Ayrton Senna’s red Honda NSX sells for record £871,250 in London By Luís Henrique Costa
4 min read
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A red 1991 Honda NSX once used by three-time Formula 1 champion Ayrton Senna sold for £871,250 at an RM Sotheby’s auction in London on October 31, 2026. The hammer price was £71,250 above the top of the pre-sale estimate of £500,000 to £800,000, or about R$ 3.5 million to R$ 5.6 million. The result set a new auction record for the NSX model.
Sholto Gilbertson, RM Sotheby’s sales director for the United Kingdom, said when the car was announced that Senna’s legacy goes much deeper than his three world championships. The car was offered at The London Auction 2026, held at The Peninsula London hotel. The two-day sale grossed £36,550,950, and RM Sotheby’s described it as the highest-grossing collector car auction ever held in the United Kingdom.
Documents tie the car to Senna and to Honda
The lot came with the original paperwork that proves its history. The file included the warranty book, a Japanese export certificate, Portuguese registration records and a copy of an official Honda fax confirming the car’s direct link to the Brazilian driver. The auction house listed the following technical details.
- Chassis: JHMNA11500T000233
- Portuguese registration plate: SX-25-59
- Engine: 3.0-litre naturally aspirated V6, about 270 hp (271 hp)
- Transmission: five-speed manual, rear-wheel drive
- Finish: Formula Red paint, black roof and black leather interior
Senna’s routine with the NSX in Portugal and at Estoril
Honda Automóvel de Portugal imported the car and registered it on March 22, 1991. The car was kept in Lisbon and handed to Senna whenever he arrived in Portugal, where he lived at the Quinta do Lago resort in the Algarve. The red coupe became world famous after photographs showed Senna, in jeans and a shirt, washing its body with a garden hose. It also appears in the 1992 documentary Ayrton Senna: Racing Is In My Blood.
Senna drove the same car to the Estoril circuit on September 22, 1991, the day of the Portuguese Grand Prix. That race came in the season he won his third world title, and he started third on the grid and finished second. The result gave him a podium at a track he knew well from his time in Portugal.
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How Senna’s comments on the prototype made Honda stiffen the NSX
Senna’s connection to the car began before the model went on sale, during development tests of the prototype in early 1989. He told engineers at the Japanese carmaker that the chassis seemed fragile and lacked firmness. Honda responded by raising the car’s structural stiffness by 50% and refining the suspension system.
Under an agreement with Honda Motor Company during his years at McLaren-Honda, Senna received three NSX units for personal use. Besides the red car kept in Portugal, he had two black units, and one of them stayed in Brazil with a plate beginning with the letters BSS, a reference to his family nickname, Beco Senna da Silva.
Owners after Senna’s death, from Lisbon to Nagoya
After Senna died at the Imola circuit in Italy in May 1994, the car stayed in Portugal for almost two decades and changed hands several times. It was registered to Laboa Etablissement in Lisbon in February 1995, was kept by the Honda Nipomotor dealership until September 1997, and passed to MSCAR Comércio de Automóveis in Faro in November 2009.
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British collector Robert McFagan bought the car in 2013, took it to the United Kingdom and obtained local road registration in May 2016. In 2019, the car went to Imola for the 25th anniversary of Senna’s death, and Giancarlo Minardi, founder and former head of the Minardi Formula 1 team, drove it on the track. A collector in Nagoya, Japan, has owned the car since 2024, and RM Sotheby’s did not disclose his identity.
What the winning bidder must do about UK import taxes
The car returned to the United Kingdom under a temporary import regime for the sale. An addendum from RM Sotheby’s sets specific tax obligations for the winner of the lot. Those rules apply to the buyer after the hammer falls.
The buyer must either export the NSX from the United Kingdom after the auction or pay the import taxes and VAT, the value-added tax, if the car stays registered in the country. The auction listing describes the car’s odometer as showing about 63,000 km.
