World record: A 1955 Mercedes car sold for $ 143 million

by time news

The 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Allenhut was recently sold for $ 143 million – making it the most expensive car ever sold. This is one of two cars in the private collection of Mercedes-Benz. According to the company, the proceeds will be used to establish a fund that will award scholarships in the field of environmental studies.

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The car was sold at auction in Sotheby’s, surpassing by $ 95 million the previous record of a car sale at auction, and by $ 70 million the record of a private sale. The buyer remained anonymous, but his representative was Simon Kidstone, a British car collector who had been trying for a year and a half to persuade Mercedes to sell the car.

After World War II Mercedes-Benz found itself in serious trouble: the company that was badly damaged during the war could only produce family cars and executive cars – and its glory days as a Grand Prix racing champion were behind it.

At Mercedes-Benz, however, it was decided to revive its racing group, relying on what it had on offer: a relatively old-fashioned executive car engine, executive car suspension system and pre-World War II engineering capability. However, the company decided to use a facility that was considered revolutionary at the time: fuel injection, which caused the old engine to wake up and increased its power to exceed 200 horsepower.

The car that was born, the 300 SL (“Super Licht”, or Super Light), was based on a lightweight tubular chassis from which the suspensions hung. But then Mercedes engineers discovered that they were facing a problem: in order for the car to remain rigid, the tubular chassis must surround the driver and passenger, meaning it was impossible to install doors in the car. The solution proposed was original: the driver and passenger would enter the car using a pair of “half-doors” located on hinges in the car ceiling and closed on the sides of the car.

When the half-doors are open, the mirror is reminiscent of a seagull that spreads its wings, which is why the car was nicknamed “Galving” – meaning seagull wings.

The 300 SL was a particularly dangerous car, as Mercedes-Benz decided to go for an “all or nothing” approach – that is, to produce a car that would be amazing in the hands of racing drivers, but dangerous to anyone who is not a skilled racing driver. Behavior was wild but the results were not long in coming: the 300 SL won quite a few races in the 1950s, and was considered the car that brought Mercedes back to life thanks to the impossible combination of those days of toughness, performance and reliability – and fearless drivers.

For example, in November 1952 a Mercedes SL that participated in the Carrera Panamericana, a particularly grueling race in South America, hit an eagle at 200 mph. , The Mercedes team continued driving, with driver Karl Kling doing his best to take care of the injured navigator.The Mercedes successfully completed the race without a window.

However the Mercedes currently sold is not a standard 300 SL; This is the 300 SLAU Allhout – one of the first two prototypes of this model designed by Rudolf Allhout.

The SLR has an interesting story in itself: after the Mercedes-Benz was a success with the SL – it was decided to design the SLR, a more advanced version that will be equipped with an eight-piston engine instead of six. The final speed was insane even in modern terms: 290 km / h. The task was placed on Allenhaut’s shoulders.

Allenhaut, born in 1906 in London, was the son of a German father and a British mother. In 1931 he joined Mercedes-Benz, and in 1936 was appointed head of the German manufacturer’s racing program, in the years when he was not only a carmaker – but a tool in the hands of the Nazi regime to prove superiority through car racing.

With the outbreak of World War II, when the Nazis realized that Allenhout was half British, he was placed under close surveillance by the Gestapo – but continued to work at Mercedes-Benz, designing aircraft engines. In 1948 Allenhaut returned to designing cars for Mercedes – this time the 300 SL.

Allenhaut took an unconventional approach when it comes to car engineering, an approach adopted by quite a few car manufacturers and Formula 1 teams today: he refused to stay in the office and preferred to hang out with drivers, hear what bothered them about car behavior and occasionally take the cars for a ride himself. Allenhaut died in 1989.

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