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The Indianapolis Motor Speedway Museum plans to auction off nearly a dozen valuable cars from its collection in the coming months as part of an ongoing effort to gain long-term financial footing.
The museum has partnered with Ontario-based auction house RM Sotheby’s to take 11 significant cars to market in late 2024 and 2025 in a move that could bolster the organization’s $10 million endowment with an additional infusion of $100 million or more.
The cars made available for the sales include a Ferrari 250LM that won the 24 Hours of Le Mans race in 1964 and the only closed-wheel Formula One car to win a race, the 1956 Mercedes W196 Streamliner that was driven by Juan Manuel Fangio.
“This is a really unique opportunity for any museum, but especially for us, to create a situation that is going to almost guarantee the future of the organization,” Joe Hale, president of the IMS Museum, told IBJ.
Hale, who was named the museum’s top executive in late 2020, said he has already spoken with numerous donors about the organization’s plan to auction off the vehicles, most of which are from the Hulman family’s historical collection and not connected to the museum’s mission of promoting and preserving the speedway and the 500-mile race.
The IMS board of directors in 2017 authorized museum staff to scour its collection of artifacts to determine whether there were items that didn’t align with the museum’s purpose and to find avenues to sell those items. In total, staff determined that 11 cars were eligible for removal from the collection, all of which have been approved for sale by the board:
— 1906 Laurin & Klement Racer
— 1907 Itala
— 1909 Mercedes Brookland ‘Semmering Hill Climb’
— 1911 Mercedes 22/40 Touring
— 1929 Bugatti Type 35C
— 1956 Mercedes-Benz W196 Streamliner ‘Monza’
— 1957 Chevrolet Corvette SS Project XP64
— 1964 Ferrari 250LM
— 1964 The Spirit of America
— 1966 Ford GT40 MkII
— 1991 Benneton B191 Formula 1 Car
Hale said IMS Museum spoke with several auction houses about listing the cars, with most indicating the organization should expect to fetch about $120 to $150 million for the lot of them, not taking into account the auction house’s commission, which is generally 5% to 10% of the sale price.
He said Sotheby’s was selected because representatives for the company were “creative in their approach” to how the cars should be auctioned.
“They weren’t going to just have everything auctioned off at one time,” he said, noting tentative plans to sell the 1956 Mercedes-Benz at the car company’s headquarters in Germany. He said the car will also be showcased during Pebble Beach Automotive Week in California this week. There’s also consideration of how others like the Ferrari and the Ford vehicles could be advertised for sale. “We haven’t finalized [things], but I think we felt that they were just a little bit more creative than the others.”
In written comments, Gore Duff, global head of auctions for RM Sotheby’s, said the company is “thrilled to partner with the museum as part of its effort to raise endowment funds.”
“These vehicles will be some of the world’s most significant cars ever sold,” he said. “From the Moss/Fangio-raced W196 to the Le Mans-winning 250LM, and even a land speed record car, these aren’t just significant; they are the pinnacle of collecting. There is almost nothing to compare them to, and knowing they are being sold for such a worthy cause is a great feeling.”
The museum’s plans to auction the vehicles comes as the organization continues a $64 million overhaul of its facility at the southern end of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, set to reopen by May 2025. About $60 million has already been raised through the museum’s Stories Behind the Spectacle capital campaign that launched last year. The IMS Museum also plans to spend another $15 million to build an automobile and equipment restoration and storage facility at an undisclosed location in the Speedway area in 2026.
The museum in 2020 and 2021 also sold off dozens of other cars from its collection that were rarely put on display and didn’t fit the organization’s needs, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Hale said while the museum has not received its accreditation from the American Alliance of Museums—a designation it hopes to achieve next year—it is already following guidelines and bylaws set forth by the organization. Among them is that the organization cannot use proceeds from the sale of artifacts in its collection for capital investments and instead must allocate those funds for the growth and preservation of its collection.
The entirety of the proceeds from the auctioned vehicles are expected to go directly to its endowment, which will be invested in stocks and bonds to get annual returns that can be put toward its collection, either to pay for new acquisitions or to cover costs related to repairs and upkeep on current items, including through new technologies such as an updated archival storage system, mounting materials for displays and high-end fire suppression systems.
Hale said the feedback from existing and prospective donors related to the sale of the vehicles has been positive, with many expressing optimism in the museum’s willingness to invest in its long-term future by removing cars from its collection that don’t quite fit the bill.
“A lot of the donors are saying to us, ‘Boy, we feel really good about investing in an organization that we now know is going to be around and is not going to have problems 10 years, 30 years from now … because there’s another pandemic or something like that,’” he said of the endowment. “This kind of assures that we’re going to be around” for a long time.
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