Former Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone has sold off his entire collection of grand prix cars – valued at around £500million – in a record-breaking deal.
Ecclestone announced last year that he had put his 69 vehicle collection up for sale and on Thursday confirmed it had been sold to Red Bull co-owner and family friend Mark Mateschitz.
The collection, which Ecclestone says ’embodies 70 years of F1 history’ features many iconic Ferraris driven by world champions like Michael Schumacher, Niki Lauda, Juan Manuel Fangio, Mike Hawthorne and Alberto Ascari.
Though the amount Mateschitz paid has not been disclosed, Tom Hartley Jnr, who handled the sale, said: ‘There has never been a transaction in the collectors’ car world that even comes close to this. By several multiples it is the biggest sale price ever achieved.
‘When we put the cars up for sale before Christmas I don’t think we could have anticipated how much interest there would be.It’s been utterly incredible.
‘We received offers from all over the world, including from two separate sovereign wealth funds. But I do feel the collection has gone to the best home, and to the buyer which Bernie most favoured.
‘The buyer moved extremely quickly. We spoke with him before Christmas, he flew over, we showed him the cars and he was very, very excited. He was definitely a favoured buyer of Bernie’s.’
The collection also includes the Brabham BT46B ‘fan car’, which famously won it’s only ever race in 1978 before being discontinued for being too fast.
Ecclestone began his involvement in F1 in the 1950s, later becoming Brabham team owner and then owner and chief executive of the Formula One Group in the late 1970s, a role he would hold until it’s sale in 2017.
The 94-year-old, who has an estimated net worth of £1.9billion, plead guilty to fraud in 2023, having failed to declare more than £400m of overseas assets to the UK government and agreed to pay a record £652m to HMRC.
But he says the sale of his collection had nothing to do with the case but rather so his wife Fabiana, 48, and their four-year-old son Ace don’t have to worry about it when he has passed.
‘With a bit of luck I might get two or three more years and I don’t want to leave all this for Fabiana to sort,’ Ecclestone told the Telegraph.
‘All these car dealers would be driving her mad. So the best thing to do is to get all the cars together and try to make sure they go to proper homes.
‘Ace might not be interested in handling all this either. He might be more into football. Sooner or later, this had to happen.
‘I’m still more or less in control, so I can do what I like. Maybe in another year I won’t be able to.’
Ecclestone will no doubt have one eye on the new F1 season which begins next week with the Australian Grand Prix.
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