Former Formula 1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone has instructed renowned collector car dealer Tom Hartley Jnr to manage the sale of his world-renowned collection of Grand Prix cars. Comprising 69 vehicles, it spans from a pre-war Auto Union V16 to the championship-winning Ferrari F2002, and has remained largely hidden from public view for decades.
Magneto magazine is the only publication to have witnessed this extraordinary collection first-hand, featuring it as the cover story of issue 4. Now coming to market, it stands as one of the most significant selections of Formula 1 cars ever offered for public sale.
Each of Ecclestone’s 69 historic Grand Prix and Formula 1 cars is unique. Highlights include Ferraris raced by the likes of Niki Lauda, Michael Schumacher and Mike Hawthorn, as well as an ex-Stirling Moss Vanwall VW10 and Brabhams driven by Nelson Piquet and Carlos Pace.
The Vanwall was the car in which Stirling Moss won several Formula 1 Grands Prix on the way to Vanwall clinching the first-ever Formula 1 Constructors’ World Championship in 1958. Ecclestone admitted to Magneto editor David Lillywhite back in 2019 that it was his favourite car in the collection, saying: “I was reasonably close with the boss, and with Stirling and Stuart [Lewis-Evans, the Connaught and Vanwall driver who Bernie managed until his traumatic death in 1958].”
Each of Ecclestone’s cars is unique; the collection has remained largely hidden from public view for decades
One of the most famous cars in Ecclestone’s collection is the Gordon Murray-designed Brabham-Alfa Romeo BT46B fan car, which was driven to victory by Niki Lauda in the 1978 Swedish Grand Prix before being outlawed by the FIA. At the time, Bernie was the owner of the Brabham team.
“I have been collecting these cars for more than 50 years, and I have only ever bought the best of any example,” says Ecclestone today. “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.”
“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,” says Tom Hartley Jnr. “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.”
The highlight of the collection for many will be the Ferraris. They include the famous Thin Wall Special (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
“I knew Mr Ferrari very well, so I’ve always been a little bit attached to Ferraris, and some of those drivers as well,” Bernie told Magneto in 2019. “In those days Wolfgang von Trips was a very good friend, as was Michael [Hawthorn]; most of them I was friendly with.
“Mr Ferrari was very, very helpful to me in those early days. Although it used to look like we were arguing – the press would make it look like that – we were still very close”
The Brabhams, too, underline just how significant Brabham was in Formula 1: the team scored 22 Formula 1 Grand Prix wins, 24 F1 Grand Prix pole positions, 25 F1 Grand Prix fastest laps and two F1 World Championships under Bernie’s tenure. The team was innovative as well, fitting carbon brakes to its cars in the 1970s, and it was the first to introduce in-race refuelling. Remember, too, that it was Bernie who gave the young Gordon Murray a job – and other big names in motor sport such as Charlie Whiting and Herbie Blash were part of the Brabham boys. Bernie has retained ownership of the Brabhams from new, and many of them haven’t been seen for decades.
“I feel very privileged that Bernie has entrusted the sale of his cars to my Tom Hartley Jnr business,” says Tom. “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. No one in the world has a race car collection that comes close to Bernie’s.
“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.”
In addition to Ecclestone’s Formula 1 cars, his collection includes a range of Isle of Man TT motorcycles and an impressive array of road cars, notably 26 Jaguar E-types – although these are not part of the Tom Hartley Jnr sale.
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