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Chassis:
Completed in December of 1954, this was the last W196 produced that year. It was constructed on the long wheelbase chassis with open-wheel bodywork. Used for pre-season testing, it made its competition debut in the hands of Juan Manuel Fangio at the 1955 Buenos Aires Grand Prix. As this was a Formula Libre race, the car was fitted with a three-litre engine, which would subsequently be used for the 300 SLR sports car. Fangio won the race, held over two heats, beating team-mate Stirling Moss by nearly 12 seconds. With Moss and Fangio preferring to race the new short-wheelbase, open-wheel cars for the lower speed tracks, chassis 000 09/54 was not used again until the 1955 Italian Grand Prix at Monza. Fitted with the fully enveloping, streamliner body, it was entered for Stirling Moss. He started second on the grid behind Fangio and grabbed the lead early in the race. Fangio fought back and by lap the team-mates had switched positions again. Moss was then delayed as a broken windscreen required a pit-stop. He then set the fastest lap of the race before a broken piston ended his charge early.
At the end of the 1955 season, Mercedes-Benz retired from international motorsport. At that point, there were still 10 complete W196s in existence, four of which were fitted with the streamliner bodywork. All cars were initially retained by Mercedes-Benz, until the mid-1960s when four were loaned or donated to major museums around the world. Among them was 000 09/54, which was gifted to Tony Hulman Jr., who was the owner of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway at the time. It entered the newly created Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum in full running order and was demonstrated on the Speedway by Peter DePaolo to commemorate the 50th anniversary of his uncle Ralph DePalma’s Indy 500 win in a Mercedes. Shown only at select events, the W196 Streamliner spent much of the next six decades in the ‘Vault’ of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum where many of the non-Indy 500 related cars were housed. In 2024, it was decided to offer some of these cars, including the W196, for public sale through RM Sotheby’s. Due to be sold in Stuttgart at a special event hosted together with Mercedes-Benz, chassis 000 09/54 was estimated to sell for in excess of €50 million. In the end, it sold for just over €51 million, making it the most expensive Grand Prix car ever sold at auctioned.
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