A 1955 Mercedes, of which only two existed, was auctioned off in early May for 135 million euros, an absolute world record for an auctioned car, RM Sotheby’s announced on Thursday.
The 1955 Mercedes Coupé 300 SLR Uhlenhaut was auctioned off May 5 at a confidential auction at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, in a collaboration between Sotheby’s luxury car subsidiary and manufacturer German Automobile.
Priced at €135 million, this Mercedes was sold almost three times faster than the previous record set since 2018 by a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO sold by RM Sotheby’s in 2018 for more than $48 million (€45 million).
Also, the Mercedes “300 SLR is now in the top 10 most expensive items ever sold at auction,” boasted RM Sotheby’s at its spring art auction this week, published in London on Thursday and transmitted to New York by holding company Sotheby’s.
In fact, according to an AFP classification of works of art that have sold primarily in New York in recent years, the absolute record-breaking Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” sold for 450.3 million in November 2017 holds Christies in New York.
Then comes Andy Warhol’s “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn,” which sold at Christie’s on May 9 for $195 million, making it the most expensive 20th-century work of art ever sold at public auction.
For 20th-century works, Pablo Picasso’s The Women of Algiers (Version 0) ($179.4 million as of May 2015) and Nu Reclining by Amedeo Modigliani ($170.4 million as of November 2015) were both included Christie’s sells.
In this ranking of works of art sold for more than $100 million at auction, the Mercedes auctioned by RM Sotheby’s on May 5 and qualified as the “most beautiful car in the world” occupies 6th or 7th place.
The car, which like the second example was owned by Mercedes-Benz, was sold to a private collector and the proceeds of the sale “will be used to set up an international + Mercedes-Benz fund + for scholarships and training for research for young people in environmental science and decarbonization,” according to RM Sotheby’s