Value
The Most Expensive Porsche Ever Sold
The most expensive Porsche ever sold is a 1970 917K, at $14,080,000 — Gooding & Company, 19 August 2017. Every one of the five Porsches on the all-time auction list is a racing car, which is the whole explanation. The dearest Porsche you can rent in Los Angeles is a 718 Boxster, and it is the cheapest exotic we have.
| Porsche | Figure | What kind of number that is |
|---|---|---|
| 917K, 1970 — chassis 917-024 | $14,080,000 | Hammer, Gooding & Company, August 2017. Race car. |
| 956, 1982 — chassis 956-003 | $10,120,000 | Hammer, Gooding, August 2015. Race car. |
| 917/10, 1972 | $5,830,000 | Hammer, Mecum, August 2012. Race car. |
| 911 GT1 Strassenversion, 1998 | $5,665,000 | Hammer, Gooding, March 2017. A race car made road-legal. |
| Type 64, 1939 | did not sell | Withdrawn at RM Sotheby's, 2019, after the bids were displayed wrongly. |
| 718 Boxster | $286/day | What the dearest Porsche in our garage costs. |
Every expensive Porsche is a racing car
Read the list of the most expensive cars ever sold at public auction and Porsche appears five times. All five are competition cars, and four of the five never had number plates.
That is not a coincidence and it is not a quirk of one auction season. It is the answer to the question. Porsche's road cars — even the rare ones, even the good ones — do not reach these figures, because the money at this level is not paying for a car. It is paying for a logbook: a chassis number that appears in a race result, on a date, at a circuit somebody has heard of.
This is the exact inverse of Lamborghini, which appears on that list not at all, for the mirror-image reason. Porsche went racing constantly and won; Lamborghini refused to go at all. Sixty years later the two decisions are visible in the same column of numbers. The one Porsche a reader can be handed the keys to is in our own Porsche pair, and it is not on any list.
The record: a 917 that raced once
Chassis 917-024 made $14,080,000 at Gooding & Company’s Pebble Beach sale in August 2017. The 917 is the car that gave Porsche its first outright win at Le Mans, in 1970, and repeated it in 1971, using a flat-twelve that grew from 4.5 to 5.4 litres across the programme. Fifty-nine were built in total.
The 917 also has a second life that has nothing to do with racing and everything to do with the price. It is the car from Steve McQueen's Le Mans, and a chassis that appeared in that film carries something no lap time can supply. When people say a car is worth fourteen million dollars, part of what they are pricing is a film most of them have seen.
Two rules, because they are where these lists break
A racing chassis is not a model. These prices belong to individual chassis numbers with individual histories, not to the 917 as a type. Another 917 with a duller logbook is worth a fraction of 917-024, and quoting one figure for “a 917” is how these lists mislead.
Withdrawn is not sold. A car that reached a headline number and then did not change hands has not set a record. It has set an estimate.
The most expensive Porsche that never sold
The strangest entry does not have a price at all. The Type 64 is a 1939 aluminium-bodied streamliner built from the drawings of a record car, three of them, around a flat-four making about forty horsepower and good for roughly a hundred miles an hour. Ferdinand Porsche wanted it entered in a Berlin–Rome race that the war cancelled. It is generally treated as the first car from what became Porsche.
RM Sotheby's brought it to Monterey in 2019 expecting more than twenty million dollars. What happened instead is that the bids were displayed wrongly on the screen in the room, the audience believed the number was climbing far faster than it was, and when the confusion was resolved the car did not sell. It remains the most expensive Porsche nobody bought.
It is worth keeping in the table for exactly that reason. A ranking that only lists completed sales tells you what changed hands; a ranking that also names the famous failure tells you where the ceiling actually is, and the Type 64 says the ceiling for a pre-war Porsche was not, on that evening, above twenty million dollars.
What about the road cars?
Porsche's road cars sit an order of magnitude below the racing ones, and the gap is instructive. The dearest of them at auction is the 911 GT1 Strassenversion at $5,665,000 — and the clue is in the name. Strassenversion means street version: it is a Le Mans prototype given number plates so the rules would allow the racing one, not a road car that got fast.
Below that the numbers fall away quickly. The Carrera GT, the 959, the 918 Spyder and the various 911 R and GT specials are collectible and rising, but none of them is in this conversation. A Porsche becomes a seven-figure car by racing, or by being so nearly a racing car that the distinction stops mattering.
The most expensive Porsche in Los Angeles
None of the cars above exists in a rental fleet, and the ones that do exist mostly do not have number plates.
Our Porsche ladder is two cars and it is short: a red 718 Boxster convertible at $286/day and a grey Macan at $149/day. That makes the Boxster the dearest Porsche here and, at the same time, the cheapest exotic in the whole garage — every Lamborghini, the Ferrari and the Corvettes all sit above it.
That sounds like a downgrade and it is not. The Boxster is mid-engined, which is the layout the 917 used and the 911 does not, and on a canyon road it is a more useful car than most of what costs four times as much. If the question behind “what is the most expensive Porsche” is really “which Porsche should I drive this weekend”, the answer and the price point are not the same thing here, and that is unusual.
What it costs, and how it reaches you
The Boxster carries a $750 refundable deposit and the Macan $500, both back 5–7 business days after the car returns. Both take multi-day and monthly blocks, and on cars at this end of the range those blocks genuinely bite — the discount for a week is real here in a way it is not on the exotics, so the car's own page is where to read it.
Collection from our lot on Robertson Boulevard is free and delivery to the partner hotels in Beverly Hills is complimentary. Airport delivery is priced per direction: $75 standard, car left in the airport parking structure with a free shuttle out to it, and $150 VIP, car at the terminal. The mileage allowance on both is written into your rental agreement. The rest is in the terms.
The short version
The most expensive Porsche ever sold is chassis 917-024, a 1970 917K, at $14,080,000 at Gooding & Company in August 2017. The most expensive Porsche never sold is the 1939 Type 64, withdrawn at RM Sotheby's in 2019 after the bidding was displayed wrongly.
All five Porsches on the all-time auction list are racing cars, and the dearest road car among them is a Le Mans prototype wearing number plates. That is the answer to the question in one sentence: at Porsche, the expensive cars are the ones that raced.
The most expensive Porsche in Los Angeles is a 718 Boxster, which is also the cheapest exotic in our garage, and on the right road that is not a contradiction.
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Frequently asked questions
What is the most expensive Porsche ever sold?
A 1970 Porsche 917K, chassis 917-024, at $14,080,000 with Gooding & Company on 19 August 2017. The 917 is the model that won Porsche its first outright Le Mans in 1970, and this particular chassis also carries a connection to Steve McQueen's film Le Mans, which is part of what the money is paying for.
Why are the most expensive Porsches all racing cars?
Because at this level the money is paying for a logbook rather than for a car. All five Porsches on the all-time auction list are competition cars, and four of them never wore number plates. The dearest road car among them, the 911 GT1 Strassenversion at $5,665,000, is a Le Mans prototype made street-legal so the rules would allow the racing version.
What happened with the Porsche Type 64 auction?
RM Sotheby's offered the 1939 Type 64 at Monterey in 2019 expecting over $20 million. The bid amounts were displayed incorrectly in the room, the audience believed the price was climbing far faster than it was, and once the confusion was sorted out the car did not sell. It is the most expensive Porsche nobody bought.
Is the Porsche Type 64 really the first Porsche?
It is generally treated that way. Three were built in 1939 with aluminium bodies, using drawings for a record car based on the VW 38 prototype, around a flat-four making about forty horsepower and capable of roughly a hundred miles an hour. Ferdinand Porsche intended it for a Berlin-Rome race that the war cancelled.
Which Porsche can you rent in Los Angeles?
Two: a red 718 Boxster convertible at $286/day and a grey Macan at $149/day. The Boxster is the most expensive Porsche we hold and simultaneously the cheapest exotic in the fleet. None of the cars in the ranking above is rentable anywhere.