$300,000 finders fee for rare German car?

This guy must want it really bad.

If I owned that car and read that story, I'd base my price on a typical 5% finders fee so I start negotiation at 300k x 20= $6 Million.

 

It must be the VW Beetle that Hitler drove to England in 1941. He was returning to Paris incognito for a dirty holiday with Eva, but all the road signs had been melted down to make medals so he overshot - (you do know that VWs float, don’t you?) and ended up in Kent with a parking ticket. The meter maid couldn’t understand a word he said and assumed he was from Scotland.
Hitler later used the car in a race against Himler out of Berlin. Hitler told Porsche that he had been born before the internal combustion engine and didn’t intend to die behind one, so Ferdie stuck the VW mill in the back to keep him happy. This came in handy when Adolf wanted to keep his eye on his luggage while he drove; it was stuffed with valuable sausages and socks. The car is rumored to have well over $300,000,000 in petrol vouchers in the glove box - that’s the 1944 exchange rate. I’m not sure the EU will still cash them.
A Santa Barbara car collector? That’s got to be Oprah. She has at least one Chrysler already and is now obviously going European.

 

Silly Kram. You are SOOOOOO far off. Everyone knows Oprah lives in Chicago. Everything else sounds plausible to me.

 

FarmerDave, you don’t spend enough quality times in supermarket checkouts reading trash of the week. Oprah bought a home in Montecito, Santa Barbara County, and had it done up. Total price: $50,000,000. (That was the true bit!) And say what? VW No. 1 was destroyed? Not at these prices! I’ll have it running in a week with prewar air in the tires. You would be surprised what you can make out of shopping carts and a ‘74 Pinto. See you in Santa Barbara and once the cheque is cash, the drinks are on me.

 

Indeed, Montecito is virtualy part of the City of Santa Barbara anyway. When she held her birthday party here it was in the local papers and the nightly news several day before, day of and several days after.

 

I remember reading in one of the UK mags quite some time ago (I think Octane) about a very rare Mercedes ("1 of 2 made" stated in the article, which got my attention while reading your post), that was owned by none other than Saddam Hussein and was kept in an underground parking lot. Last seen there just before the war...

They showed a grainy B&W photo of the car and I thought it was quite butt-ugly. I think it was a 500K which had all-enveloping (covered) front fenders, which because the front wheels have to steer in these things, made them incredibly wide and ungainly-looking. I think it was originally made for some European King, or some other elite person, eventually ending up in Iraq decades later in Hussein's collection.

My thoughts as to what the car in question could be. I haven't heard of this recent story you mention, so no idea who the collector or what the car actually is.

 

KRAM - I'll bring the starter fluid.

 

931 Mercedes 500K. The first car I thought of when I saw this thread too. Saw it in Car and Driver.

 

And I thought it was in Octane... But I also occasionally read C&D, so I probably confused it with it, which its been a while since that story was printed. Do you remember which issue it was?

 

how much is the car actually worth? most likley in very poor condition... taking it to an auction would get you more. or am i wrong...?