Mr. Formula 1 can’t remember his first ride
Billionaire owner of world’s most expensive cars has no sentiment for the past
Bernie Ecclestone, one of the richest men in England with an estimated fortune of more than $4 billion, made a sizable portion of his wealth in the automobile and motorsport businesses.
Here’s a resume: first reconditioning and selling motorbikes as a teen; tough-as-nails used-car salesman; dealership owner; car auction owner; racer; racing manager; agent, owner of a Formula 1 team; an elite member of the sport’s governing body (his friend Max Mosley was head); head of the constructors association; running and controlling most aspects of F1 racing through Formula One Management and associated businesses, through which he negotiates contracts with television companies and circuit owners and promotes and markets the sport.
Although he cashed out to investors, Ecclestone remains the head of Formula One Management — the sport’s commercial rights holder. At 84 years of age, despite controversies and legal troubles, to everyone he is simply “Supremo.”
So it’s safe to say that for most of his adult life, Ecclestone has, and continues to be, intimately involved with cars. He’ll have you believe it’s been all business. The F1 ringmaster isn’t exactly known as the warm and sentimental type; his aloof image has served him well in deal-making and at the gambling table, where he has bet enormous sums.
Even his long-ago first car is well-forgotten.
“I can’t really remember,” he says plainly. “I used to be in the car business so I had an awful lot of cars through my hands. So in the sense of having one that I would say, ‘This is my car,’ I never really had one.
“I can’t remember what the first car was that I ever had and I have never fallen in love with any particular car where I could say, ‘I wish I still had that car.’ ”
Rising from a humble background, he worked non-stop growing his businesses after leaving school. A risk-taker, he also competed in races in a Cooper until a serious crash forced him to stop. Known for his stylish homes (a good chunk of his fortune has come from property investments) and near-obsessive neatness, he is direct and matter-of-fact, with a wry British wit.
“I don’t think I ever had a dream car,” Ecclestone says bluntly. “I don’t think I ever had anything like that; I’m not a dreamer.”
He isn’t the type to become mistyeyed reminiscing over the past.
“Yesterday’s gone. I don’t think about what happened 10 years ago or 20 years ago. It’s all history. I’m concerned about tomorrow, not yesterday.”
He does note that a gull-wing Mercedes Benz, purchased early on in his career, may have made something of an impression — but not because of its eye-popping unique design.
“I think it was because it was probably one of the only ones in captivity in the area, in England in those days. That was probably it.”
Introduced at the New York Auto Show in 1954, the gull-wing Mercedes-Benz 300SL was in fact a racing car of the early ’50s reimagined as a road car for the American market. More than 1,100 of the 1,400 cars produced were sold in the U.S. The iconic car remains highly collectible. Jus- tin Trudeau has wisely hung on to his father Pierre’s 1959 Mercedes SL300 Roadster. The company brought back the gull-wing on its SLS AMG, which was produced from 2009 to the end of last year.
Ecclestone has, over the decades, seen a lot of impressive automobiles.
“If I go back, it’s surprising how many changes there are now or have been over the last 30 or 40 years,” he muses. “It’s difficult to say that’s the one, because it might have been whatever that car was at the time, but things have sort of moved on. I tend to move on, you know.”
He has owned a slew of Mercedes cars. He’s currently ferried about in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes, though the vehicle he’s likely most identified with is his lavish F1 motorhome, dubbed the Kremlin.
John Phillips, of Car and Driver magazine, in his review of Susan Watkin’s Bernie: The Biography of Bernie Ecclestone, recounts how Ecclestone, behind the wheel of a different Mercedes, nudged the bumper of a parked car while pulling in. The driver became irate. Ecclestone got back into his Mercedes, backed up, put the car in forward gear and hit the gas. “Now I’ve driven into the back of your car,” he’s reported to have said.
Ecclestone even made the papers when the wheels were stolen off of his new-to-Britain 2005 Mercedes Benz CLS55 AMG V8.
As a racer, he only cared to have the fastest ride.
This isn’t to say he hasn’t collected some stunning road and track automobiles over the decades. In 2007 he sold his collection of road cars through RM Auctions in England. Some of the highlights from an assortment of Mercedes, Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche, Jaguar and Aston Martin included: an extremely rare, stunningly beautiful 1937 Mercedes Benz 540K Special Roadster; a 1933 Rolls-Royce Phantom II Continental Faux Cabriolet; a 1954 Ferrari 250 GT Europa; a 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Coupe (the gull-wing), a 1929 Mercedes SS Sports Tourer and a 1931 Mercedes Type SSKL Replica. Oh, plus a rare and notable Lancia Astura Lungo and a winged 1959 Cadillac 60 Feetwood Special.
He also has a rumoured collection of about 100 Formula 1 cars.
“They each, they’ve all got some sort of history about them which is interesting but nothing for me,” he says. “I go and see the cars maybe twice a year. Maybe. I collect them. If there’s something for sale and I think I’d like to buy it, I buy it.” Yvonne Marton is a frequent contributor to Toronto Star Wheels. For Wheels editor Norris McDonald, nmcdonald@thestar.ca