This Mercedes F1 Car Is Now The Second-Most Expensive Car Ever Sold

A little under three years ago, one of two 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupes became the most expensive car ever publicly sold at auction, displacing the various Ferrari 250 GTOs the honour had bounced between for years.

Over the weekend, another classic Merc racer bumped the Ferrari down to the third spot on the podium, with a 1954 Mercedes W196 R Stromlinienwagen shifting for €51,155,000 through RM Sotheby’s. That’s roughly £41,500,000, or $52,500,000.

While it’s a little under half the €135 million the 300 SLR went for back in 2022, it’s still an amount of money that we have a hard time visualising. What exactly is this thing that’s sent collectors into such a spending frenzy?

Well, despite its closed-wheel bodywork, it’s actually an F1 car. Back in the ’50s, when the regulations were a lot more fluid, Mercedes developed this slippery body for its W196 Grand Prix racer for use at high-speed circuits.

Paired with the W196’s 290bhp, 2.5-litre straight-eight engine, the Stromlinienwagen – ‘Streamlined Car’ – was formidable at the era’s fastest circuits. Though the streamliner-bodied car only entered four world championship events, it won three of them – the French Grand Prix at Reims in 1954, and the Italian Grand Prix at Monza in ’54 and ’55.

One of the reasons it’s attracted such a high price is the names associated with the car. This particular one, chassis 00009/54, was one of four cars fitted with the streamliner body when the W196’s racing career ended at the close of the 1955 season. That year, it had been driven to victory at the non-championship Buenos Aires Grand Prix by Juan Manuel Fangio, and Stirling Moss used it to set the fastest lap at that year’s Italian Grand Prix.

It’s also only the second W196 of any kind ever offered for private ownership, and the first with the Stromlinienwagen body. All this may go some way to explaining exactly why it sold for such a massive figure, despite the fact that, after six decades of static display at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum and various other exhibitions, it’ll “require careful recommissioning” should its new owner want to drive it again.