| Hi there, it's Hannah Elliott, back with more car news for you. What a weekend this has been: A 1954 Mercedes-Benz W 196 R Stromlinienwagen sold for $53 million yesterday in Germany, beating its $50 million estimate and making it the second highest amount culled at a car auction behind the $142 million 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé of 2022. "The car is the top echelon of engineering—that's the sweetness and the risk" of driving it, Marcus Breitschwerdt, the head of Mercedes-Benz Heritage, said just prior to the sale. "These cars are really made for the true champions." The silver racer doesn't run—it hasn't since Mercedes donated it to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum in 1965—but if the buyer wants to spend about $2 million and two years on that project, it is mechanically complete enough to get there. "It would've been cool, but it would've been risky," RM Sotheby's Peter Haynes told me when I asked if the auction house had considered trying to start the engine before the sale. "That's a long time for a car to have been sitting."  In the 1955 Formula Libre Buenos Aires Grand Prix, W196R racing cars were equipped in their open-wheel body work and used 3-liter engines from the 300 SLR (W196S). Fangio eventually won the race. Source: Mercedes-Benz AG What's fascinating to me is that while most collectible cars are valued, at least in part, by what proportion of their components are still those that actually rolled off the production line, that concept quickly flies out the window when you're dealing with race cars, where no bolt, hose or panel is sacred in pursuit of a racing crown. This W196R has had different body styles and engines over the years of its furious racing history. It was even dismantled at one point. I asked Simon Kidston about this. The founder of the K500 Index, which tracks automotive data (kind of like a wine guide but for cars), he has worked with clients to buy and sell some of the most significant vehicles in the collecting world. The notion that any race car would survive with all of its original body is fanciful thinking, Kidston says. When it comes to exemplar racers, the question of what is "original" on the vehicle is more of a hypothetical vanishing point without a concrete answer, kind of like the Ship of Theseus paradox. Here's more of what he said: As a general rule, racing history and originality are largely incompatible. Cars do not have long and successful racing histories and survive without any damage. The drivers don't care if they damage them. The mechanics don't care what they change to get them ready for the next race. They were treated as tools back in the day. And if a car raced a lot then it's going to have had parts changed. In Formula One, generally speaking, parts are considered to be interchangeable in between races and sometimes even during the race itself. If you get extreme racers, you end up with virtually nothing of the original car left. And sometimes not even the chassis plate, just the chassis number, is there. You're going to have chassis and engines changed regularly. Body work would have been changed throughout its racing career and then sometimes again entirely when the car is restored.
I asked him how that affects what he tells his clients as he advises them on building their collections. People need to be realistic. Notions of originality are viewed very simplistically in the modern world. Just because you have a piece of paper from whoever it might be doesn't substitute the fact that people should do their own research in detail and also accept that the totally virginal car simply does not exist. Certainly not a racing car. People should put themselves in the time period and put themselves in the shoes of the people who owned, raced and fixed these cars to realize that it's impossible that something survives completely unscathed and untouched.
Those details become part of a car's own unique story. In fact, tracking down those details is one of the better parts of the job, he says. I love nothing more than going to meet old mechanics who have been largely forgotten and interrupting their peaceful retirement and hearing their stories. You learn so much from those people. We have a very different view in the modern collecting world, but I think people need to deepen and not always consider "original or not original" and nothing in between. Sometimes people just don't have the patience to delve into the details, but it's the details that are interesting. You've got to accept that not every detail of every car is perfect in the same way that not every person is perfect, but it's just part of the package.
Who knew there were life lessons even in this rarefied air of multimillion dollar car collecting? Now I'm really excited to watch another big-ticket car, this old racing Ferrari, cross the auction block in Paris on Feb. 5. To those planning to bid on its gracious curves, I wish you bon chance! I'll be with you in spirit. Connect with Hannah via Instagram.  A 1955 Ferrari 410 Sport Spider sold for $12.9 million; it was the third-highest sale during the auctions at Pebble Beach in August 2024. Source: RM Sotheby's | 
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