Just four examples of the W 196 R ‘Stromlinienwagen’ were built—and this one was raced by both Juan Manuel Fangio and Sir Stirling Moss
- Mercedes-Benz streamliner raced by Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss set to cross auction block
- The car will be the first W 196 R Stromlinienwagen ever made available for private ownership
- It’s expected the race car will net a sale price in excess of €50,000,000, or CDN$73.65 million
- The sale, by Ontario, Canada-headquartered RM Sotheby’s, takes place in Germany on February 1, 2025
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What you’re looking at is one of just 14 Mercedes-Benz W 196 R race cars built, specifically chassis 00009/54. It wears the marque’s rather aerodynamic Elektron-alloy Stromlinienwagen bodywork, which together with the car’s 3.0-litre M196 straight-eight engine helped it achieve speeds of up to 186 mph (299 km/h).
The specs aren’t what gives this piece of history its value, though: it’s its racing pedigree. This Benz was first campaigned in an open-wheel configuration, without that sleek, streamlined body, by Juan Manuel Fangio at the Formula Libre Buenos Aires Grand Prix in January 1955, near the start of that year’s Formula One season; you won’t be surprised to hear he took the win, there.
It went on to become one of four W 196 R racers fitted with that then-experimental Stromlinienwagen coachwork, and in that configuration was raced by a young Stirling Moss at the 1955 Italian Grand Prix at Monza, where it was forced to retire mid-race—after setting a record fastest lap, mind you.
At the end of the ’55 F1 season, just 10 examples of those 14 W 196 R race cars remained, and Mercedes itself initially held on to all of them. Eventually, it decided to donate four of them to various museums; chassis 00009/54 here thus went to the then-fledgling Indianapolis Motor Speedway (IMS) Museum in 1965.
The museum kept the car in good nick, refinishing it to a high standard twice, in 1980 and then in 2015. While living most of its life in the IMS Museum vault, chassis 00009/54 got around some, too, for example flying to the Canadian International Auto Show in Toronto in 2003, among more prestigious concours and events.
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