Bonhams The 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196 racecar, back in its grand prix glory days.A 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196 grand prix car driven to wins by Juan Manuel Fangio, the five-time world champion from Argentina, sold Friday for $29.7 million at the Goodwood Festival of Speed in England, the highest price ever paid for a car at auction.
The sale, conducted by Bonhams, smashes the previous record of $16.4 million brought by a 1957 Ferrari Testa Rossa sports car two years ago at Pebble Beach, Calif. The sale on Friday took eight minutes, with the winner, bidding by telephone, described by the auction house only as a “wealthy enthusiast” with a history of buying racing cars. Two of the Mercedes racecar’s drivers in competition, Stirling Moss, 84, and Hans Herrmann, 85, were at the sale.
“It’s a piece of mechanical jewelry,” said Douglas Nye, a motor racing historian recruited by Bonhams for a preauction briefing on Thursday for reporters and potential bidders gathered in a marquee erected as an auction hall behind Goodwood House.
“The Mona Lisa, the Haywain and the Sunflowers,” he said, citing the great works by da Vinci, Constable and van Gogh, “are the works of a single creative mind and of a single pair of hands. What you have here is the product of many creative minds, and of many hands.”
Bonhams, the London-based auction house, used the catalog entry for the car, prepared with Mercedes, to claim a place in history for the car. It was “an absolute technological landmark in the long and glittering history of motor sport,” but beyond that, “an emblem of worldwide postwar recovery.” The description added: “It epitomizes everything achieved by the world-famous three-pointed star.”
Enthusiasts at the Goodwood festival will have a chance to witness a W196 in action. On Saturday, a different car from the original batch of 14 built by Mercedes will make runs up the long driveway to the Goodwood House with Moss and Herrmann at the controls.
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