Cars

Taking matters into your own hands 

It sounds clichéd to say, but Dorotheum’s Classic Expo Salzburg sale on 19 October truly has something to satisfy every automotive taste and budget. The auction is spearheaded by a matching-numbers 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL ‘Gullwing’ (est. 1–1.3m euros) finished in the rare shade of Strawberry Red Metallic and lovingly owned by a 300SL enthusiast for the last 25 years. 

There hardly is any better key to twentieth-century history than the automobile. If future archaeologists study the dusty artifacts of our era, it will probably be the last surviving sports and racing cars, which will tell them the most about the technical possibilities and social aspirations of the Homo automobilis on the eve of the third millennium. In retrospect, it seems almost visionary that Filippo Tommaso Marinetti already put the aesthetic relevance of a race car ahead of the formal meaning of ‘Nike of Samothrace’ in his Manifesto of Futurism in 1909.

The strong Swiss franc may currently deter tourists, but for young, meticulously maintained and affordable classic cars, the country’s market is still attractive to overseas buyers.

An eccentric first owner