[imagesource: Gooding & Company]

This 1903 Mercedes-Simplex 60HP “Roi des Belges” just became the most expensive pre-1930s antique car sold on auction after fetching a whopping $12.1m (R223 million) at Gooding & Company’s Amelia Island sale last weekend.

In 1903, Wilhelm Maybach introduced the Mercedes-Simplex 60 HP as a modified and more comfortable version of his Mercedes 35 HP from 1901. Easy to operate, hence its name of simplex, with high performance and luxurious quality, this revolutionary car would become the blueprint of all automobiles to come. Now, it’s the most expensive pre-1930s car thanks to the record-breaking action price.

Gooding & Company stated that this impeccably maintained automotive relic became the inaugural antique vehicle to exceed $10 million. Powered by a 9.2l four-cylinder engine that produces 45kW sent to the rear wheels via a four-speed manual transmission, it was a speedster in its time and set the fastest times at Nice Speed Week and Castlewellan Hill Climb in 1903, according to the auctioneers.

Up until the turn of the 20th century, the Mercedes-Simplex 60 HP dominated the world of racing, winning countless speed trials, hill climbs, and circuit races, evening winning the 1903 Gordon Bennett Cup in Ireland.

 

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This car was owned by British businessman Alfred Harmsworth (1865-1922), also known as Viscount Northcliffe, who founded The Daily Mail. An automobile aficionado, Harmsworth was among the very first to place an order for the new 60 HP model upon introduction, and this 1903 Mercedes-Simplex 60 HP ‘Roi des Belges’ was one of his favourite cars, which he used to drive around Europe.

Roi-des-Belges (King of the Belgians) or tulip phaeton was a car body style used on luxury cabriolets in the early 1900s, featuring exaggerated bulges “suggestive of a tulip”. It was named after Belgian King Leopold II, who commissioned a car with this body shape in 1901.

This meticulously maintained vehicle resided within the confines of the Harmsworth family’s garages until the inauguration of the Beaulieu Motor Museum in the mid-1950s, nestled in Hampshire, England. From 1956 to 2023, spanning nearly seven decades, this Mercedes proudly held court as a featured exhibit at Beaulieu. Among the limited number of four privately owned examples, it stands distinguished, with a fifth exemplar, a Long-Wheelbase Omnibus, housed at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany.

Notably, the Harmsworth Mercedes is one of just two such vehicles boasting original coachwork and the sole Mercedes 60 HP with a documented racing history.

After an impressive 121 years under the stewardship of the Harmsworth family, this historic antique car is poised to embark on a new chapter within a different garage.

[source:timeslive]