The man who bought the world’s most valuable car

He might have taken his Lamborghini Miura SV; that’s always thrilling. Or his Countach LP400 Periscopio. Or the oh-so-satisfying 1973 Carrera RS 2.7 Touring. Or, going modern and effortless, his BMW M5. But no: for this journey from his office in Geneva to Stuttgart, 495km to the northeast, Simon Kidston knew only his Mercedes-Benz 300 SL was right.

It wasn’t just that the silver Gullwing is so close to his heart: his father bought it new in 1955 and picked it up from the factory. He’d loved it but sold it in 1961 for a new Maserati 3500 before Simon was born. Decades later, it had taken Simon 30 years to track it down and buy it back. Now, he mused that this run back to Stuttgart was a kind of history in reverse.

But beyond emotional attachment, this trip, on 5 May 2022, was all about Gullwings, from the lowliest – if you could ever say such a thing about the greatest car of the 1950s, the one often considered the first supercar – to the most exalted. Simon quietly hoped it would be a date with destiny.