A 70-year-old Mercedes raced by the likes of Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss has smashed the document for the most costly Components 1 automotive ever bought.
A W196R from the 1955 season, in closed-wheel ‘Streamliner’ configuration, bought for €51.155 million (£42.7m) at public sale. It was auctioned by RM Sotheby’s on the Mercedes museum in Stuttgart, Germany.
Its sale value is greater than double that of the earlier record-holder, one other W196, which raced in 1954. That automotive bought for £19.6m in 2013.
The brand new record-holder was final raced by Moss on the Italian Grand Prix in 1955. Mercedes constructed totally different configurations of its W196 for various circuits, favouring the ‘streamlined’ model for the quickest tracks.
Nevertheless the involvement of a Mercedes in a crash on the 1955 Le Mans 24 Hours, which killed scores or spectators, led the producer to withdraw from motorsport on the finish of that 12 months. It didn’t return to grand prix racing till 2010. Mercedes donated the automotive to the IMS in 1965.
Regardless of greater than doubling the document value for an F1 automotive, it fell in need of the best worth ever paid for an car. That document is held by one other Mercedes, a roadgoing 300 SLR ‘Uhlenhaut’ Coupe, which a purchaser paid $142m for in 2022.
The marketplace for traditional F1 vehicles has been very robust in recent times. A 2013 Mercedes of the kind utilized by Lewis Hamilton to attain his first grand prix victory bought for $18.8m (£15.1m) in 2023.
A big selection of traditional F1 vehicles are as a consequence of go on sale later this 12 months because the sequence’ former CEO Bernie Ecclestone is because of promote his assortment which incorporates uncommon Ferraris and different well-known machines. His total assortment is predicted to promote for a nine-figure sum.
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