1955 Mercedes sold for $180 million, a world record for a car at auction

RM Sotheby’s announced Thursday that the 1955 Mercedes, which exists in only two versions, sold in early May for 135 million euros, an absolute world record for a car sold at auction.

The 1955 Mercedes 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe was sold May 5 at a secret auction held at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, in cooperation between Sotheby’s luxury car company and the German car manufacturer.

Priced at 135 million euros, this Mercedes was sold three times the previous record set since 2018 by a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO that was sold in 2018 by RM Sotheby’s for more than 48 million dollars (45 million euros).

In addition, the Mercedes “300 SLR is now among the top ten most expensive items ever sold at auction,” RM Sotheby’s boasted in a press release published Thursday in London and carried by Sotheby’s parent company to New York. This week’s Spring Art Auction.

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In fact, according to a classification made by Agence France-Presse for artworks sold at auction in recent years, especially in New York, the absolute record was held by Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi”, which was sold in November 2017 for 450.3 million by Christie’s in New York.

Then comes Andy Warhol’s “Shot Sage Blue Marilyn,” which on May 9 sold for $195 million at Christie’s, becoming the most expensive work of art of the 20th century ever sold at auction.

For works of the 20th century, “Women of Algeria (Version 0)” by Pablo Picasso ($179.4 million in May 2015) and “No Recovering” by Amedeo Modigliani (170.4 million in November 2015) were sold at Christie’s.

According to the order of artworks that have sold at auction for more than $100 million, the Mercedes was sold on May 5 by RM Sotheby’s and ranks sixth or seventh.

The car, which was owned by the second example of Mercedes-Benz, has been sold to a private collector and the proceeds from the sale will be used “to create an international fund + Mercedes-Benz for scholarship and research training for young people in environmental sciences and decarbonization,” according to RM Sotheby’s