32-Year-Old Red Bull Heir Buys Bernie Ecclestone’s Unreal F1 Car Collection

Last year, former Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone took the automotive world by surprise when he made two stunning revelations. One: He had secretly amassed a collection of 69 emblematic F1 cars, including models driven by Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna, and Niki Lauda. Second: He was selling the entire collection. It didn’t take long for the F1 supremo to find a buyer, and now the cars are headed to a museum.

Mark Mateschitz, the 32-year-old Red Bull heir, purchased the entire collection, according to Reuters. Details about the transaction haven’t been made public, but The Daily Mail learned that the lot was valued at approximately £500 million, which represents about $646 million at the current conversion rate. Ecclestone claims that he wasn’t merely after money. He wanted the cars to go to someone he trusts, and that’s understandable. I’ve worried about whose hands my sub-$1,000 beaters end up in; Ecclestone’s collection is in a different stratosphere.

“They’ve gone to a good home, which is the real thing I was interested in making sure. They’ll present them somewhere, into a museum so people can have a look at them for a change, which has never happened before,” the 94-year-old told Reuters. The cars were reportedly stored in a massive hangar at the Biggin Hill airfield, which is located south of London, and the facility was never opened to the public.

Mateschitz hasn’t revealed where the cars will be displayed, he just said that they’ll be shown “at an appropriate location,” but you can bet that we’ll be among the first in line when the ticket office opens. He added that he plans to expand the collection in the coming years. Logistically, it would probably make sense to open the museum in England. Can you imagine what it takes to move nearly 70 cars collectively worth over $640 million off of an island? Then again, if you’ve got that kind of money, spending a million more on shipping is probably the least of your worries.

Ecclestone spent over 50 years amassing the collection. His role and salary as F1’s head honcho put him in the perfect position to buy some of the greatest cars ever to line up on a grand prix starting grid. Much like Ecclestone didn’t want his collection to end up in the wrong hands, F1 teams normally don’t sell cars to the highest bidder. Cars are generally considered obsolete after one season. Some are kept in storage by the team that raced them, while others get parted out. The few that end up in private hands are often sold as rollers without a drivetrain.

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