A 1955 Mercedes-Benz has sold for $143 million or P7.4 billion
A 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupés is now the most expensive car ever sold after a private collector bought it at an auction for $143 million or P7.4 billion.
In a minute-and-a-half long video on its YouTube channel, RM Sotheby's announced that the car, one of the only two known to exist and dubbed “the world's greatest car,” was sold on May 5.
The video then showed shots of different parts of the car, as well as video of it being driven, along with scenes of the frenzied bidding that went on for it. It then revealed that aside from being the most valuable car ever sold, it is now also part of the top 10 most valuable items ever sold at an auction.
Proceeds of the sale are going to the worldwide Mercedes-Benz Fund, which aims to fund educational and research scholarships in environmental science and decarbonisation.
The Uhlenhaut Coupé gets its name from its designer Rudolf Uhlenhaut, who was also the 1955 Daimler-Benz motorsport chief. It was considered one of the fastest road cars of its era, traveling at a speed of 290 kilometers per hour. Only two copies of the car were ever made. The other existing Uhlenhaut Coupé is kept in the Mercedez-Benz corporate museum in Bad Cannstatt.
Watch the video announcing the sale below.
The car is the latest big-ticket item to rake in huge prices at an auction. Just yesterday, a Pablo Picasso painting depicting his lover Marie-Thérèse Walter as a tentacled creature sold for $67.5 million or P3.5 billion.
Last week, Andy Warhol's Short Sage Blue Marilyn sold for $195 million or P10.2 billion, making it the most expensive 20th-century artwork to ever be auctioned.
Other art pieces to fetch high auction prices include Banksy's Love is in the Bin that sold for $25.4 million last year. A Frida Kahlo self-portrait
also sold for $34.9 million last year, making it the most valuable Latin American artwork to be sold at an auction.
If these prices are too much for you but you want to start looking into collecting art, check out pieces made by local celebrities in the gallery below.
