Inside Bernie Ecclestone’s £250m ‘unique’ sale of classic racing cars
Almost eight years after he left his role at the helm of Formula 1, Bernie Ecclestone is selling his collection of rare Grand Prix racing cars, believed to be worth in the region of £250m.
The trove of 69 historic cars includes Ferraris raced by world champions Michael Schumacher, Niki Lauda and Mike Hawthorn, models from Ecclestone’s former team Brabham, and a Vanwall VW10 driven by Stirling Moss.
It is believed to be the finest collection of its kind ever assembled and could, according to some estimates, fetch around a quarter of a billion pounds.
“I have been collecting these cars for more than 50 years, and I have only ever bought the best of any example,” said Ecclestone, 94.
“Whilst many other collectors over the years have opted for sports cars, my passion has always been for Grand Prix and Formula 1 cars.
“A Grand Prix and in particular a Formula 1 car is far more important than any road car or other form of race car, as it is the pinnacle of the sport, and all the cars I have bought over the years have fantastic race histories and are rare works of art.
“I love all of my cars but the time has come for me to start thinking about what will happen to them should I no longer be here, and that is why I have decided to sell them.
“After collecting and owning them for so long, I would like to know where they have gone and not leave them for my wife to deal with should I not be around.”
Ecclestone, who ran F1 for four decades until his departure, has engaged British dealer Tom Hartley Jnr Ltd, a specialist in classic sports and racing cars, to handle the sale.
Ecclestone Collection ‘is the history of F1’
“This is quite simply the most important race car collection in the world. There has never been and probably never will be a collection like it ever offered for sale again,” said Tom Hartley Jnr.
“This is a great opportunity for a discerning collector to acquire cars that have never before been offered for sale, and it would be great to see them back on the track again.”
It comes a year after Ecclestone pledged to pay HMRC £652m after pleading guilty to fraud. He was accused of failing to declare more than £400m in assets held in an overseas trust.
Other cars in the collection include the one-off Brabham-Alfa Romeo BT46B “fan car”, which left its rivals trailing in its one and only race in 1978, the “Thin Wall Special”, the first Ferrari to ever beat Alfa Romeo, and Alberto Ascari’s Italian Grand Prix-winning 375 F1.
“All of the cars on the Formula 1 grid today look the same. If you stripped them of their liveries, you’d struggle to know which one was a Williams and which was a Ferrari,” added Hartley Jnr.
“But when you look at some of the Grand Prix cars from the early 1960s to the late 1970s, they’d very much be at home in the Museum of Modern Art. This collection is the history of Formula 1.”
