Finding Andy Warhol’s Gullwing

The license plate was key, and it led to this week’s gala RM Sotheby’s auction of a Mercedes-Benz 300SL “Gullwing.” In 1985 German art dealer Hans Mayer met his close friend, the artist Andy Warhol, at the newly opened Harry Cipriani bar/restaurant in New York City. The subject was cars, indeed, the 100th anniversary of the automobile. Mayer wanted Warhol to do a series of paintings of historic Mercedes-Benzes, including some of the world’s founding cars, and to that end brought along a book called Serien Sport Wagen 1945-1980. Warhol leafed through it, and was captivated by a photograph of a 1955 300SL originally delivered to France.

The car was silver, and the two images Warhol initially produced—and that Mayer paid for—are of the pictured car in its original color and in red. Constantin Buschmann, CEO of Brabus GmbH, the German high-performance tuning and restoration company, told Autoweek in New York that these paintings convinced Mercedes it needed more work from the artist, and so 80 car works were commissioned. Alas, only 36 paintings had been finished (plus 13 drawings) at Warhol’s untimely death in 1987.

The art now belongs to Mercedes-Benz, but where was the car that started it all? Ulrich-Joachim Gauffrés, Brabus’ longtime chief technology officer and now a senior consultant, pointed out that the German license plate EI-DR 1 is visible in both the Serien Sport Wagen photograph and the Warhol art that copies it fairly exactly.

When Brabus bought an unrestored 300SL from the estate of its longtime owner, Dr. Heinz Noeth, in 2020 it had only stories about it being the Warhol car. Gauffrés said that Brabus spent 4500 hours restoring the Benz to its original condition, while parallel research went on to prove the provenance. Fortunately, that license plate was still with the car, and its original German registration document (“fahrzeugbrief”) listed matching numbers. It’s chassis number is 198.040.5500629.

What’s more, Gauffrés said, some flaws that were evident from a likely 1970s restoration—cross pieces on the side intakes that are a little too deep, and minor inconsistencies in the Rudge knockoff wheels—were evident both in the unrestored car and in Warhol’s paintings.

Buschmann said the now-glorious Benz, in its original silver with blue leather and—an extra—fitted luggage, was debuted at Mercedes’ museum in Stuttgart last June. Part of the work had included rebuilding the original engine, which was included but not installed in the car when purchased.

Attending the Stuttgart event was RM Sotheby’s, which secured the car for Sotheby’s Sealed, timed online auctions for registered bidders with the final results not disclosed. The ex-Juan Manuel Fangio Mercedes-Benz 300SL Roadster—his personal car—was sold through that private process. The auction process began November 10 and ends November 17. The Benz is being sold without reserve, with a pre-sale estimate of $1.5 to $2.5 million. It’s unclear how much the Warhol connection adds to the value of what is already one of the world’s most valuable cars.

The biggest automotive auction sale ever was Mercedes’ own 1955 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupé, a grand relation to the consumer 300SLs, which sold last May for €135 million.

The red 300SL Warhol painting hung in Sotheby’s showroom in New York pending the sale. The silver one is currently at the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles. All the art is retained by Mercedes, and it includes colorful Warhol renderings of such key cars as the C111 experimental vehicle of 1970, the BMW M1, a W196 Grand Prix car of 1954, a W125 Grand Prix car of 1937, a Model 400 touring car of 1925, the Benz Milford coupe of 1901, and both the Daimler Motorized Carriage (with Gottlieb Daimler in the back seat) and Benz Patent Motor-Wagen (with Karl Benz) of 1886.

Warhol never got a driver’s license, but he did buy a 1974 Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow (Sotheby’s auctioned it for $77,000 to a Los Angeles art dealer in 1988), and he depicted cars in various works. These included what appears to be a stylized Cadillac in a 1950s watercolor, 12 Cadillacs (in a 1962 silkscreen), and even a circa 1963 series on fatal car crashes.

Sotheby’s is auctioning “masterworks spanning over a century of artistic production” in New York at the same time as the Gullwing sale. The 300SL was located next to a gallery with works by Frank Stella, George Segal and other modern artists.

Share your thoughts on Andy Warhol, his art, the famed 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing—or the intersection of all of the above—in the comments below.