There are a lot of well-known classic car collectors. Serious people like Jay Leno (one of the greatest car collections on earth), Ralph Lauren (I think the highest quality collection on earth we know about), Jerry Seinfeld (Porker king collector) and Nick Mason (forget uni, drumming and drugs are clearly a better career choice for your kiddies).
Surprisingly, one of the world's top collectors is the child in a grown man's body who drives a citron green 1977 Mini 1000 Mark 4 with a matt black bonnet. Rowan Atkinson (aka Mr Bean) has everything from a Mille Miglia winning 1939 BMW 328 to a 2011 Skoda Superb.
He is best known as the owner of a McLaren F1 that he pranged twice. He spent $2.5 million getting it back in shape and then sold it for $13m.
But, and here's the point of this long and rambling story, Rowan's 1991 Merc 500E brought just $36k at CCA's auction at Warwickshire Event Centre a week ago. While that sounds OK for a 27-year-old motor, the 500E really was a supercar. CCA called it the ultimate "wolf in sheep's clothing", because the conservative looking Stuttgart taxi hid a 240kW 5.0-litre quad-cam V8 that was good for 0 to 100km/h in 5.5 seconds and would hit 260km/h.
Best of all, these Mercs were actually hand built by Porsche. In the US, these are bringing at least $60k but I can't remember a sale in Australia. Well bought by the new owner.