The Bernie Ecclestone Grand Prix Collection, 69 cars for sale

His father Dietrich Mateschitz was co-owner of the Formula One teams Red Bull Racing and Scuderia AlphaTauri until his death in 2022.

 

If it's true Bernie is a financial backer of THJ then it makes sense to do all of that and publish it on YouTube for marketing/promotional purposes rather than have it sold without word on how or through whom to get more future clients.

 

It wouldn't be the first car dealership or auction house in which the number one client has owned a stake, Louwman with Bonhams springs to mind.

 

Do you think Ecclestone cares about how it got done? What he cares about is that it was done. Watch the video where Hartley Jr. talks about the sale and you'll see there were several potential owners for both individual cars and the entire collection. Would BE have heard from all these people had he decided to do it himself? At 90 something years old his most valuable possession is time - why would he spend any of it doing the required work to sell these cars, even one extra conversation, when he has extremely capable people a phone call away who are willing to do so? At his age and wealth, getting rid of these cars is an administrative task, nothing more. It's best left to other people, and if they have to be remunerated for it so be it. It happens that for THJ it was great marketing, as well.

 

Did you get sent a 40 to 50 page information brochure or any brochure for the cars you enquired about and were interested in buying?

 

I was eagerly waiting for any brochure to appear (especially for the Thinwall Special, the Dino 246 F1 and the D50), in vain now it seems.....

 

Yes. I was sent 5 individual PDF files. One for each of the chassis and a detailed history of each.

 

Can you / are you willing to share those PDF files? I am not in the market for a classic (F1) car but love their histories.

 

I didn't look if they put a copyright on them, but since they created it I don't want to run into issues redistributing them. Each was 2 pages with a few paragraphs of info, a couple photos at most, and a race log (practice session logs for the ones that didn't race). It's also a very unsuccessful Brabham car so not one many have interest in.

 

So not 40 to 50 pages then some of which I would love to see, especially the one re the 1960 Dino 246 F1 0003 preposterously stated as actually being the 1958 Mike Hawthorn World Championship winning car. I do not know that they do, but IF Ferrari Classiche say it is the 1958 Championship winning car attributing races to Mike Hawthorn in this physical "Dino 246/60 lookalike" (source here) then it is absolutely absurd.

 

I can tell you the pdf for the car that is listed under the sold category of the website is this:

8 page PDF
page 1 - Photo of car in their warehouse/hangar with make, model, and chassis number in header and THJ logo.
page 2- Highlights section. Same four bullet points that are listed on the sold webpage verbatim under description tab.
page 3 - Period race photo of the car and footer saying which race that photo is from.
page 4 - 7 paragraphs about the backstory of that model Brabham and season summary.
page 5 - Continuation of the above and then a section specific to that chassis that is a couple paragraphs.
page 6 - Race Chart - list of the entries and result for the car in that F1 season.
page 7 - Different photo of the car in warehouse/hangar.
page 8 - THJ logo with their contact info and note about info gathered from various sources and believed to be correct.

There is a lot of repeated info between the five files as page 4 has a lot of backstory on the season and what all the cars did, but a few have more history than others as this one just had 4 DNFs while others had done more.

 

Just a figure of speech but yes confiscated is the wrong word. I'm sure they were handed over correctly by AO and collected by BE correctly under terms of the lien.

 

Of course, Mr Massini.
Please see my post 197 here.

 

If it is known, let's be clear and accurate on this. Were the cars that then belonged to AO the subject to a bank lien and used as collateral for the loan that was defaulted on that BE was a guarantor of that BE then satisfied and then collected the cars, or a different situation with perhaps BE holding the lien against the cars as security in the event that he had to satisfy the bank loan that was defaulted on?

 

I read yesterday night that Mr Ecclestone agreed in a civil settlement in 2023 to reimburse around £653 million to HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) after pleading guilty to fraud.

 

Nor is it BCEs first tax evasion trial!

 

I have actually met and had dealings with many car dealers who are very honest, ethical and respectable. I don't normally talk about former employers and it's something I have never done before. Throughout my life I have had some extremely hard task master but highly professional and honorable employers, both in the legal profession and in the classic, performance and prestige motor trade. Of course many people have had bad experiences with difficult employers, including me, but I have never felt compelled to write about them on a public forum before, even though I may come across as the scorned former employee, albeit an employee for a very short time in this case, I am not concerned. However, in the case of Tom Hartley Junior I felt I had to write about my awful experience of him, as despite him volunteering and emphasising to me that he was a man of his word on a number of occasions, without any questioning from me whatsoever regarding his integrity, he proved that was not the case at all, not only on one occasion but at a number of junctures during my interactions with him. The man wasted months of my life and cost me a lot of money.

 

Do you have access to the Auto-Union .pdf? If so, would you be able to post the car's racing history? Thank you in advance.

 

Well that would be contentious. Firstly from what I have learned the Auto-Union P-Wagens or A-Types were #76001-76006 or 76007, most were rebuilt as B-Types. Any surviving cars became C-Types in '37 and several new C-Types were built, perhaps chassis numbers up to #76019 or something. Meanwhile Prof. Porsche returned to Mercedes-Benz and a new 3 litre design the D-Type was created. This took til mid 1938 and in the meantime a group of maybe six C-Types were partially rebodied as C/D-Types. June '38 saw new D-Types built and numbered in the #76001-76021 series, I assume for carnet reasons? There is talk of 11-15 Auto-Unions taken on a train from Zwickau to Czechoslovakia to Romania and on to Ukraine in '45/46 and their eventual dispersal throughout the Soviet block is relatively well covered in Russian media and communist papers from the 1940s. What happened before '45 and post '50 is not so well covered.

VAG themselves claimed the Auto-Union D-Type on offer at Christies in 2006/7 was X and then publicly had to withdrew the lot because they admitted it was Y. So if they couldn't be clear on its history, how is anyone else going to? We know one engineless D-Type showcar was found in Czechoslovakia circa 1970 and smuggled to Germany and then the UK and today in the Loh collection. We know the Karassicks found parts and a half a chassis for two others in Russia in the late 1980s and their story post WW2 is well documented. We also know all about the sole original C Type found in Riga that is today in the Audi Tradition collection and the other in the Deutsches Museum. We know very little about any pre war racing history AND even the current Auto-Union books offer only patchy race history.

Into this picture came a early 2000s Motorsport Magazine where former Team Lotus mechanic Terry Wright revealed an Auto-Union P-Wagen/ A-Type that he found in Ukraine with three motors and a set of cloth bodywork. The contemporary conversation was that it couldn't be original, ignoring that the Karassiks had found the semi complete remains of two others, and so it remained. Eventually BCE acquired the car and VAGs restorer/ re-creator (Crosthwaite & Gardner) restored it for him, anointing it A-Type #15 which still didn't answer any questions about whether the chassis was genuine or not although THJ says it was certified as original by Audi Tradition so surely, it must be. Further Peter Vann published a book in 2002 where he suggests he knew of two further original early A/B/C - Type chassis existing, I have pictures of two further C-Types in a collection I cannot attribute to anything other than the Vann cars.

Denis Jenkinsons wonderful directory listed just three Auto-Unions as existing, the Deutsches C, the Riga C/D and the Corner D but today we have seven original/ semi original cars believed to exist.

A-Type - Wright/ BCE/ THJ/ Red Bull
C-Type - Deutsches Museum
C-Type - Unknown
C-Type - Unknown
C/D-Type - Riga/ VAG
D-Type - Karrasik/ VAG
D-Type - Karrasik/ VAG
D-Type - Corner/ Lee/ Loh collection