Alright, what I'm literally looking at is a private talk group for 300SL owners, which by extension includes a lot of people involved with Mercedes-Benz, auctions like this, and engineering types. One is the guy who restored this car back in the 90's. Another is the individual who brokered the sale of this car at one point. Etc. etc.
When I posted, a couple of them had posted estimated prices as well as what they claimed Bonham's was hoping for (which is supposedly as high as $40-$50 million).
One of them commented:
Bonhams are not publishing an estimate other than to say they expect it to 'comfortably' exceed their 'house record' for a car at auction, as the current management sold the Bugatti Royale when working at Christies in November 1987 for £5.5m.
Since my original posts, a lot of other informed individuals are throwing in their estimates. The car sold for $20 million in 1990, so I still feel comfortable guessing $30-$40 million in 2013. This puts me in the middle of the prices being suggested by the rest of the group.
Since it's a private talk group, I don't want to start copy/pasting full posts or giving names, but I don't see why I can't post some of the technical stuff, since this IS F1 Tech.
Feel free to PM me if you MUST have a name or two (or you have W196 that needs servicing).
...they had Castrol Company prepare a special fuel for the car, 92% 105 Octane gas, 5% ether, 2.5% nitro benzol, and .5% acetone. If the car is not run regularly, this fuel mix will gum up the engine. The engine was frozen when it reached the Cushways. Compression ratio is 13 to 1. The engine has very small valve clearance, and Mercedes loaned ... a special tool to adjust the valves, when they were done, they returned the tool to Mercedes. The engine has 4 camshafts, and 4 oil pumps, one pump for each camshaft, it has twin magnetos, 2 spark plugs per cylinder. The two spark plugs in each cylinder did not fire together, they alternated strokes so that 1 magneto would fire one plug in all 8 cylinders, and then the other magneto would fire the other 8 plugs, by alternating the magnetos it gave them time to recover. The engine took 42 litres of oil. Needless to say, the car is very complicated to maintain, especially if you are going to run it.
