Montecasino hosted the Creative Rides auction this weekend where nine national classic car auction records were smashed.
Fierce bidding quickly saw the price fly from over R1 million to the ultimate hammer fall price of R3.5m for a diamond blue 1971 Mercedes Benz 280 SL Pagoda belonging to legendary film director Anant Singh.
The Durban-born visionary is the owner of Videovision Entertainment, and responsible for many of the most profound anti-apartheid films made in South Africa, such as “Place Of Weeping,” “Sarafina!” and “Cry, the Beloved Country”.
Four other classics cracked the R2m mark at this year’s auction, three of them also setting new South African classic car auction price records, said Creative Rides CEO Kevin Derrick.
Derrick added that it was no surprise that six cars in the auction’s star lots were Mercedes Benz. “German cars are precision engineered, they are superbly designed and they retain or significantly increase in value over the years,” he said.
According to Auto Express, the most expensive classic car to go under the hammer was a Mercedes. In 2022, a 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SLR Uhlenhaut Coupe was sold at an exclusive, invite-only auction at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, Germany, for £135million.
A 1977 Volkswagen Beetle SP got an honourable mention for achieving an exception auction price of close to a quarter of a million rand after it fetched R245 000.
The top bidding countries on the Creative Rides app were South Africa followed by the US, the UK, mainland Europe, Australia, Canada, China and Brazil.
Words:Fame Frenzy
