1955 Mercedes car smashes F1 auction record with £42.7m price tag
A streamlined Mercedes raced by F1 legends has smashed the auction record with an eye-water🍌ing pric💃e tag.
A Mercedes grand prix car raced by F1 leღgends Stirling Moss and Juan Manuel Fangio has sold at auction for £42.75m (€51.15♐5m).
It has smashed the record for a gra🥂nd prix car selling at auction. The previous record was another ex-Fangio Mercedes W196 from 1954 which went under the hammer for £19.6m at Goodwood in 2013.
The silver W196 R Stromlinienwagen, one of only four complete examples in existence, was sold by RM Sotheby’s at the Mercedes museum in Stuttgart, G𝕴ermany, on Saturday.
Five-time world champion Fangio won the 1955 Buenos Aires Grand Prix in the W196 R, while Moss set the faste🎶st lap at an average spe🍃ed of 134mph in the car at the Italian Grand Prix at Monza the same year. Moss retired after the feat.
It had a price estimate of more than €50m and went under the hammer after a ಌfinal offer of €46.5m. The final price includes the buyers’ premium from the highest bidder, who was not named.
"It's a b🧸eautiful car, it's a very historic car, it's just a litt♌le bit outside our scope window," curator Jason Vansickle said.
"We've been fortunate to be stewards of this vehicle for nearly 60 years and it has been a great piece in the✤ museum but with this auction and the pr🤡oceeds raised, it really will allow us ... to be better in the future."
The record fee ever paid for a car at an auction was a 195🌳5 Mercedes 300 S🍨RL Uhlenhaut Coupé that sold for €135m in May 2022.
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