Looks Ideal

Bonhams, Stuttgart, Germany 28 March

IT IS FITTING that Bonhams’ annual Mercedes-Benz auction will once again be held at the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, because the list of consignments to date reads like a marque history – and not a concise one, either. Bidders will be given a crack at everything from a 12,000-mile 2007 SLR McLaren Roadster (estimate: €250,000-350,000) to a 1925 Type 8 ladies’ bicycle (estimate: €4000-6000; mileage unknown).

The lots expected to provoke the fiercest squabbles, unsurprisingly, are a pair of 300SLs – one a Roadster, one a Gullwing – and a Sindelfingen-bodied 1938 540K Cabriolet A. For the keen automotive archaeologist, though, none of those is half as compelling as the car pictured here, a Benz 4½hp Ideal dating from 1900.

It is known that it was sold new to the UK, and acquired prior to World War One by a gentleman whose widow sold it to a pair of enthusiasts in the 1950s. Those ‘car sleuths’, who had tracked it to its location in Builth Wells a er hearing a rumour of its existence, restored the car most sympathetically, judging by its current condition. The hardware, most of which is original, has lasted the years beautifully, and the big, single-cylinder engine is still going strong, as evidenced by several London to Brighton finishes.

Between the car’s obvious suitability for that event and its even more obvious significance as part of the early Mercedes-Benz story, the estimate of €230,000280,000 seems reasonable. You could have that SLR McLaren Roadster for the same money, of course, but we promise that 20mph atop the Ideal will feel more exhilarating than 200mph inside the SLR – especially when the time comes to slow the old girl down…