When the auctioneer’s hammer fell yesterday at the RM Sotheby’s auction, marking the victory of the mysterious buyer of the Mercedes W 196 R with its aerodynamic "Stromlinienwagen" body (which should be pronounced in the most German accent you can muster), it may not have made much noise, but in the world of elite classic and race cars, it resonated from one end of the world to the other.
This car is one of those exceedingly rare cases where a creation of its scale is even available for purchase—let alone to private hands. In fact, this point is so significant that the astonishing sum of $53 million paid for it is actually the least remarkable part of the story.
The starting grid for the first race of the 1954 Formula 1 season was one of those moments in time where, even without fully understanding what you're looking at, you can tell a big story is unfolding. A single glance at the photo from that day is enough to notice that among all the race cars, two stood out as completely different. Unlike their competitors, which featured the typical cigar-shaped body with exposed wheels at all four corners, these two were covered in a full magnesium body, gleaming with the signature silver color associated with German race cars of the 1930s—machines that were part race car, part Nazi propaganda, known as the "Silver Arrows."
These cars sat incredibly low to the ground, a testament to their front-mid-engine placement behind the front wheels for improved weight distribution. They emitted a deafening roar, their idle RPM producing an irregular series of explosions—the last thing you’d expect from elite German engineering. But that was because this engine was never meant to idle for more than a few fleeting moments.
Its engine displacement wasn’t particularly impressive—2,494 cc—nor was its power output, which ranged from 275 to 290 horsepower in its later versions. But within its inline-eight cylinders lay the cutting edge of race car technology for that era. It was essentially built as two four-cylinder engines fused together to achieve extreme precision in operation.
Nothing about it was "off the shelf"—it was designed from the ground up to be the pinnacle of technology. Its crankshaft was unique: instead of the connecting rods wrapping around the crank with a bearing, it used a series of complex ball bearings. It featured two overhead camshafts, a separate camshaft for the exhaust manifold, dual ignition, a dry sump oil system, and an innovative desmodromic valve system, where specially shaped cam lobes controlled the opening and closing of the valves without relying on conventional springs. It also had Bosch direct fuel injection, and its redline was somewhere between 9,000 and 10,000 RPM.
Every aspect of this car was meticulously engineered. Its drum brakes weren’t mounted at the wheels like most cars but positioned deeper within the chassis to reduce what’s known as "unsprung weight"—the weight not supported by the suspension system. These cars were so fast, reliable, and fuel-efficient that they marked one of the first instances in which drivers realized race cars could be smooth and easy to control at high speeds, rather than wild, unforgiving machines constantly trying to kill their driver at every turn. It was still a demanding car that required a highly skilled driver to precisely place it on the track with its enclosed wheel arches, but when such a driver was behind the wheel, it was truly unbeatable on the high-speed circuits of the season.
On that starting grid, surrounded by Maseratis, Ferraris, a few Coopers, and a Lancia or two, the world witnessed the return of Mercedes to the pinnacle of global motorsport—a stage it had been absent from since the outbreak of World War II. It would dominate that season and the next, only to disappear from the sport for decades after the infamous 1955 Le Mans disaster, where a Mercedes flew into the crowd, killing 83 spectators and injuring about 120 others (ask, and there’ll be an article about that too).
This car brought together engineer Rudolf Uhlenhaut—who was in his second stint developing race cars for Mercedes after working on the team’s 1930s efforts—with the greatest racing driver of all time, Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio, who secured two world championships with it at the age of 43 (!), including a victory at the Buenos Aires Grand Prix. On the other side, it was also driven by a young British racer named Stirling Moss—the best driver never to win a world championship—who took it to victory at the 1955 Monza Grand Prix. Between the engineer, the two racing legends, and this machine, a legend was born that lasted just two years in reality but has lived on for 70 years as mythology—the Mercedes W 196 R Stromlinienwagen.
This car, which sold for $53 million, is one of only four known examples of this specific body style in existence—and one of just two that competed in the 1955 World Championship. In 1965, it was donated to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum, where it was preserved and maintained over the years.
The buyer has chosen to remain anonymous, and their identity has not been disclosed. The car has made appearances at various public events and has been a centerpiece attraction at motorsport festivals such as the Goodwood Festival of Speed, where I had the chance to see it in person—the only time in my life. So while this sale is an opportunity to retell the story of this legendary car, it’s a bit disheartening to think that it may now disappear into a private collection, limiting public access to this masterpiece.