As automotive months go, it’s hard to beat August on the Monterey Peninsula. The cozy proximity of so much old-car excess is sensory overload, and amid all the concours and tours and racing, big auction prices follow. For pure auction spectacle, though, there is no topping January, on either side of the Atlantic. Kissimmee, Scottsdale, and Paris are a three-week clearinghouse of thousands of classic cars, several for astounding sums.
With Mecum’s big Florida sale and the Arizona auctions still massive in the rearview, we caught our breath and turned our attention to the Rétromobile-adjacent auctions in France, curious to see how Artcurial, Bonhams, Broad Arrow, Gooding Christie’s, and RM Sotheby’s might possibly top what we’ve already seen this month. When the hammer fell on Artcurial’s lot 33, this 1956 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing coupe, we had our record-breaking answer.
At a price of €4,407,800 ($5,188,421), the car set the new benchmark for non-alloy-bodied SLs. But for missing one of its two matching suitcases, this 21,000-mile example is as original as they come. You’ll note the car’s distinct lack of polish: Curiously, its shabby coat is “as found” and intentional at the same time.
In his preview of the car earlier this month, my colleague Ronan Glon wrote that the Mercedes’ third owner, Jean Piger, “finally sold the 300SL in 2014. By that point, the car was a dust-covered barn find that hadn’t been fired up for about 11 years. In spite of this, it reportedly started after receiving six new spark plugs, a new battery, and fresh fuel. It drove onto a trailer under its own power and headed to Germany, where it was put in a plastic storage bubble and, by the sound of it, never touched. From there, it returned to Paris in 2023 and fell into the hands of the current owner, who also chose not to clean, wash, or otherwise touch it.”
This car’s original owner, Claude Foussier, was Coca-Cola’s European guy as well as a two-time Olympian, and he ordered it with the NSL engine—up 20 horsepower and standard in the 29 alloy SLs plus 249 other steel cars. He specced it with an upgraded suspension and those rare Rudge knockoff wheels, not to mention that matching luggage set, and he drove it for five years. It spent a couple months with a dealer before Piger, a sports car enthusiast in a castle, bought it and kept it for 50 years. One suspects both Foussier and Piger enjoyed this car.
Its last two decades with Piger at Château de Margeaix, though, when it maybe had become “that old Merc,” are what we see here—turn-of-the-century dust—by way of the two subsequent owners who loved it but appreciated it as industrial art, a great rare Gullwing, in a color suited for grunge, hibernating. In doing so they missed their opportunity to drive it, but then they would have known that. So it has sat, under the auspices of preservation, waiting for its day.
Now that someone has just paid more than double the #1 (concours, or best in the world) price for it—nearly $2M more than the next-highest price we’ve seen for a standard Gullwing at auction—what’s next? Back into a bubble? Over to some other dusty castle for its next layer? Doubtful. This old Merc is a barn find found.
The vintage SL market tends to put a premium on originality and provenance, and for its outright spec, known chain of ownership, and its dusty originality, this Gullwing is tough to beat. The price reflected as much, but this result will be impossible to replicate any time soon, and certainly not for the reason it did in Paris: It was a dirty well-optioned SL mostly unseen for more than 30 years. Now it’s just a dirty well-optioned SL. That seems like the best kind.
The vintage SL market may prize the above qualities, but vintage Mercedes owners also love to drive their cars. This Gullwing was built to go, and with some minor sorting, a quick vacuum, and maybe a damp rag across the windows, it could be doing just that in no time.
Report by Stefan Lombard
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