Car of the Week: This 1923 Mercedes Raced in the Indy 500 a Century Ago. Now It Could Fetch More Than $5 Million.
In 1923, the supercharged Mercedes-Benz Type 22 race car was the equivalent of Lewis Hamilton‘s Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula 1 car today. So confident was Mercedes—or Daimler Motoren Gesellschaft, as the company was known then—of the car’s towering power that it built four of them to challenge that year’s Indianapolis 500.
Piloted by the automaker’s chief engineer and lead driver, Max Sailer, and his young nephew Karl, the No. 15 car finished eighth overall in the iconic race, beating all other European challengers. It also is one of only two original-specification Mercedes Type 122 Indianapolis Racers known to have survived. Arguably the most original, No. 15, is being auctioned at the RM Sotheby’s Munich sale on November 23.
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“You can count on one hand the number of surviving Mercedes 2.0-liter competition cars. So the opportunity to purchase one of the originals, and one that has competed in the Indianapolis 500, will likely never be repeated,” says Michael Squire, director of research at RM Sotheby’s.
Adding to the car’s collectability is the fact that it comes with its original engine and gearbox, as well as what is almost certain to be its original, bare-aluminum body that’s being sold as part of the auction lot. The car itself is part of the Aumann Collection, put together by Dieter Aumann, a German construction entrepreneur who purchased the car in 1996 from former Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone. Aumann, who passed away last year, paid a reported 750,000 Deutschmarks—the equivalent of roughly $2.1 million at the time.
“Mr. Aumann was a truly passionate researcher, and the beauty of this car is that it comes with a mountain of photos and documents going all the way back to Indianapolis in 1923,” explains Squire.
What adds further to the car’s provenance is that the Type 122 was the brainchild of Paul Daimler, the legendary designer and son of company founder Gottlieb Daimler. Two months after the Indy 500 race, Paul joined rival Horch, that would later be incorporated into Audi. “That makes it arguably his last ‘masterpiece’ for the company bearing his name,” says Squire.
After the Indy race, the car was sold to a New Jersey race-team owner, E.J. Schroder, in 1934. He kept it for a couple of years before passing it on to famed midget-car racer Mike Caruso, who in 1936 entered it in the Vanderbilt Cup, though it ultimately didn’t compete in the contest.
“The cool thing about the car is that it lived on the East Coast for much of its early life. After the war, there was a core group of vintage car enthusiasts who were all friends and acquired interesting cars to go race at places like Bridgehampton in New York. The Type 122 was one of those cars,” says Squire.
Among that cadre of enthusiasts was Henry Austin Clark Jr. who bought the Mercedes in the early 1950s for his Long Island Automotive Museum. Clark allowed his good friend, Charles Addams, cartoonist at the New Yorker magazine and creator of the Addams Family, to regularly race the car at Bridgehampton.
In 1978, this Type 122 was sold to the well-known Japanese collector Yoshiyuki Hayashi, who had it shipped to Tokyo . Fast forward to 1995 and Formula 1’s Bernie Ecclestone acquired a number of cars from Hayashi for his world-famous collection of single-seat race cars in the UK.
Among all the documents, there’s copy of a 1996 fax from Ecclestone to Aumann confirming the 750,000 DM sale price, but slightly berating him for not buying his stunning 1937 Mercedes-Benz 540K Special Roadster as part of the deal.
Shortly after Aumann bought the car, he drove it in the 1996 running of the 1,000-mile Mille Miglia retrospective rally in Italy. Yet it primarily stayed locked away in his private collection, housed in a custom building on the grounds of Aumann’s home in Babenhausen, Germany.
“This really is a magical car with a significance that cannot be overstated. Supercharging and competition both run deep in Mercedes-Benz’s DNA,” says Squire. RM’s Sotheby’s estimates the car’s value at between €3.8 million and €5 million ($4.07 million to $5.35 million).
Click here for more photos of this 1923 Mercedes Type 122 Indianapolis Racer.
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