The W04 with which Lewis Hamilton started his career at Mercedes in 2013, after his debut with McLaren in Formula 1, not only marked the end of the era of 2.4-liter V8 engines in the category, before the transition to V6 hybrids, but also begins a period of dominance for Mercedes-AMG, with the British driver winning six world championships.
In his first year with the German team, Hamilton only won one race, in Hungary, and scored four podiums, but it was behind the wheel of the silver car from that season that he wrote the first pages of a record-breaking story.
There is only one Mercedes in private hands, so the W04 is kind of a unicorn. There is no other for sale unless you buy one that belongs to Lewis Hamilton or Toto Wolff themselves. Quite remote possibilities…
Also for this reason, RM Sotheby’s estimated that this Mercedes could reach $15 million at the auction held this weekend on the sidelines of the upcoming Las Vegas Grand Prix. A prediction that was actually pessimistic…
The car was sold for the incredible sum of $18.8 million, which is about €17.3 million, far surpassing Michael Schumacher’s Ferrari F2001 (€6.9 million) as the most valuable modern-era car and the second most expensive Formula 1 car ever, only behind the legendary 1954 W196R, which belonged to Juan Manuel Fangio.
