ROME – The latest record was won by a Ferrari, a 250 GTO owned by former Microsoft chief developer Gregory Whitten, sold by RM Sotheby’s in August 2018. The price? 46.5 million euros plus change. No one would therefore have imagined that four years later that insane record could be pulverized by another jewel on four wheels. Yet it is so, because it seems that the Mercedes Museum in Stuttgart has sold at a price of 135 million euros – it is unknown to whom – one of the two specimens in its possession of the 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé from 1955. We use the “seems” because not there is nothing official for the moment, even if the Museum continues not to deny the news.
Named after the technical director of the racing department Rudolf Uhlenhaut, the “Seagull Wings” in question would also become the most expensive Mercedes among those sold at auctions or in private negotiations, given that the maximum sum reached was that of 29, 6 million euros paid for the W196 R single-seater driven by Juan Manuel Fangio in the 1954 Formula 1 season. Instead, Stirling Moss drove it and won a Mille Miglia in 1955.
The 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé has a 302 hp inline eight-cylinder engine, capable of projecting it at the insane speed (for a 1955 car) of 290 km / h. A wonderful car destined for competitions, whose career was however abruptly interrupted following the tragedy of 11 June 1955, when the driver Pierre Levegh lost his life ending up in the grandstands of the Le Mans public, killing 84 spectators and injuring them at the same time. 120 (the most serious accident in the history of motoring).
It remains to be clarified why the name of its designer was linked to the car. An anecdote explains it to us. One of the two examples was long used by Rudolf Uhlenhaut as a company car. One day the Mercedes engineer, having to reach Munich for an important appointment, he left Stuttgart quite late and was forced to push the car to its maximum performance. Uhlenhaut covered the 232 km that separate the two cities, and for which a current navigator indicates a travel time of 2 hours and 45 minutes without traffic, in just one hour, so much so that he earned the privilege of reading his surname on one of the most beautiful cars in the world. Which is now also the most expensive.