In This Article:
Bernie Ecclestone is putting his entire collection of historic grand prix and Formula One cars – 69 cars worth an estimated £500,000,000 – up for sale.
The 69-car collection includes Ferraris raced by world champions such as Mike Hawthorn, Niki Lauda, and Michael Schumacher, Brabhams raced by Nelson Piquet, Carlos Pace, and Lauda, as well as the one-off Brabham-Alfa Romeo BT46B ‘fan car’, which raced only once, winning the Swedish Grand Prix at Anderstorp in 1978.
It comes after Ecclestone, 94, pleaded guilty last year to fraud after being accused of failing to declare more than £400 million of overseas assets to the UK Government. Prosecutors told the court that Ecclestone would pay a record £652 million to HM Revenue and Customs, and he was given a suspended jail sentence of 17 months. It made him the UK’s second-highest taxpayer, according to the Sunday Times tax list for 2024.
But the former F1 supremo has insisted the car sale is because the time has come for him to “start thinking about what would happen to them should I no longer be here”.
“That is why I have decided to sell them [the cars],” he said. “I would like to know where they have gone and not leave them for my wife to deal with should I not be around.”
In 2020 Ecclestone became the sixth-oldest registered father in history when wife Fabiana gave birth to their son, Ace. They now live in Gstaad in the Swiss Alps, with a farm in Brazil near Sao Paulo. According to Forbes’s most recent figures, Ecclestone has a net worth of $2.9 billion (£2.2 billion), having agreed to sell F1 to current owners Liberty Media in 2016 for $8 billion.
Ecclestone, who began his involvement in F1 in the 1950s with the Connaught team before becoming a team owner and ultimately the sport’s commercial rights holder, added: “I have been collecting these cars for more than 50 years, and I have only ever bought the best of any example. Whilst many other collectors over the years have opted for sports cars, my passion has always been for grand prix and Formula One cars.
“A grand prix and, in particular, a Formula One car is far more important than any road car or other form of race car, as it is the pinnacle of the sport, and all the cars I have bought over the years have fantastic race histories and are rare works of art.”
It is impossible to put a value on the cars as they are unique and have never been sold on the open market, but one source close to the sale estimated they could be worth as much as half a billion pounds.
Classic car dealer Tom Hartley Jnr, who is handling the sale, described the Ecclestone grand prix collection as “quite simply the most important race car collection in the world”.