The Mercedes Benz Monza Streamliner

[BunkMoreland]

Went on the block today in Stutttgart €46,5M! (€51,1M with fees!)

https://rmsothebys.com/auctions/tt25/lots/r0001-19...

Got some provenance!

"Driven by future five-time Drivers’ Champion Juan Manuel Fangio to victory at the 1955 Buenos Aires Grand Prix"

[Nova Gyna]

£46 million would certainly make most people blink twice. Lovely looking thing though.

[slopes]

That must be the open top version of the Uhlenhaut Coupe

[LotusOmega375D]

No that was the 300 SLR endurance racer, not the F1 car. This one:

[LotusOmega375D]

To be honest the €51 million paid for the W196 Streamliner seems a relative bargain compared to the €135 million paid for the Uhlenhaut 300 SLR coupe! Maybe the bottom has fallen out of the high end classic car market?

[LarJammer]

Indeed. I thought it would sell for more.

[bergclimber34]

Sadly it will probably never be seen, driven or heard about again.

Unless the owner is a keen driver and wants to show it off, but I doubt it

[lauda]

LotusOmega375D said:

No that was the 300 SLR endurance racer, not the F1 car. This one:

You’re correct, but as I understand it, the F1 car and the sports car are quite closely related, the sports car having a larger engine and extra seat.

[Mr Tidy]

Such a stunning car.

Given there are apparently only 4 in existence I'm not surprised it made so much.

[thegreenhell]

lauda said:

You’re correct, but as I understand it, the F1 car and the sports car are quite closely related, the sports car having a larger engine and extra seat.

Yes, they are both type W196 variants - W196R for the F1 car and W196S for the sportscar. They share essentially the same engine (apart from a different crankshaft), gearbox, suspension and brakes.

I always thought this compromised the SLR slightly, due to them making it LHD. In the F1 car, which came before the SLR, they tilted over the engine to get it lower and to allow the gearbox and propshaft to run along the left side of the cockpit , so the driver sat next to it rather than on top of it as was traditionally the case in most single seaters.

When they made the SLR using the same layout, they were forced to put the driver back on top of the driveline with feet straddling either side of the gearbox! They should have just made the SLR RHD like most racing sportscars of the time.

[I-am-the-reverend]

Apart from the Alfa Romeo P3 and Tipo 308, all the old race cars etc leave me a bit cold. I've seen them in action at the Nuerburgring at classic events and.......yeah, whatever. Porsche 917K's are a different matter of course.

1940's Mercedes powered? Just 5 or 6 million quid gets you something a lot more interesting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zu3XHZCUd1k



I'll never tire of seeing stuff like this.

[BuyaDuster]

I wonder if its the same one I photographed when I was at the Museum in 1991.
We went on a European Tour of car restoration workshops and Museums paid for by the College.

That's me in the background with the brown jacket and the red top!

[LotusOmega375D]

Are you talking about the third car in that line-up? I can’t see for sure what it is. The first two are 300SLR and W196 open wheeler. The fourth is one of the original design 300SL gullwing race cars, probably ex Carrera Panamericana.

Anyway, according to the Sale blurb, Mercedes donated the auction Streamliner to the Indianapolis museum back in 1965, so it presumably wasn’t on display in Stuttgart when you were there in 1991.

[CanAm]

There is (or was when i was last there in 2018) one of the streamlined F1 cars in the Deutsches Museum in Munich.