The 400GT 2+2, bought by a phone bidder, was estimated to fetch between 100,000 pounds and 120,000 pounds in the 19th annual Bonhams sale at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in Sussex. The Italian maker's cars have been selling well and the GT's price was influenced by its described ownership, dealers said.
"Collectors always like to buy the cars they grew up with," Dietrich Hatlapa, founder of Historic Automobile Group International (HAGI), a London-based research company, said before the event. "There's been a generational shift and wealthy people in their 40s and 50s are now pushing up the prices of sports models from the 1960s and 70s."
Some exceptional sports cars are making record prices, said dealers. Lamborghini, along with Aston Martin, Ferrari and Porsche, is among a group of sports marques from the 1960s and '70s that is rising in price at a time when the values of other classic models remain little changed.
The HAGI Top 50 index of exceptional classic-car prices has gained 1.47 percent this year, lower than its average annual growth of more than 12 percent from 2003 to 2008.
McCartney was the 400GT's first owner, according to three histories of the Italian luxury carmaker, which began producing sports models in competition with Ferrari in 1963. The four- seater 400GT was the second model made by industrialist Ferruccio Lamborghini.
Log Book
The Beatle may not have kept the car for more than three years, according to Stewart Skilbeck, a Bonhams motoring specialist, though the original log book hasn't been retained. The seller, Suffolk-based collector Nic Portway, acquired the vehicle in 1979.
The sportster was originally orange, as befitted a car made in 1967, the year of "Sergeant Pepper" and the Summer of Love, and later given a wine-red livery.
In October, RM Auctions sold a yellow 1972 Lamborghini Miura SV, whose first owner had been the singer Rod Stewart, for 694,400 pounds ($1.1 million) against an upper forecast of 560,000 pounds.
--Editors: Mark Beech, Richard Vines.
