A Mercedes Formula 1 car raced by Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss has sold at auction in Germany for a record £42.75 million.
The car – a W196 R Stromlinienwagen – was driven by Fangio to victory at the 1955 Argentinian Grand Prix [his home event], and by Moss at the Italian Grand Prix the same year. It is only one of four left in the world.
Sold by RM Sotheby’s at the Mercedes museum in Stuttgart on behalf of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the car has broken the record for the most expensive Grand Prix car ever sold, and the second-most expensive car of any kind, second only to a Mercedes 300SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe from the same year, which sold in 2022 for £113 million.
Jason Vansickle, curator for the Indianapolis Motor Speedway said: “It’s a beautiful car, it’s a very historic car, it’s just a little bit outside our scope window.”
Fangio would take the Drivers’ title that season, the third of his final haul of five, with four wins in a seven-race championship, which included the Indy 500, a custom that stayed until 1961.
The calendar was due to be 11 rounds, but after the tragic accident at that year’s Le Mans 24 Hours – in which one driver and 83 spectators were killed – the French, Swiss, German and Spanish Grands Prix were cancelled.
Moss was second in the standings with a solitary win, coming at the British Grand Prix, staged at Aintree.
It was Moss’ first-ever win in F1, and a long-standing theory has lingered that Fangio allowed his team-mate to take victory, something that Moss himself believed, but Fangio maintained that Moss was “simply faster”.
With German Karl Kling and Italian Piero Taruffi also part of the Silver Arrows team, the pair finished behind Fangio and Moss to make it a Mercedes 1-2-3-4.
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