The late great Sir Stirling Moss took his maiden Grand Prix in this Mercedes W196 at Aintree in 1955. Well, not this W196 as it’s only 24 inches long.
The wonderful 1:8 scale model tribute to Moss’s first victory at the British Grand Prix from Amalgam Collection is an exact replica of the car as it finished the race – inspected and approved by Mercedes archivists. It comes complete with all the dirt and weathering that 90 laps and 270 miles of flat out racing delivers.
The full-sized W196 was powered by a 2.5-litre straight-eight with Bosch fuel injection delivering 260 horsepower. Moss was joined at Aintree by Piero Taruffi, Karl Kling, and Juan Manuel Fangio, who followed him to the chequered flag. During over three hours of racing Fangio was right on Moss’s tail throughout the race, and the margin at the end was just 0.2 of a second.
Amalgam Collection is commemorating this very special race with just five editions of the incredibly detailed model. Hand-crafted at the company’s Bristol workshop they were built using original drawings, archive imagery and materials provided by Mercedes-Benz. Following construction the models were scrutinised by Mercedes’ engineers and archivists to ensure accuracy.
The price of perfection is £13,455 and a further £4540 if you’d like the ultimate walnut and glass, illuminated display case in which to showcase it.
Via Hagerty US
