What is the Bonhams Scottsdale auction?
Bonhams is a London auction house founded in 1793 that sells everything from Old Masters to whisky, and every January since 2012 it has sold cars in Scottsdale. The venue is the Westin Kierland Resort, the format is a single auction day after two days of preview, and the docket is small — 60 to 80 cars — because the point is quality, not volume.
That makes it the counterweight to everything else in Arizona Car Week. While Barrett-Jackson runs nearly 2,000 cars across a WestWorld arena for nine days, Bonhams puts a curated field of European sports cars, prewar coachwork, and blue-chip exotics on a resort lawn and sells them in an afternoon. Its Scottsdale record is a $9.4 million Ferrari 275 GTB Competizione in 2015; the 2026 sale did $11 million on just 59 cars, led by a one-off Bugatti Chiron.
For a spectator it’s the most relaxed serious-money room in town. You can preview a Bugatti up close, talk to the specialist who catalogued it, then watch a few hundred collectors decide what it’s worth — and be done in time for dinner at Kierland Commons across the street.
How to do it
Preview first. The two preview days are the underrated part. Cars sit on the Westin’s lawns and in its halls with bonnets up and doors open, and Bonhams’ motoring specialists are there to answer questions. The access is far better than the auction tents at WestWorld, where the interesting cars are roped off behind bidder-only lines.
Auction day moves fast. With fewer than 80 lots, the sale runs a single session — typically starting late morning — and the big cars are scattered through the order rather than saved for the end. Grab a catalogue or the online lot list, mark the six you care about, and be seated for them. The action is on the phones and in the front rows as much as on the block; a $5 million car can sell in ninety seconds to a bidder you never see.
Pair it. Bonhams’ date usually lands the same week as RM Sotheby’s sale at the Arizona Biltmore in Phoenix and the Arizona Concours on the Civic Center lawn — the three together are the high-end circuit, and Kierland sits neatly between the Biltmore and WestWorld.
Practical: park at the resort; the Westin’s lazy river and bagpiper-at-sunset routine are still running for guests, and the lobby bar is where the post-sale debriefs happen. Late January is cool in the morning, perfect by noon.
Why Bonhams came to the desert
By 2011, Scottsdale’s January had become the largest collector-car marketplace in the world, and Bonhams — which already ran storied sales at Goodwood and Quail Lodge — wanted a seat at the table. Its debut sale on January 19, 2012 was calibrated to make a statement: 67 cars, a 1937 Mercedes 540K Cabriolet as the headliner, Marlene Dietrich’s Rolls-Royce Phantom I, and, for the tabloids, Andy Warhol’s Rolls. The $5.7 million total was modest by Car Week standards but the average price was not, and that has been the identity ever since.
The house chose the Westin Kierland deliberately. The volume auctions live at WestWorld and the Salt River fields; the boutique sales live at resorts — RM at the Biltmore, Gooding at Fashion Square while it lasted — because their buyers stay there and the setting flatters the cars. Kierland’s lawns and ballrooms were built for exactly this kind of gathering.
The results followed. The 2015 Ferrari 275 GTB Competizione at $9,405,000 remains the house’s Scottsdale high-water mark and among the top results in the week’s history. The 2020s brought a rebrand — the motoring department now trades as Bonhams|Cars — and a docket that has learned to mix seven-figure Bugattis with pop-culture lots like Tupac Shakur’s Hummer, which set a world record for the model in 2026.
The competitive landscape
Car Week’s roster has churned around it. Russo and Steele folded, Gooding left, Worldwide moved to Tempe, and Leake’s single Salt River Fields sale never returned. Bonhams stayed, in the same ballroom, on the same week, which in the event business is its own kind of achievement. It is now the only boutique auction house physically inside Scottsdale during Car Week — the one place a spectator can watch a truly rare car sell in a room with carpet.