By Alan Baldwin
LONDON (Reuters) – Bernie Ecclestone has sold his large car collection to Red Bull heir Mark Mateschitz for an undisclosed sum in a deal that will see them put on public display, the former Formula One supremo confirmed on Friday.
Mateschitz, 32, is the son of the late Austrian Red Bull billionaire Dietrich, who was a team founder and owner and personal friend of Ecclestone.
The 69 cars date from the start of the Formula One championship in 1950 and include examples raced by champions Alberto Ascari, Mike Hawthorn, Niki Lauda, Nelson Piquet and Michael Schumacher.
British media reports have valued them at an estimated 500 million pounds ($646.05 million).
“They’ve gone to a good home, which is the real thing I was interested in making sure,” Ecclestone, 94, told Reuters by telephone from Switzerland.
“They’ll present them somewhere, into a museum so people can have a look at them for a change which has never happened before.
“It’s good. I’m more than happy that’s where they’ve gone. I wouldn’t have sold them to (just) anyone unless I knew where they were going to finish up. They’re going to build something like a museum and that’s where they’ll be.”
Ecclestone said he had interest from all over but largely from “the wrong people”.
The Daily Mail newspaper quoted Mateschitz as saying the collection would be “carefully preserved, expanded over the years, and in the near future it will be made accessible to the public at an appropriate location.”
The cars have been stored at a secure hangar at Biggin Hill airfield in southern England and have not been publicly accessible, other than for occasional individual outings at races.
One highlight is a controversial Brabham BT46B “fan car”, named after the huge downforce-generating fan in the back, that Austrian Lauda raced to victory in Sweden in 1978 before it was withdrawn.
The Ferraris include the 375F1 that Ascari drove to victory in the 1951 Italian Grand Prix, Hawthorn’s title-winning 1958 car and Schumacher’s 2002 car.
“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,” Ecclestone said when it was first announced in December that the cars were for sale.
($1 = 0.7739 pounds)
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin; editing by Mark Heinrich)
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