Indianapolis Motor Speedway Has Been Hiding Some Amazing Mercedes
We only know of these cars because the Indianapolis Motor Speedway is selling them.
Central Indiana. Stuttgart Germany. Not exactly places that have a lot in common. Except for one very important thing. A love of all things speed. Germany has the autobahn and Indiana has the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.
Many know of the museum there at IMS, and some even know of the “basement vault.” But few people have ever seen it. in fact, most of us are just becoming aware of the incredible cars held by the museum because they are making an attempt to free up some cash.
RM Sotheby’s has announced they will be auctioning off some of the Speedway Museum collection, which includes truly incredible cars. The showstopper for us? This Fangio and Moss driven W196 in “Monza” spec.
Amazingly, Mercedes donated this W196 to the museum all the way back in 1965 according to MotorAuthority. In that era, Benz had already pulled out of motorsport due to the disastrous and unfortunate crash at Le Mans a decade earlier.
Previously an open wheel formula car driven by Fangio, this W196 was then driven by Stirling Moss in the current “Monza” aerodynamic bodywork. While that’s the show stopper with an estimated worth of 70 million dollars, other Mercedes in the collection include two much older Mercedes from 1909 and 1911 respectively.
One of which is a 1909 “Semmering” hill climb car. No pictures of this one, unfortunately but we know from Mercedes that this race car was an early racing car, and produced about 150 horsepower. In addition to that, there’s another Mercedes over 100 years old in the collection, too. This one is a 1911 22/40 “Touring” car. This one isn’t a racer.
Mercedes has a critically important connection to the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. They’ve won there, twice. In 1915, and decades later in 1994. That 1994 win was accomplished by Roger Penske spotting a loophole in the rulebook, and issuing an order to Mercedes and Ilmor to make a secret engine for the race. It won, by a solid margin. And many of those engineers are still with AMG to this day. So a Mercedes actually doesn’t seem all that out of place in an Indiana cornfield, now that we think about it.
Photos courtesy of RM Sotheby’s
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