For $15 Million You Could Build The Ultimate ’80s And ’90s Garage Next Month At Pebble Beach

Monterey Car Week (MCW) 2024 is almost here and with it will come some of the coolest cars the world has ever known. Automakers across the globe debut special vehicles that they hope will become legends in their own right. For a cool $15,000,000 you can forget that noise and put together the ultimate garage full of bonafide legends from the 1980s and 1990s.

During MCW there are two different major auctions happening. One is the RM Sotheby’s Auction and the other is with Gooding & Co. The latter of which is where one can pick up that Weirdo Lambo from a few weeks back.

There are a lot of different ways to spend $15,000,000 and surely several that are better than buying cars but if all I’m allowed to do with it is buy cars from these two decades, here’s what I’d spend it on at Pebble Beach.

First things first, let’s spend a chunk of change on a rare but fun car, the 1991 Porsche 911 Singer DLS. This is a 4.0-liter air-cooled flat-six with 500 horsepower that screams to 9,000 RPM. It sends that power to the rear wheels only via a six-speed manual gearbox. This is what Gooding & Co. describes as the answer to the question “what might the most advanced, air-cooled Porsche 911 look like?

The engine was co-developed with Williams Grand Prix Engineering. Yes, that’s the same Williams that you hear of in F1. The entire car features high-end lightweight parts like magnesium wheels, carbon fiber track seats, and carbon fiber body panels. It’ll likely take a full $4,000,000 out of the budget.

Next, we’ll drop a few more million on this 1993 Bugatti EB110 SS Prototype. That’s right, this isn’t just some everyday common-man’s EB110, it’s one of seven prototypes ever made. It was the very first EB110 Super Sport prototype and was one of the cars that Bugatti sent to the Nardo ring to confirm the model’s top speed capabilities.

The automaker sold the car to a Japanese racing driver named Sokichi Skikiba. He kept it and brought it to numerous car shows before his death in 2016. Now, it’s up for sale to the highest bidder with a guidance of up to $2,800,000. That’s a lotta cheese but at least the buyer gets a 3.5-liter quad-turbo V12. There aren’t many of those rolling around.

Let’s turn our attention to America for our next car. It’s none other than the 1993 Vector Avtech WX-3R. That’s right, the tiny little failed supercar company started by Jerry Wiegert. In fact, this exact example is the only open-topped Vector of its kind and Wigert himself kept it until 2019. It’ll set us back another $1,500,00.

Under the hood is a twin-turbocharged V8 that reportedly makes 625 horsepower and sends it to the rear wheels via a three-speed GM Turbo-Hydramatic 425. The consignor spent some $116,000 over the last few years to restore it to running condition. Notably, if you really want a hard top version of this Vector another is available for the same money.

Jaguar might be axing just about everything it makes now but who cares when we can spend seven figures on this 1991 XJR-15? Don’t forget that this is basically the street-legal version of the car that won Le Mans in 1988 and 1990. Oh how far Jaguar has fallen since then and oh how little this XJR-15 has driven. It has just 83 miles on the odometer.

Jaguar only built 50 of these cars and just 27 are road-legal. This might be the lowest-mileage example of the bunch. It very much wouldn’t be for long if I actually picked it up. Add another $1,000,000 to our total and that brings us to $9,300,000 if every one of these goes for their high-guidance figure. Time to get a few six-figure vehicles into the garage.

Truth is though, I’d likely end up driving this, a 1998 Lamborghini Diablo SV more than anything else here. Guidance indicates a top dollar of $550,000 which is objectively a great deal of money but this is my dream car. It’s the first car I ever fell in love with and it’s notorious for trying to kill its driver.  Lamborghini was best in my eyes when its cars actually embodied the bulls they’re named for.

This SV is one of only 346 to exist. It made 523 horsepower and 7,100 RPM when new. It has not one but two overhead intake ports for the massive 5.7-liter V12 in the rear and features a top speed of 208 mph. As the listing makes clear, that’s a number that holds up very well when compared to contemporary supercars.

What happens when I want to take more than just one person on a fun trip somewhere though? That’s why I’m also adding the 1989 Lamborghini LM002 to the collection at a price of (up to) $450,000. Sure, it’s not wildly practical but it is very fun, features a V12, a five-speed manual gearbox, and some silly run-flat Pirelli tires.

Whereas many of the abovementioned cars may or may not be ready for everyday road-going duty, the LM002 has benefitted from over $90,000 worth of service work in recent years. Wait, maybe that means it’ll be broken down more. Either way, it and its Paul Mitchell bottles of shampoo are coming back to my place.

Now, before we finish up, we’ve got to add a sedan to the mix and it’s arriving in the form of the 1990 Mercedes-Benz 190E 2.5-16 Evolution II. That’s a long name but it stands for something. Building on the base of Mercedes’ 190E, the 2.5 nomenclature refers to the Cosworth-engineered engine with its dual overhead cams and four valves per cylinder.

Those valves contribute to the name in that there are 16 of them. Evo II recognizes that Mercedes-Benz had already built a 190E 2.5-16. It did well in DTM Racing, but not well enough, so the automaker went back to the drawing board, changed the aerodynamics, and brought us this, the Evo II. Now, this one, number 106 of 502 ever made, could go over the block for up to $300,000.

Next up let’s go get this blast from the past. Few cars are as instantly recognizable across various generations and non-car-people as the Ferrari Testarossa, and at $200,000, this one should be a peach. Unlike many if not most of the cars that will be at MCW, it has some real miles on it, so driving it shouldn’t diminish its value very much.

Beyond the pop-culture celebrity that comes with driving the Testarossa, the new owner is going to get a boatload of real performance too. The flat-12 originally made 380 horsepower and had a top speed of 180 mph. Is it an F40? No. Is it still going to turn heads? Absolutely. It’s also only $200,000 which would be more like a tip on my final tab in this car-buying fantasy.

What about days when we want to sneak under the radar? Could there be a better car than this 1989 BMW M3 Cecotto Edition? The E30 M3 is already a legend but consider the Cecotto Edition to be almost akin to a CSL E46.

It came from the factory with a “higher-spec version of BMW’s free-revving S14B23 2.0-liter inline four-cylinder. The upgraded engine produced more than 200 horsepower,” says the auction house. It’ll go over the block for an estimated $200,000.

Seeing as we’re still a bit short on our budget and several million bucks is burning a hole in my pre-distressed jeans, let’s spend a chunk or two again starting with the Cizeta V16T. I played Gran Turismo every day growing up and this was one of my favorite cars.

Lamborghini had nothing to do with GT back in those days so this was the closest thing I could get to a Diablo in-game. Little did I appreciate that Cizeta only built nine (Yes really) of these cars before shutting down production.

Wildly enough, this car is from the Brunei Royal Family. Three of the nine every built went there and this is one of them. It comes with a V16 engine, rear-wheel drive, and just 622 miles on the chassis since new. Again, this is a car that deserves to be driven. That’s especially true at $900,000.

Finally, let’s do the damn thing and pick up this 1991 Ferrari F40. Yeah, who wouldn’t add one of these to the gotta-get list if they have around $2,500,000 laying around?

Dubbed the “Mint Forty”, this unique Ferrari has a wild history. After it was crashed in 1994, the owner rebuilt it. In 2008, Ferrari certified it with its original engine and gearbox. From 2010 through 2012 it participated in the Ferrari Tribute to the Mille Miglia. In 2021, its current owner bought it and had a thought, which presumably went like this: “What if I simply repainted it in a fresh color and drove the wheels off of it?” As a formerly crash-damaged car, it would never be an “in the original wrapper” example, so changing the color was “liberating,” the listing says.

Every F40 rolled off of the line in Rosso Red, so this one with its pistachio hue is completely unique. It also has nearly 19,300 miles on the odometer. That’s a stewardship we can get behind.

All of this puts our grand total at $14,400,000 which is enough to maybe add one more great car, but we’ll save it for all of the buyer’s fees incurred at these types of events. We wouldn’t want to be irresponsible with our money, after all.