The World’s Most Expensive Car Just Sold for an All-Time Record of $142 Million | Architectural Digest

In a magic formula auction at the brand’s museum in Germany, Mercedes-Benz marketed one particular of just two 1955 300 SLR Uhlenhaut coupes from its in depth selection of historical automobiles—which dates back again to the earliest times of the auto in the late 19th century. The sale, to a personal buyer, was for 135 million euros ($142,769,250). It handily outstripped the previous history-setting $48.4-million sale of a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO at a 2018 auction to turn out to be the most expensive motor vehicle ever sold at auction. Equally of these high-greenback profits have been brokered by RM Sotheby’s.

“Despite Ferrari staying the most probable marque to have crafted a $100-million motor vehicle, Mercedes-Benz was the upcoming most possible prospect,” said Brian Rabold, the vice president of Hagerty Automotive Intelligence, the valuation wing of the basic car or truck insurance plan, life style, and editorial huge, Hagerty.

The two avenue-legal 300 SLR Uhlenhaut coupes had been designed by (and named for) Mercedes-Benz’s racing director at the time, Rudolf Uhlenhaut, who crafted them as aspect of a motorsport assault. Regardless of getting amongst the speediest autos in the environment at the time, they ended up never raced because of to the brand’s withdrawal from racing in 1955 subsequent a disastrous crash at the Le Mans endurance race that hurt hundreds of spectators and killed over 80 folks, like Mercedes’s driver.

This icon of automotive historical past is an absolute rarity—one of just two prototypes constructed.

Though bearing a sturdy resemblance to the famed Gullwing sporting activities car of the 1950s, the two Uhlenhaut coupes had substantially a lot more intense styling and mechanicals, and had been truly built on a chassis that underpinned the brand’s contemporary W196 track car.

“The Mercedes-Benz racing autos from the 1930s and 1950s are uncommon, and most are nevertheless owned by the factory, so any that occur to current market are really sought immediately after,” Rabold reported. The Bonhams auction property established a then-report selling price for the brand in 2013, providing a 1954 Mercedes-Benz W196 at $29.6 million. Considering that then, according to Rabold, the Hagerty Rate Guideline index of blue chip collectible cars and trucks has found a staggering appreciation of 60%.