Jerry Seinfeld’s Steve McQueen-Owned Porsche 917K Could Fetch $25 Million at Auction

One of Jerry Seinfeld’s closest friends, and “The Soup Nazi” writer, Spike Feresten, found Steve McQueen’s Porsche 917K racecar from the 1971 film Le Mans in a Los Angeles dealership showroom (Symbolic Motors) on Wilshire Boulevard in 2001. He convinced Seinfeld to buy the 600-hp 5.0-litre flat-12 powered Porsche, and now, experts are saying that it could fetch $25 Million at Mecum Auctions in Kissimmee, Florida.

The story, as told by Seinfeld on Feresten’s Spikes Car Radio podcast (2020), starts with Steve McQueen. He purchased the racecar new from the Porsche factory in 1970 to use it as the “hero car” in the movie, and he would personally drive it in all racing sequences. During these sequences, he showcased the prowess of a vehicle that won seven of eight races during the World Sportscar Championship 1971 season, including Le Mans.

During its life as a movie prop, the racecar (chassis #917-022) was modified to hold cameras with mounts and brackets. Interestingly, these modifications remain today, despite an extension restoration at Cavaglieri Restorations of Van Nuys in August 2024.

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During its life, the Porsche 917K chassis 917-022 has had six owners, they’re as follows:

• Steve McQueen/Solar Productions, 1970-1971
• Reinhold Joest, 1971-1975
• Brian Redman, 1975-1977
• Richard Attwood, 1977-2000
• Frank Gallogly, 2000-2001
• Jerry Seinfeld, 2001-Present

Reinhold Joest purchased the chassis from McQueen after the movie wrapped and held onto the car for a few years. Then, in 1975 he sold it to Le Mans racer Brian Redman who had survived one of the most traumatic crashes of the era, breaking his neck, destroying his shoulder, splitting his breastbone, and breaking his ribs with a side dish of brain bleed. Redman paid $19,000 for it.

His friend, Richard Attwood, bought the car from Redman for $50,000. He would own it for the best part of 23 years and in 2000 it was time to move on, and Attwood sold it at auction for $1.2 Million.

It passed through one more set of hands, Mercedes-Benz and Porsche collector of New Jersey, Frank Gallogly, before Jerry Seinfeld purchased the car from Symbolic Motors on Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles. It quickly became one of his most prized possessions, “The thing I love the most about Porsches is, I love the story of how they started so small and grew so quickly,” said in a video about the car.

“There are cars that I call ‘moment cars,’ that are from moments when things just landed perfectly. It happens in lives, it happens in cultures, it happens in stories, so to me the 917 is the moment of Porsche where all their work and expertise came together.”

“The 917, which is a 600-hp, fire-breathing dragon… the crazy thing about this car which is a 240-mph car, it’s like every other Porsche, it’s pretty easy to drive,” said Seinfeld.

These words were echoed by retired American race car driver and car dealer, Bruce Canepa, who has owned, raced, and restored multiple 917s. “Every input, it does what you want it to do. There are race cars that are evil when you get in them. That car is so well-balanced, it’s hard to believe this is a car that was designed in 1969 and is this good. It’s a driver’s car.”

Redman, like Canepa, believes this car is “better than new.” However, Canepa goes one step further and believes this car is worth $25 Million to the right buyer. “It’s interesting because there’s two parts to that car,” he said. “He (McQueen) bought that from Gulf to make a movie. It’s a Gulf car, it’s a movie car, and it’s Steve McQueen. When his 911 sold for a million four, when his Lusso sold, it was some ungodly number, his 275 sold for eight or nine million. So you’ve got the Steve McQueen thing.”

“There is no guy who’s comparable to Steve McQueen. I’m just guessing, but that car should be a $25 million car,” he said.

Seinfeld is a little more retrained, “There are objects that have great value and then there are objects that you really can’t place a value on because they evoke so much,” he said. “If you’re in the car hobby, you pursue these cars that give you a special feeling of excitement. I would say it’s the automotive equivalent of sitting behind the Resolute Desk.”

The last time a Porsche 917K hammered it went for around $14 Million at Gooding & Co. at Pebble in 2017. However, like all things, prices for these cars are only going up and we wouldn’t be surprised to see it climb past the estimated $25 Million price. Nevertheless, all will be revealed when it crosses the block in Kissimmee on Saturday, January 18, 2025.

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