Mercedes-Benz 500 K "Caracciola" Special Coupe z 1935 roku na aukcji

The two seater vehicle, CALIFORNIA, USA, A ONE OFF car built for Mercedes-Benz’s legendary champion racing driver, Rudi Caracciola is up for auction with no reserve. Images show the striking, 1935 Mercedes-Benz 500 K 'Caracciola' Special Coupe, in all its glory. The car is being offered for sale by Sotheby’s The Junkyard, The Rudi Klein Collection. This vehicle is the single most pursued Full Classic automobile of the last half-century. documented by a copy of its build sheet, bearing Caracciola’s name. Formerly owned by legendary California enthusiasts Dr. Milton Roth and M.L. “Bill” Post and acquired by Rudi Klein in 1979, it has been hidden away and not seen by the public since 1980. This is the long-awaited opportunity to acquire and freshly restore one of the most famous and desired of all Mercedes-Benzes. Currently the vehicle is being offered without reserve and without a listing price. Rudolf Caracciola, born in Germany to Italian parents, who enjoyed cars and so apprenticed at an automobile factory as a young man, eventually became a car salesman for Daimler in Dresden, and in 1926 asked Mercedes-Benz to supply him a car to drive in the first German Grand Prix.  The race was beset by drenching rain, which Caracciola hurtled through, even as other drivers literally crashed and died around him. Rudi Caracciola, Regenmeister, and his utterly fearless nature won the day. By the mid-1930s Caracciola, the first non-Italian to win the Mille Miglia, was the star of Mercedes-Benz’s Formula 1 team, occupying a position in the public eye akin to the modern legend of Lewis Hamilton.  At the wheel of the famed “Silver Arrows” he accumulated six German Grand Prix trophies, a record which still stands today, as well as three European Driving Championships and three European Hillclimb Championships.  In January 1938, at the wheel of a W125, he was clocked at 268.9 mph on the autobahn, which is still the fastest speed ever officially recorded on a public road. Such was the Regenmeister’s level of skill; 86 years later, one of his achievements still stands Following this success Mercedes-Benz built him unique car creation on what was then their ultimate supercharged chassis.  “The design of the car was tailored specifically for Caracciola, hence the somewhat taller but nonetheless well-balanced roofline and windshield, accommodating the driver’s height,” states the listing.  “The body sat at the end of an almost impossibly long, gorgeous hoodline, it and the fenders unencumbered by awkward spare tires,instead, the spare hung at the rear, at the terminus of bold chromed accent lines that flowed to a point through the curve of the deck lid.  “It was a car that emphasised its power.  It looked, in fact, like a racing car with a roofline, and that was almost certainly the idea. Befitting an automobile that Mercedes-Benz wanted people to see Caracciola drive, to events all over Europe, it came with room for two passengers, and a luggage set aft of the seatsÃłperfect for a weekend at Reims or Monza. “Significantly, the build sheet clearly lists Caracciola as the receiving original owner, via the dealer in Paris. Caracciola posed with the car and Alfred Neubauer, manager of the Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix team, at Bremerhaven prior to embarking to America for the George Vanderbilt Cup.  “Further, the car is known to have been utilised in at least one Mercedes-Benz advertisement in-period. It was, like its driver, a star. “It is believed that Caracciola used the car until the late 1930s, and that it was then resold through the Paris dealer.  “Reportedly the new owner was Italian foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano, hence the transplant of the original “D” on the rear fender with “I” for Italy, but this is not documented.  “Tom Hanson, son of the 500 K’s eventual restorer, recounted to Car and Driver in 2012 that the car had somehow wound up “in Ethiopia, where it was covered in tarpaulins and hidden in a manure pile.” Reportedly the car was purchased out of this situation in the early 1960s by Dr. Milton Roth, a Long Beach dentist best remembered as an early and avid “Bugattiste.”  Soon after the Mercedes-Benz arrived, in the fall of 1963, Dr. Roth passed away, and the 500 K changed hands through a couple of brief ownerships in Southern California.  It wound up with Matthew L. “Bill” Post, a prominent enthusiast who was co-founder with Bud Cohn of the Le Cercle Concours, at one time the most prestigious vintage automobile event in the area.  Post brought the car to restorer Dale Hanson, who spent 16 months undertaking a complete restoration, matching the original maroon finish and leather interior to traces of original materials still in place on the car.