Ecclestone’s Mercedes Sells for $8.1 M
Bernie Ecclestone's Mercedes-Benz 540K Special Roadster sold for 3.9 million pounds ($8.1 million), including commission, at a London auction today, short of its top estimate.
Ecclestone, Formula One's billionaire chief executive officer, is selling more than 40 cars valued at a combined 15 million pounds by RM Auctions Inc. in London's Battersea Park. The silver 1937 Mercedes had a pre-commission top estimate of 4 million pounds.
Ecclestone, Formula One's billionaire chief executive officer, is selling more than 40 cars valued at a combined 15 million pounds by RM Auctions Inc. in London's Battersea Park. The silver 1937 Mercedes had a pre-commission top estimate of 4 million pounds.
Bidding for the car lasted more than 15 minutes. The winning bid came from an unnamed buyer in the front of the saleroom, according to Peter Haynes, a spokesman for RM Auctions.
The Mercedes 540K was the high point of the company's pre- World War II automobile development, according to the sale catalog. Only 26 of the 540K Special Roadsters were built, RM Auctions said. The “K'' refers to the German word for supercharger, kompressor.
Other owners of 540K Special Roadsters have included Jack Warner, co-founder of the Warner Brothers movie studio, and Nazi Hermann Goering, according to the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper. Bloomberg