Fangio and Mossa's Mercedes W196 sold for €51.15 million

Fangio and Mossa's Mercedes W196 sold for €51.15 million

      Last August we told you that a unique racing car, the Mercedes W196 R Streamliner, created by German engineers in 1954 and driven by Juan-Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss in Formula 1 in the mid-50s, would be up for auction. Yesterday, RM Sotheby's auction house held the auction at the Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart and the car went under the hammer for a truly impressive €51,155,000.

      There are only four examples of such cars in the world, but this is the first time that a W196 in Streamliner version has been offered to a private individual - provided, of course, that the potential buyer has, in fact, unlimited financial resources. In the course of the auction, the price of the car reached 46.5 million euros, and the final sum of over 51 million also included a commission fee. The amount is cosmic, but by absolute standards is not a record: the most expensive car, ever sold at auction, was a sports car Mercedes 300SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe 1955 year of production: for him in May 2022 paid 135 million euros.

      But the record was still fixed, because until yesterday the most expensive historical racing car was considered the most expensive historical racing car was another copy of Mercedes W196, which in the 50-ies also performed the legendary Argentine racer: in 2013 at the auction in Goodwood, the new owner paid for it $ 29.6 million.

      The car with chassis number 00009/54 was donated to the Indianapolis Autodrome Museum by Daimler-Benz AG in 1965, but now it had to be parted with in order to raise funds for reconstruction and restoration works. In addition, the museum intends to focus more on American racing heritage from now on. "It's a great car, it has a rich history, but it's a little bit out of our thematic range," Jason Vansickle, the museum's curator of exhibitions, explained in an interview with Reuters. - We've been fortunate to have been the custodians of this car for almost six decades and it's very valuable to our museum, but this auction and the proceeds will make us even better in the future." The museum will auction the next car at the Retromobile festival of historic machinery in Paris on February 5: it will be a 1964 Ferrari 250 LM sports car.

Fangio and Mossa's Mercedes W196 sold for €51.15 million

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Fangio and Mossa's Mercedes W196 sold for €51.15 million

In Stuttgart at the Mercedes Museum, auction house RM Sotheby's held an auction at which a unique Mercedes W196 R Streamliner went under the hammer for 51,155,000 euros....