Former Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone has announced he will sell his entire car collection, estimated to be worth “hundreds of millions” of dollars.
The collection, which is made up of 69 cars, includes world championship-winning Ferraris raced by the likes of Michael Schumacher and Niki Lauda.
Also included is Alberto Ascari’s Italian GP-winning 375 F1, and the controversial Brabham BT46B “fan car,” which won its first and only race before being withdrawn from competition and then outlawed the following season.
The news comes after Ecclestone pleaded guilty to fraud last year, having failed to declare more than £400 million (about $509 million) of assets held in a trust in Singapore. The former F1 supremo agreed to pay back almost £653 million (about $830 million) to HM Revenue and Customs, and was sentenced to 17 months in prison, suspended for two years.
“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,” the 94-year-old said in a statement.
“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.”
Rather than being sold at auction, Ecclestone will sell the collection through sports and race car dealer Tom Hartley Jr, who called it “the history of Formula One.”
“There has never been, and probably never will be, a collection like this ever offered for sale again,” said Hartley. “It consists of the greatest cars of their time, many of which have not been seen for decades, and are totally unique.”
“There are many eight-figure cars within the collection, and the value of the collection combined is well into the hundreds of millions,” he said, per the BBC.
Ecclestone tried his hand at racing in the 1950s, before becoming a driver manager for Stuart Lewis-Evans and Jochen Rindt, both of whom were tragically killed while competing.
The Englishman bought Brabham F1 Team in 1971, employing the likes of Lauda and Nelson Piquet, before taking the sport into the modern age when he became the CEO of Formula One Group in 1987, founding a new company – Formula One Promoters Association, later known as Formula One Management – to manage the sport’s commercial rights.
Ecclestone left Formula One in 2017 when Liberty Media took over the sport.
