Watch: Opel launches in NZ! Zooming with DRIVEN EP109
You may not be surprised to hear this, but former Formula One supremo Bernie Ecclestone has quite the impressive collection of historic Grand Prix cars. He has 26, in fact, including the McLaren M23 that James Hunt won his world championship title, a Vanwall Ferrari ‘Thinwall Special’, a BRM V16, one of only four surviving Bugatti Type 54s, the Ferrari F2002 that Michael Schumacher won his 5th title in and, most remarkably, two of the legendary pre-war Silver Arrows Grand Prix cars; a 1937 Auto Union Type C and a 1937 Mercedes-Benz W125.
Fun racing fact: producing more than 700hp, the W125 was the most powerful Grand Prix car ever built for nearly 50 years, taking until the advent of the turbocharged F1 monsters from the mid-1980s before it was out-muscled.
Long story short; Bernie has a lot of very cool cars and he recently collaborated with ‘luxury publisher’ Opus (which means they publish lavish and exciting expensive coffee table books) to show case his collection in, you guessed it, a lavish and exciting expensive coffee table book.
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To create the book, Ecclestone’s cars (and a number of legendary F1 drivers) were photographed using a giant 20x24-inch Polaroid camera that was originally built to photograph oil paintings and tapestries. Polaroid only built six between 1976 and 1978, with only five remaining today.
Of course, the book was excitingly expensive, with the standard ‘Paddock Edition' costing NZ$6500 and the customisable 'Grand Prix Edition' starting at US$17,500, but now Opus has teamed up with New Zealand-based studio Glorious Digital to offer both a more affordable and a fantastically more expensive way to get a slice of the extraordinary collection - by making the photographs available in digital non-fungible token (NFT) form.
The ‘more affordable’ way is the ‘Grand Prix Trilogy’ collection that consists of 2600 NFTs created using the original Polaroid photographs. Each NFT will feature three of the cars from the collection and will sell for £500 (NZ$970).
The fantastically more expensive way is the ‘The Ecclestone Grand Prix Collection’ that is limited to just 26 NFTs, each featuring one of the cars, as well as the original Polaroid used to create the NFT and an authenticated copy of it, as well as a copy of the Opus book.
But that’s not all – because if you are one of the lucky (well, fantastically wealthy) buyers, you will also receive an invitation to visit Ecclestone’s private race track (because, of course he has one) for a tour of the 26 cars – and yes, you will be allowed to look under the bonnet and even hop in them. Providing you can fit, of course.
You will also get trackside seats to watch the cars being thrashed around the track followed by lunch for you and 12 of your closest friends, hosted by Bernie himself, allowing you to finally answer that nagging question: what exactly do you talk to a 92-year-old multi-billionaire about over lunch?
How much will this experience cost you? Well, that remains to be seen, as the 26 ‘Ecclestone Grand Prix Collection’ NFTs will go up for auction between the 1st and 7th of December and will no doubt go for frankly ludicrous amounts of money.
If you have a lazy small fortune lying around and are thinking of bidding then you can find out more and register for updates at Glorious Digital’s website, while the 2600 ‘Grand Prix Trilogy’ NFTs will go on sale on the website between the 17th and 30th of November.