You’re all revved up and ready to go for a weekend of non-electric motorsport where fantasy and fact blend into what they call the Formula 1 Heineken Grande Prêmio de Sao Paulo 2022 – but we all call the F1 race in one of the world’s crookest cities, in a country where the citizens, due to poor economic conditions, only have one name like Pele, Ronaldo, Kaka, Ayrton and Gisele – the Brazil F1.
But wait there’s more.
Mad Max has said his boycott (translation, no talkies) of Sky Sports is over. We provide no results of the Perth-Sydney rally because the race organisers won’t tell anyone but we can confirm the photo in last week’s column was not of Andrew Miedecke’s 1967 Volvo 122S but a Datsun.
Mick and I call on all Weekend Australians to have a good, hard look at themselves. We look at what’s happening to the value of everyday classic cars but first we look at the F1 sale of the year.
Yes, Mick Schumacher’s old 2003 Ferrari went for a record $22m at Sotheby’s Geneva auction this week, doubling the previous world record. Mick’s ex is now the most valuable Formula One car of the modern era ever sold.
The car broke the record held by another old ex, his 2001 motor which brought $11m at a Sotheby’s evening contemporary art sale in New York five years ago.
Look, this was a great buy.
You send Sotheby’s a Gregory Peck for a lazy $22m, you get a car that’s ready to go. One friend, 20 readers, this Fezza is in full running order. It was thoroughly overhauled by Ferrari Formula 1 Clienti, given a shakedown by Michael Schumacher’s son, Mick, at Ferrari’s Fiorano test track and with a bit of help from local race car prepper to the stars Garth Walden, you could run it at the Eastern Creek Recycling Ecology Park (and Landfill) this arvo.
Can’t afford a Schuey Ferrari? Can’t afford the $100m to $300m to stick an Andy Warhol on your garage den/person cave? Now Andy couldn’t drive but he loved cars. For instance, there’s his Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) $150m, Green Car Crash (Burning Green Car I) $110m (see a pattern here?), And of course, always looking for a quid, Andy teamed up with Mercedes to paint 80 pictures of Daimler Benz cars from 1886, to now.
Of course, while Andy survived being shot and his body wasn’t actually a temple of cleanliness, he died in 1987 delivering 36 silk-screen paintings and 13 drawings. Andy said he wanted to be a machine, which we should see in the context of person machines like Mad Max and Schuey. F1 legend Mika Hakkinen this week suggested Schuey, Mad Max and the Hamster were all “naughty boys” because of how tough they were in racing.
Anyway, RM are selling “the very car that inspired the first painting of Andy Warhol’s Cars Series”. Now, it’s not that the good folks at Merc were super keen to have Andy paint pictures of their cars. Andy’s German rep, Hans Mayer, came up with the idea but had to go to New York to show the artist a copy of Frank Oleski’s book Series Sports Cars from 1945-1980, and tell him to pick one to sketch for free to get the Germans interested.
Mr Campbell Soup Cans picked the 300SL, the Chefinnens at the factory loved it and the rest is 49 pictures.
BRABUS, the Ruhr-Region’s (no it’s not near the Eastern Creek Recycling Ecology Park and Landfill) best restorer of old Mercs spent over two years and 4500 hours of passionate manual work to make the 300, one of 1400 ever built, better than new.
Last June the 300SL and the painting it inspired were brought together for the very first time at the Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart. I think somewhere near $4m.
While the classic car market seems to have defied economic gravity, specialist US insurer Hagerty says “at long last, that trend appears to be slowing down”.
At the top end Hagerty’s Blue Chip Index posted a 3 per cent gain for the quarter, the biggest move in a year. More segment-specific upper-end market indices, like Ferrari and German, also posted a 3 per cent increase. Most of this movement can be explained by recent auction sales where Ferrari have dominated.
Hagerty’s Affordable Car Index has been the strongest performer of the company’s three indices. “Component cars like the Datsun 240Z and the 1970 Camaro SS were once very inexpensive cars and have since exploded in value.”
Huge gains from cars like the VW Beetle “balanced out losses by cars like the 1965 Mustang GT and the MGB. Some sanity is returning into the market for the collector of more ordinary means”.
OK. Enough talk of these meaningless matters. Disturbing reports this week from Global HQ at 461 South Rd, Regency Park, SA, 5010.
Dr Tim Cooper himself told one of our own business editors from Adelaide, Cameron England, that sales fell last financial year. What? Why wasn’t this on the front page? Where’s the call for the royal commission? Albo, Boweno and Shorteno get on to this instead of wasting your time talking to the Teals. The very fabric of this country is falling apart while the various generations of x, y, z, p and q are sploshing around.
My fellow (in the association meaning of the word, not the gender-specific way) Weekend Australians get back to beer. Do you want the place to end up full of boys, girls sipping Sangria Popsicles or Savoy Corpse Revivers? Who will don the khakis, pick up the 303s and run to the front bar of the Kensi to protect this place from the invaders in their fancy electric cars?
Look we know who you are. Readers in Victoria and Tasmania are down 7.4 per cent in Victoria and Tasmania, 4.9 per cent in NSW and 4.6 per cent in SA. Thank God for Sandgropers like Ian Barron. Western Australia readers drank 2 per cent more Coopers.
[email protected]
