from 35 countries. They sold 90 percent of everything offered — the strongest sell-through rate of any auction that week.
The headline lot was a car that had never been at public auction before: the 1992 Benetton B192-05, chassis 5, the exact car in which Michael Schumacher won his first Formula 1 Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps. It sold for €5,082,000. The number alone would be interesting — the provenance made it inevitable.
The rest of the catalogue was a different kind of lesson. A 1971 Lamborghini Miura P400 S — one of 338 built, 38,500km on the clock, restored over five years in correct Giallo Miura over Nero leather — sold for €1,716,000. A 1986 Countach 5000 QV went for €792,000. A 2003 Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale in Azzurro California — the only one ever finished in that colour — set a European auction record at €561,000. A 1955 Lancia Aurelia B24 S Spider, €660,000. A Ferrari Dino 246 GT in rare Blu Sera Metallizzato with orange leather — €440,000. Even a 1990 Ferrari Mondial t Cabriolet in Verde Scuro green sold for €99,000 — 52 percent above its high estimate.
Among the crowd was Raul Marchisio — Il Professore himself, the Italian who raced for Lancia, Audi and Renault through the 1990s before a crash on the Col de Tendre in 1996 redirected his life toward Monaco and the supercar trade. His garage, RM Autosport on Avenue Prince Pierre, has become one of the Principality's most recognised addresses. His presence at Rétromobile felt fitting — a man who exists precisely at the intersection the show had chosen to celebrate.
Paris opened the 2026 automotive season. The 50th edition of Rétromobile was a record on almost every measure — attendance, auction totals, the breadth of what was on offer. But the thing that stays with you is simpler than any number: this show, which was supposed to be about the past, spent its anniversary year figuring out what comes next. And judging by the queues in front of the Ultimate Supercar Garage, quite a lot of people came specifically to find out.
