Bids short of seller’s minimum for Hitler Mercedes at auction
$7 million isn’t enough for führer’s 1939 Tourenwagen at Scottsdale auto event
A “Super Mercedes” said to have carried Adolf Hitler during the parades of Nazi Germany failed to sell Wednesday night after a $7 million bid didn’t meet the anonymous seller’s undisclosed minimum price.
The rare car was up for auction by Worldwide Auctioneers in Scottsdale.
The vehicle, a 1939 Mercedes-Benz 770K Grosser Offener Tourenwagen, is one of five still around and one of three in private hands. The U.S Army seized the car in 1945, according to the auction house, after which it passed through numerous owners.
Had the car sold, 10 percent of the vehicle’s sale price would have gone to the Simon Wiesenthal Center — a Jewish human-rights organization named after a famous Nazi hunter.
A sale might yet occur as negotiations with the bidder will continue privately now that the auction has closed, a Worldwide Auctioneers representative said.
If sold, Lawrence Bell, executive director of the Arizona Jewish Historical Society, said he hopes the buyer uses the car as an educational tool.
Bell was neutral about Nazi artifacts being sold among private collectors, acknowledging there isn’t much anyone can do about it.
“There’s a huge interest and market for Nazi paraphernalia which, whether people are happy about that or not, doesn’t really matter.”
He said, “Ideally, an artifact like that would be in a museum — would be used for educational purposes.”
The Mercedes grabbed headlines because of its history, but not everyone is convinced that makes it museum quality.
The car’s model may have been rare, but it was one of many vehicles that carried the Nazi leader, said Michael Rubinoff, a historian and professor at Arizona State University’s College of Integrative Sciences and Arts.
“I mean, there were a lot of Mercedes that Adolf Hitler sat in,” Rubinoff said. “And so therefore to attach some significance to this, that Hitler once rested his derrière on the seat ... OK.”
A historically significant car, Rubinoff said, is the one Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated in — an event that triggered World War I. The car is on display at the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna, where visitors can view the blood-soaked seats firsthand.
“That’s a car that’s worthy of a painful reminder of a war that took 25 million lives as a direct result of what happened to the two people who were sitting in that car,” Rubinoff said.
Carlos Galindo-Elvira, Arizona regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, said he’d prefer to see the car in a museum-type setting so inquiring minds could learn about the car’s past with the proper context.
Whether the Mercedes ends up in a museum, historians and others agree the car should be used for education. A desire to use the car as a teaching tool was one of the bidder qualifications, according to Worldwide Auctioneers.
Rubinoff wasn’t concerned about the Mercedes ever falling into the hands of a Neo-Nazi due to its high price.
“Neo-Nazis don’t strike me as being a particularly wealthy group of people. They tend to be people who are outside the system, and people with that kind of money tend to be in the system of mainstream politics,” he said.