RM Sotheby’s has acquired the Mercedes Streamliner-bodied W 196 R driven by Juan Manuel Fangio and Sir Stirling Moss for auction.
- The first Streamliner-bodied W 196 R ever offered for private ownership
- One of four known complete examples mounted with the exquisite factory-built enclosed-fender Stromlinienwagen coachwork at the conclusion of the 1955 Formula One season
- Driven by future five-time Drivers’ Champion Juan Manuel Fangio to victory at the 1955 Buenos Aires Grand Prix
- Piloted by celebrated driver Sir Stirling Moss at the 1955 Italian Grand Prix at Monza, achieving fastest lap; presented today with that streamlined bodywork
- Donated in 1965 by Mercedes-Benz to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) Museum, and now offered from 59 years of fastidious care by the IMS Museum
Rudolf Uhlenhaut—Juan Manuel Fangio—Stirling Moss—Tony Hulman. These four men form the arc of this W 196 R’s story, from the hallowed grounds of Mercedes-Benz’ Rennabteilung (Racing Department), to the stifling heat of Buenos Aires in January, to the brand-new high-speed banks of the Monza circuit, to one of the shrines of motorsport in Indianapolis.
Our story begins with a humble engineering student in Munich at the dawn of the thirties when Germany was undergoing some of the worst symptoms of the crushing Great Depression. The London-born Rudolf “Rudi” Uhlenhaut was hired by Mercedes-Benz straight out of school in 1931, and he spent the next five years proving his mettle in the production car department, increasingly recognized for his quiet demeanor, strong work ethic, and unusual sense of commitment. During this time Mercedes-Benz returned to racing, and in 1934 and 1935 the works team enjoyed great success, giving rise to the W 25 racecars known as the Silver Arrows, for their unfinished metal coachwork. Despite these initial successes, Stuttgart suffered a setback in 1936 when that year’s new car failed to meet expectations, and changes were soon afoot.
The promising Rudolf Uhlenhaut was promoted to director of the experimental department for racing, which was somewhat of a surprise given that he had no experience in racecar development. He was to work under racing department director Dr. Fritz Nallinger, and in conjunction with racing team manager Alfred Neubauer. Keenly aware of how little he knew about competition cars, Uhlenhaut threw himself into the assignment with characteristic zeal, learning the ins and outs of racecar behavior by privately testing the cars on the Nürburgring. Team drivers marveled at how quickly Uhlenhaut became shockingly good, as he insisted on testing cars at racing speeds to properly replicate in-race conditions, occasionally even besting team-driver lap times in the process. He was also the only Daimler-Benz engineer who routinely traveled with the racing team, and his direction led to key improvements for the 1937 car, the W 125. Uhlenhaut proceeded to the highly successful W 154 and W 165 racecar programs before war broke out in September 1939.
AT THE END OF AN ERA
Having demonstrated that they could dominate on the track Mercedes-Benz chose to make a graceful exit once again from motor racing after 1955, bowing out for the next few decades—and further ensuring that the remarkable legend of the W 196 R would never be forgotten. At the conclusion of 1955, 10 different complete W 196 R examples remained in running order, including four with Stromlinienwagen coachwork. Fourteen chassis had been built in total, designated with numbers 1 to 15. (Chassis numbers 1 and 15 were eventually scrapped, and number 11 was never actually assigned to a chassis.) In October 1955, Mercedes-Benz held an official ceremony to retire the W 196 R, publicly shrouding the cars in dust sheets before transferring them to the company’s museum in Stuttgart. Following the completion of its competition duties but prior to being stored, chassis number 00009/54 had been—in keeping with common post-race procedure—partially dismantled and equipped with a new engine, among other items. While the Daimler-Benz Museum initially retained all 10 remaining W 196 R examples, four cars were eventually donated to prestigious museums around the world, including chassis number 00009/54.
The post-racing path of chassis number 00009/54 was set in motion in September 1964, when a contingent from the Mercedes-Benz Club of America visited the marque’s Untertürkheim plant in Stuttgart. As detailed by a wealth of correspondence on file, during this visit, a conversation ensued between the club’s Wilhelm “Bill” Spoerle and the manufacturer’s Dr. -Ing Friedrich Schildberger about donating a race car to the “planned new museum on the grounds of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.” A German immigrant who once worked in NSU’s motorcycle racing division before the war, Mr. Spoerle had moved to Indianapolis in 1956 to work on racing cars, taking a position at the nascent Dreyer Motorsports for several years. Eventually lured away by Anton “Tony” Hulman Jr. in 1963, Spoerle became the Restoration Manager at the relatively new museum at the Brickyard. By the time of Spoerle’s visit to Untertürkheim he was already working for Tony Hulman, and he surely realized there could be no better place for a W 196 R donation than the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum.
Tony Hulman was a typical example of one of motorsports’ classic archetypes—the colorful business-savvy impresario who has arrived at racing rather late in life and by accident, but is bitten by the bug and comes to love it. From Terre Haute, Indiana, Hulman was the scion of a fortune built on an eponymous grocery distribution business. He worked his way up through the family business, eventually becoming president in 1931, while excelling in imaginative marketing approaches such as the ad campaign for the firm’s Clabber Girl baking powder. The Brickyard had fallen into a surprising state of disrepair by late 1941 when racing was canceled after the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war, the track’s owner, former World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker, was content to sell the circuit to whomever might want it, for any use at all. But former three-time Indianapolis 500 winner Wilbur Shaw was adamant that the Brickyard should only be sold to someone intending to keep it open for racing. After searching high and low, Shaw found Hulman, who officially purchased the speedway in November 1945, and quickly set about renovations for the planned 1946 Indianapolis 500, the first post-war edition of the legendary race. Hulman continued to regularly improve the course over the years, while notably founding the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Foundation, a separate non-profit organization created in part as the financial/business facade for the new IMS Museum.
As Mercedes-Benz president Walter Hitzinger and chief engineer Dr. Nallinger explained in a March 1965 letter to Hulman, “In view of the special significance of Indianapolis in the history of automobile racing and also in particular view of our own company’s contribution, we have now decided to give you a 2.5 litre streamlined car, Type W 196, built in 1954, as a gift for exhibition in your museum.” Mercedes-Benz had a tie to America’s greatest race, having won the race in just its fifth running in 1915 when Ralph DePalma drove a Mercedes to victory in what proved to be one of just a handful of Indianapolis 500 wins for a European manufacturer. Dr. Schildberger set about re-commissioning the W 196 R so that it could be driven during an official presentation at the Brickyard, which was planned for the weekend of the 1965 Indianapolis 500. For this exhibition, Mercedes-Benz ordered 50 gallons of Esso (Exxon) racing fuel to be delivered. The Stromlinienwagen was shipped through the port of Baltimore in late April and trucked to Indianapolis.
Officially donated to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Foundation on Sunday, 30 May 1965, the Mercedes-Benz made two appearances during the weekend. The first came at an informal presentation after the annual driver’s meeting, where the car was demonstrated by Peter DePaolo in honor of the Mercedes victory 50 years earlier by his uncle, Ralph DePalma. The following day DePaolo again took the wheel before Monday’s feature race, after the car had officially been presented to the IMS Museum by Mercedes-Benz.
LIFE IN RETIREMENT
For almost six decades, the W 196 R has been fastidiously stored and maintained by the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, occasionally being invited to attend important exhibitions, such as the 1996 Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance, the 2003 Canadian International AutoShow, and the grand re-opening of the redesigned Petersen Automotive Museum in December 2015. The car participated in the first Velocity Invitational (then called Sonoma Speed Festival) event at Sonoma Raceway in 2019, and it was then shown at the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance once again in 2020.
The W 196 R has been displayed at the IMS Museum periodically, including the 2020–2021 “From the Vault” exhibition; when not on display, it was part of the Basement Collection VIP tours of the Museum’s vehicle storage location. From July 2022 to January 2023, chassis number 00009/54 was again shown at the Peterson Automotive Museum as part of the “Andy Warhol: Cars — Works from the Mercedes-Benz Art Collection” exhibit. Most recently, it was part of the Mercedes-Benz display at the 2024 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance. In the interest of a true educational mission, however, the car has never been submitted for judging at concours events.
The Streamliner has been treated to two mild bouts of sympathetic freshening during its more recent lifetime, first undergoing a refinish in the correct DB 180 Silver Metallic in 1980, with race #16 in white roundels, as per the 1955 Monza livery when driven by Stirling Moss. In late 2015, in preparation for its display at the Petersen Museum, the car received a second refinishing of the coachwork by the esteemed experts at Canepa Motorsports in Scotts Valley, California, and it continues to be a startling testament to the brilliance of the Stromlinenwagens at Monza.
There is no small irony in the fact that this W 196 R has spent so many decades in the care of the IMS Museum. For at the end of the 1955 season, according to motoring historian Karl Ludvigsen in his book Mercedes-Benz: Quicksilver Century, some minds at Mercedes-Benz wondered how the model might fare in the Indianapolis 500. Initial research and development calculations were undertaken to create performance projections. But after these initial calculations were made, the pursuit was dropped in the face of anticipated high costs and a lack of pure necessity. The W 196 R had achieved everything it was built to do; no further campaigning was necessary. Its shocking form, however, inspired a number of Indianapolis 500 hopefuls—perhaps most notably Jimmy Daywalt and the Sumar Special—to incorporate elements of its streamlined design into their own cars for 1955.
It should now be very evident that chassis number 00009/54 is a diamond of extraordinary cut, emitting a brilliance that is almost impossible to fathom. The car is one of just 14 chassis built, and it is believed to be one of just 10 known complete examples surviving at the conclusion of the 1955 Formula One season. Of those, this example was one of only four mounted with the magnificent Streamliner coachwork at the conclusion of the 1955 Formula One season. It was an integral component of the factory racing campaign that saw Mercedes-Benz capture two Formula One Drivers’ Championships in as many attempts, and one World Sportscar Championship during the same period.
Further driven to victory by Fangio at the 1955 Buenos Aires Grand Prix, and to the fastest lap by Stirling Moss at the 1955 Formula One Italian Grand Prix at Monza, this W 196 R had been piloted by two of history’s most famous and accomplished racing drivers. Following one of the most successful competition campaigns imaginable, the car was retired to the stately in-house collection of Mercedes-Benz before being donated nine years later to the equally respected Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, whose collection includes some of the finest racing cars the world has ever seen.
Chassis number 00009/54 represents only the second W 196 R ever offered for private ownership, and the sole example offered with the magnificent Streamliner coachwork. Presented in its proper Monza livery from the 1955 Italian Grand Prix, and documented with a trove of period materials, chassis number 00009/54 has moreover never been formally presented for judging or driven in any vintage events; it should experience a rapturous welcome at any of the major events for which it is eligible. Ideal for display at flagship concours d’elegance like Pebble Beach or Villa d’Este, the magnificent W 196 R will surely also experience great acclaim at significant marque events worldwide. Note that after many years of static display at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, chassis number 00009/54 will require careful recommissioning prior to starting or driving.
The future caretaker can take pride in ownership of a bona fide competition legend that is one of Formula One’s most successful models ever, bar none. Absolutely astonishing in every respect, from its advanced, powerful engineering and truly singular coachwork to its remarkable history—driven by two of the biggest names in motorsports, this W 196 R Stromlinienwagen is a gem without parallel. It now awaits the expected ardor of Formula One enthusiasts, dedicated marque collectors, and lovers of the all-but-unobtainable—sure to redefine our very understanding of what is possible.
Here’s more on auction: https://rmsothebys.com/auctions/tt25/lots/r0001-1954-mercedesbenz-w-196-r-stromlinienwagen#/smallgallery_1265072
Auction start price: In Excess Of €50,000,000 EUR
[The story is as per press release]
