2022 has been a roller coaster year for tech, booze, and automobile world. It all began with Elon Musk buying Twitter (the deal is still not locked) for a whopping $44 Billion. We also saw the world’s largest bottle of whiskey that could well be deemed as the most expensive, when it goes under the hammer next week. Now, the breaking news is Mercedes just sold as the world’s most expensive car for $142 million (€135 million). We don’t know who is the new owner.
A classic traditional Mercedes-Benz starts at about $54,000 and scales up to an amount, my pockets won’t be able to afford even after ten lifetimes. But, someone in the world did have plenty of cash to splash and bought the vintage Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe ‘Silver Arrow’ of 1955.
What makes Mercedes-Benz SLR coupe 1955 so special
The luxurious beauty had been kept in the German automaker’s collection for a long time but finally found its rightful owner after it was sold in an auction organized by a Canada-based company called RM Sotheby. The rare sports car sold is ridiculously beautiful. It is touted to have a top speed of 186-mph and is powered by a 300-horsepower eight-cylinder engine. The doors of the car rise up like curved wings making it one of the world’s most desirable cars.
The car is named after Mercedes’ chief engineer at that time. It is one of only two 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe prototypes that were there in the German company’s collection. While the one has been sold, the other prototype remains in the ownership of Mercedes-Benz.
The owner is unknown
The burning question is, who is the owner of the most expensive car in the world? And, the answer is, we don’t know. Well, we could all make our speculations from Elon Musk to Tom Cruise, but whosoever it is, you need some spending to take home a 67-years old roadster. The owner has decided to keep the identity anonymous.
The car was sold at a closed invitation-only auction at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart on May 5. It went on to shatter the previous record of the most expensive car that was previously held by a 1963 Ferrari 250 GTO which was sold for about $70 million in 2018. Mercedes said in a statement that the money derived from the sale will be used to establish the Mercedes-Benz Fund, a global scholarship fund.