PREVIEW

Bernie Ecclestone is selling his unrivalled collection of historic race cars.

The sale, run by Tom Hartley Jnr Ltd, on behalf of the 94-year-old, includes 69 historic Grand Prix and Formula 1 cars - making it the most impressive collection offered for sale.

Ecclestone was for decades the commercial rights holder of Formula 1, transforming it from a gentleman’s sport into a multi-billion dollar business.

Each and every one of Ecclestone’s 69 cars is unique, having been stored away from the public gaze, in some cases for more than half a century. Many of the cars have never been seen since Ecclestone purchased them.

Highlights are Ferraris raced in Formula 1 Grands Prix by legendary World Champions such as Mike Hawthorn, Niki Lauda, and Michael Schumacher, and Brabhams raced in Formula 1 Grands Prix by aces such as Nelson Piquet, Carlos Pace, and, again, Niki Lauda.

Among them is the one-off Brabham-Alfa Romeo BT46B ‘fan car’, which raced only once, victoriously, to win the Swedish Grand Prix at Anderstorp in 1978 by more than half a minute.
Bernie Ecclestone said: “I have been collecting these cars for more than 50 years, and I have only ever bought the best of any example. Whilst many other collectors over the years have opted for sports cars, my passion has always been for Grand Prix and Formula 1 cars.
“A Grand Prix and in particular a Formula 1 car is far more important than any road car or other form of race car, as it is the pinnacle of the sport, and all the cars I have bought over the years have fantastic race histories and are rare works of art.”

The racing mogul, who in 2023 paid £650
million to settle a tax case with HMRC that also resulted in a fraud conviction, said he was parting with the cars due to his advancing years and desire to know what becomes of them before he passes away.

“I love all of my cars but the time has come for me to start thinking about what will happen to them should I no longer be here, and that is why I have decided to sell them,” he explains. “After collecting and owning them for so long, I would like to know where they have gone and not leave them for my wife to deal with should I not be around.

“Having collected what are the best and most original Formula 1 cars dating back to the start of the sport, I have now decided to move them on to new homes that will treat them as I have and look after them as precious works of art.”
Tom Hartley, Jnr. said that it was a privilege to handle the sale of the world’s most important race car collection.

“This is quite simply the most important race car collection in the world,” he gushes. “There has never been and probably never will be a collection like it ever offered for sale again. The collection spans 70 years of Grand Prix and Formula 1 racing, and highlights include Mike Hawthorn, Niki Lauda, and Michael Schumacher World Championship-winning Ferraris, all of Bernie’s Brabhams including the famous ‘fan car’, and the Vanwall VW10, the car in which the great Stirling Moss won several Formula 1 Grands Prix on the way to Vanwall clinching the first ever Formula 1 Constructors’ World Championship in 1958, plus so much more.”

Explaining how they were a window into a more romantic era of Formula 1, he adds: “All of the cars on the Formula 1 grid today look the same. If you stripped them of their liveries, you’d struggle to know which one was a Williams and which was a Ferrari. But when you look at some of the Grand Prix cars from the early 1960s to the late 1970s, they’d very much be at home in The Museum of Modern Art. This collection is the history of Formula 1.”