Bernie Ecclestone is selling his prized collection of 69, beautifully maintained historic Formula 1 machines that span decades of history.
Ecclestone sold the commercial rights to F1 at the end of the 2016 campaign, handing the charge over to Liberty Media.
The 94-year-old lives and breathes the sport to this day, and has devoted practically his entire life to it.
From a team employee, to then driver manager, Ecclestone rose through the sport to become Team Owner at Brabham.
Beyond that, he rose to lead the Formula One Constructors’ Association and seized control of the sport in 1987.
His collection of 69 F1 and Grand Prix racers is highly sought after and exclusive, featuring marvels such as the one-time raced Brabham BT46B ‘fan-car’ which Niki Lauda famously won the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix with.
Cars driven by Nelson Piquet, Mike Hawthorn, Michael Schumacher and more make up the collection, with Tom Hartley Jnr Ltd handling the sale.
“I have been collecting these cars for more than 50 years, and I have only ever bought the best of any example,” Ecclestone said.
“Whilst many other collectors over the years have opted for sports cars, my passion has always been for Grand Prix and Formula 1 cars.
“A Grand Prix and in particular a Formula 1 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.
“I love all of my cars but the time has come for me to start thinking about what will happen to them should I no longer be here, and that is why I have decided to sell them. After collecting and owning them for so long, I would like to know where they have gone and not leave them for my wife to deal with should I not be around.
“Tom [Hartley Jnr] is handling the sale for me because he knows the cars better than anyone else, his business is best placed to sell them, and I am guaranteed transparency which is important to me.
“Having collected what are the best and most original Formula 1 cars dating back to the start of the sport, I have now decided to move them on to new homes that will treat them as I have and look after them as precious works of art.”
‘This collection is the history of F1’
Tom Hartley Jnr added: “This is quite simply the most important race car collection in the world. There has never been and probably never will be a collection like it ever offered for sale again.
“The collection spans 70 years of Grand Prix and Formula 1 racing, and highlights include Mike Hawthorn, Niki Lauda, and Michael Schumacher World Championship-winning Ferraris, all of Bernie’s [Ecclestone] Brabhams including the famous ‘fan car’, and the Vanwall VW10, the car in which the great Stirling Moss won several Formula 1 Grands Prix on the way to Vanwall clinching the first ever Formula 1 Constructors’ World Championship in 1958, plus so much more.
“But, for me, the highlight of the collection has to be the Ferraris. Bernie has assembled a collection of Ferrari Formula 1 cars that today would be near-impossible to repeat.
“There is the famous Thin Wall Special, which was the first Ferrari to ever beat Alfa Romeo, the Alberto Ascari Italian Grand Prix-winning 375 F1, the Mike Hawthorn World Championship-winning Dino which Ferrari campaigned over three seasons before it was donated to the Henry Ford Museum, plus historically significant World Championship-winning Niki Lauda and Michael Schumacher cars.
“Because Bernie has retained ownership of the Brabhams since they were new, and many of those cars have not been seen for decades, people can forget quite how special a team Brabham was.
“Brabham scored 22 Formula 1 Grand Prix wins, 24 Formula 1 Grand Prix pole positions, 25 Formula 1 Grand Prix fastest laps, and two Formula 1 World Championships under Bernie’s tenure. The team was also very innovative, fitting carbon brakes to its cars in the 1970s, and was the first to introduce in-race refuelling.
“Bernie was also the person who gave a young South African engineer named Gordon Murray a job – and other big names in motorsport such as Charlie Whiting and Herbie Blash were part of the Brabham boys.
“I feel very privileged that Bernie has entrusted the sale of his cars to my Tom Hartley Jnr business.
“Formula 1 cars are cars that I know particularly well, they are not just cars that I have a great personal interest in, but we at Tom Hartley Jnr actively buy and sell them, too. However, there has never been a collection like this one offered for sale, and no one in the world has a race car collection that comes close to Bernie’s.
“This is a great opportunity for a discerning collector to acquire cars that have never before been offered for sale, and it would be great to see them back on the track again.
“All of the cars on the Formula 1 grid today look the same. If you stripped them of their liveries, you’d struggle to know which one was a Williams and which was a Ferrari. But when you look at some of the Grand Prix cars from the early 1960s to the late 1970s, they’d very much be at home in The Museum of Modern Art.”
“This collection is the history of Formula 1.”
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