Europe's largest Mercedes S-Class collection sells with no reserve
Hannes Daxecker spent two decades buying colourful S-Classes, and now every one must go
Austrian collector Hannes Daxecker's 'Sammlung Sonderklasse', widely described as Europe's largest private S-Class collection, goes under the hammer on 7 November in Feldkirchen an der Donau, near Linz. Humer, Granner & Co will sell 83 Mercedes cars and 50 motorcycles, every one of them without reserve. Around 900 lots of automobilia go on 6 and 7 November.
Dutch museum Metropole bought the 83-car Mercedes collection this year
Metropole, the car museum in Druten in the Netherlands, acquired Daxecker's collection this year and decided to sell it rather than keep it together. Humer, Granner & Co auctions the 83 cars and 50 motorcycles from 14:00 on Saturday 7 November, while Ni-Cola Classics sells the automobilia, original dealer signs and even the furnished rooms on 6 and 7 November. Viewing opens on 5 November. Bids are accepted in the room, in writing, by phone and online, so the sale is open to buyers anywhere in Europe.
46 of the 83 Mercedes lots start at €4,000 or less
The catalogue lists a starting call rather than an estimate, and 46 of the 83 cars open at €4,000 or less. That covers almost every W116, W126 and W140 saloon in the sale, including a 1992 600 SEL with the 6.0-litre V12 at €3,000. Added together, the 83 starting calls come to €1,018,000, and €300,000 of that is a single car, the 1959 300 SL Roadster. With no reserves, those figures are where bidding begins, not a floor the seller can retreat to.
Daxecker chose citrus green and apricot over silver for his S-Classes
Daxecker collected by three rules: documented history, an unusual colour and, wherever possible, an S-Class. The habit started with his father's W116, and his height helped, since at 1.91 metres he no longer fits in every sports car. Silver, black and grey bored him, so his 450 SEL 6.9 is citrus green, a 350 SE is Byzantine gold and a first-series W126 280 SE is apricot orange. A 380 SEC wears Petrol Metallic, a teal rarely ordered in the 1980s, and a 280 SEL in Classic White was first owned by German broadcaster ZDF.
The 1968 'Wilfert' Mercedes 300 SE 6.3 is the only one of its kind
Lot 19 is the sale's true one-off: a 300 SE 6.3 built in 1968 with the short body and the 6.3-litre V8 from the Mercedes 600. All 6,526 production 6.3 saloons were long-wheelbase 300 SELs. This test car was the company car of Daimler-Benz development chief Karl Wilfert, and it already wore the ribbed tail lights, padded door panels and safety steering wheel that later appeared on the W116. Its body belongs to the W108 and W109 family that designer Paul Bracq worked on. It escaped the crusher by chance and opens at €20,000.
A 286 hp 450 SEL 6.9 heads an almost complete Mercedes W116 line-up
The W116 of 1972 was the first Mercedes officially called S-Class, and in 1978 it became the first car offered with the electronic ABS that Bosch developed with Mercedes. Daxecker wanted one of every W116 version and ended up missing only a 280 S. The flagship is a 450 SEL 6.9, one of 7,380 built, with a 6.9-litre V8 of 286 hp and a starting call of €10,000. A 1969 600 limousine and a Maybach 62 complete a line that runs all the way to today's S-Class.
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This is the generous way to break up a great collection. Daxecker built it for colour and history rather than investment, and the sale keeps that spirit: an enthusiast with €5,000 and a trailer has the same shot at a citrus-green or apricot S-Class as any dealer. Metropole could have released the cars over years at retail prices. Selling all of them in one afternoon, with no safety net, lets the market decide what originality is worth.
Expect the Wilfert car to finish above the 450 SEL 6.9 on 7 November, because another 6.9 will always come along and a development chief's short-wheelbase 6.3 never will. If the brightly painted W126s also clear their €4,000 starting calls by a wide margin, Daxecker's rule about colour will have been proved right in a single afternoon.
