Monterey Car Week closed on Sunday, August 16, and the 75th Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance ended it the way the Peninsula prefers: with a prewar American car of unimpeachable provenance on the winner’s ramp. The 1935 Duesenberg SSJ Special Speedster owned by Harry Yeaggy of Cincinnati took Best of Show — one of only two SSJs built, originally delivered to Clark Gable, and the eighth Best of Show trophy for Duesenberg, still the winningest American marque at Pebble Beach. It was Yeaggy’s second win on that lawn, after the “Mormon Meteor” in 2007. The anniversary year also pushed the Concours past $50 million in cumulative charitable giving, with more than $4.3 million raised in 2026 alone for over 130 Monterey County nonprofits.

Down the road, the auction rooms did what they have done for the last several Augusts, only harder at the top. RM Sotheby’s ran August 13–15 at the Portola Hotel and Monterey Conference Center, where the top ten lots alone accounted for more than $170 million. A 2026 Ferrari Luce “Tailor Made,” chassis 0, brought $40,000,000. A 1996 McLaren F1 GTR, chassis 10R, took $34,655,000. Mecum’s Monterey sale was led by a Ferrari F50 at $14,575,000 and an Enzo at $12,100,000, with at least 23 cars crossing seven figures. Hagerty had forecast the week at roughly $470 million to $496 million against the standing record of $471.2 million set in 2022; consolidated final tallies are still being audited across the houses, so treat any single headline number you see this week as provisional.

The Corvette result that reframed the segment

For anyone whose collecting interest runs to American cars, the defining number of the week was not a Ferrari. It was $18,705,000, paid at RM Sotheby’s for the 1963 Chevrolet Corvette Grand Sport, chassis 003 — one of five built, the first of the three coupes, and the most expensive Corvette ever sold at public auction. The previous benchmark was $7,705,000 for the 1957 Corvette SS Project XP-64 at RM Sotheby’s Miami in 2025. That is not an increment. That is a reset.

Chassis 003 earned it. Zora Arkus-Duntov conceived the Grand Sport as an off-the-books answer to Shelby’s Cobra, stripping a production Sting Ray of roughly 1,400 pounds. This car finished second in class at the 1964 Sebring 12 Hours with A.J. Foyt and John Cannon aboard, wearing the blue No. 2 livery it still carries, and third in class again in 1965. It has spent most of its life with long-term custodians who kept it running and exercised it in historic competition.

What that result confirms is something the mid-year market has been circling for several seasons: the 1963–1967 Corvette is no longer a domestic-muscle asset. It is an internationally traded one. And because there are only five Grand Sports, the demand that number represents has to go somewhere. Increasingly it goes toward the small population of C2s and Tri-Fives built to a standard that is genuinely comparable in craft — cars where the engineering, the fabrication, and the finish would survive a walk-around by a Pebble Beach judge even though they will never be eligible for that lawn.

That is the tier RK Motors operates in at the top of the inventory. Here is what it looks like.

1963 Corvette Split-Window Restomod — Art Morrison chassis, and now sold

Offered at $359,900 and now sold, this Firecracker Red coupe (stock #138191, VIN 30837S106053) is the cleanest illustration of the argument. It began as a genuinely good original Split-Window body and went through nearly three years of work at Lundquist Restorations in Salt Lake City, with C2 stress points — the rear tub, inner front fenders, cowl, and the original floor toolbox location — reinforced on the basis of documented research rather than guesswork. The cowl was reworked to conceal the wiper motor. A subtle chin spoiler was added to balance the nose. It took awards at the 2022 Salt Lake City Autorama and showed 579 miles at sale.

Underneath sat an all-new Art Morrison chassis with Strange adjustable coilovers at all four corners, a Ford 9-inch with 3.73 gearing and a limited-slip, Wilwood four-wheel power discs, and power rack-and-pinion steering. A 525-horsepower Chevrolet Performance LS3 fed a 4L70E with a SuperMatic converter in the 3,000–3,400 stall range; a Griffin radiator and a bespoke Dr. Gas exhaust handled the rest. Dale Hancock Upholstery trimmed the cabin in saddle leather with black suede inserts, over German square-weave carpet, with Dakota Digital instruments behind a modified original dash bezel and a Custom Autosound head unit that reads as factory. Forged Schott Mach 5 wheels, 18-inch front and 20-inch rear, carried Michelin Pilot Sport 4S rubber.

We mention a sold car for a reason. Cars at this level are frequently dismissed as aspirational pricing. This one transacted. So did the Daytona Blue, Triple Crown–awarded numbers-matching L76 Split-Window we listed alongside it. Both ends of the Split-Window market — the modernized and the sanctified — cleared at the same time. That is a market signal, not a coincidence. Full details remain in the archive: the Art Morrison Split-Window restomod.

1965 Corvette Widebody by Vette Industries — $369,900

If the Split-Window is the orthodox choice, this widebody coupe is the heretical one, and it is executed with the same seriousness. It is titled a 1965 because it retains its original birdcage, VIN 194375S117103, but it wears a brand-new GM-licensed 1967 shell laid up by Vette Industries using proprietary tooling and modern resins, with factory-correct mounting points. The body is three inches wider than stock. That is enough to change the car’s proportions entirely — the Sting Ray’s hips read like a modern supercar’s — while opening room for real tire and real suspension travel. Vette Industries was recognized at SEMA for advancing Corvette composites, and the panel fit here is the argument for why.

The chassis is a Street Shop unit built around C7 Corvette suspension geometry with adjustable QA1 coilovers, power rack-and-pinion steering, and a powder-coated 8.8-inch Cobra rear with a 3.73 limited-slip. Braking uses a Bosch iBooster electronic-assist system paired with Z51-spec hardware — the same architecture found on modern performance EVs, chosen because it delivers consistent pedal pressure without depending on engine vacuum. The 6.2-liter LS3 makes 495 horsepower and is deliberately dressed to read as a period 427, with polished valve covers, stainless headers, and a triangular Turbo-Jet air cleaner over what is in fact modern electronic fuel injection. A Tremec TKX five-speed keeps it a driver’s car.

Details reward the second look. The one-off 36-spoke turbine-style knock-off wheels, 19-inch front and 20-inch rear, are drawn to imitate redline rubber; they carry Michelin Pilot Sport 4S in 245/40ZR19 and 345/30ZR20. Steve Holcomb executed the interior in red leather with black suede, with an Antique Automobile Radio head unit concealing Bluetooth, Vintage Air climate control, and an Alcantara headliner. The decklid wears a custom “Megalodon” badge in factory style rather than Sting Ray script — a nod to the Mako Shark concept that produced the C2’s shape in the first place. It shows 1,205 miles.

1957 Bel Air Twin-Turbo Pro Touring by Graham’s Hot Rod Shop — $399,900

The flagship of the current inventory is a Tri-Five, which is fitting: no other American body shape has held its cultural position as stubbornly. Stock #137894, VIN VC57L100847, shows 61 miles. Graham’s Hot Rod Shop built it end to end, including the pro-touring chassis it sits on, with a Strange 9-inch rear axle, QA1 coilovers front and rear, 14-inch Wilwood discs with six-piston calipers, and power rack-and-pinion steering. Billet Specialties wheels measure 18 inches front and 19 rear, with 355-section Michelin Pilot Sport rubber out back.

The engine is the headline: a 427-cubic-inch twin-turbocharged LS3 producing 1,200 horsepower on pump gas and 1,600 on race gas, with custom-fabricated turbo piping and intake and a Gearstar 4L80E behind it. An in-dash selectable tune, managed through a Holley digital touchscreen, lets the car be driven at a sane output and then unlocked. The body was restored and refined before being finished in a custom two-tone green, and the cabin follows the same color story in green leather over a bench seat — a deliberately traditional choice in a car that is anything but. Push-button start, power windows, dual polished Kooks stainless exhaust, and a custom-upholstered trunk with hand-fabricated subwoofer enclosures and dual hidden batteries round it out.

What Monterey actually rewards

Strip away the setting and the Peninsula’s pricing logic comes down to four things, and they are portable to any segment.

• Singularity. A one-year-only rear window. Five Grand Sports. Two SSJs. Scarcity that cannot be manufactured after the fact.
• Attributable work. Pebble Beach cares who did the coachwork. This market increasingly cares who did the build — Lundquist, Vette Industries, Graham’s, Street Shop, Art Morrison, Dale Hancock, Steve Holcomb are all names a knowledgeable buyer can price.
• Documentation. Photo albums of the process, award records, and a verifiable build sheet do the same job for a modern build that a factory record does for a prewar car.
• Unrecoverable cost. Every one of these cars was completed for materially more than its asking price. That gap is the buyer’s margin, and it is the single most underappreciated fact in the restomod market.

Where this goes next

The forecast Hagerty published before the week described a K-shaped market: records at the very top while the middle softens. Monterey largely delivered on that, with modern supercars projected to represent roughly 60 percent of the week’s volume. The useful read for American-car collectors is that the top of the domestic market moved with the top of the international one. The Grand Sport did not sell at a Corvette price. It sold at a blue-chip price.

Between now and January, the calendar runs through the fall show season and SEMA, where builds of exactly this kind are validated in public before they ever reach a bidder’s book. Then Scottsdale and Kissimmee in January will price the segment out loud. If Monterey’s message holds, the cars that hold value into that window will be the ones with named builders, documented process, low completed mileage, and a shape nobody can reissue. All three of these qualify on every count.

The 1957 Bel Air and the 1965 Corvette widebody are both available now. The rest of the flagship inventory, including a Scott’s Hot Rods 1967 C10 at $369,900, a Roadster Shop–chassis 1966 Corvette at $309,900, and a Triple Diamond award-winning numbers-matching 1967 427/435 at $275,900, is at rkmotors.com. Every car receives a comprehensive multi-point inspection, and we can arrange worldwide shipping. If you have a car of this caliber and Monterey has you reconsidering where it sits, our consignment team is taking conversations for the winter sales now.