The Rudi Klein Junkyard Car Collection
Paying a premium for someone else's junk isn't something anyone would normally do — but this isn't your normal junk. Rudy Klein emigrated to the US in the late 1950s, setting up a trade dealing mostly with European sports cars. Klein began amassing an incredible collection of automobiles, storing them out in the open and in corrugated steel buildings littering a property in South Central Los Angeles. Dusty and derelict, the collection is staggering. Ferraris, Jaguars, multiple Lamborghini Miuras, over a dozen Porsche 356s, and two incredible Mercedes — one of 29 alloy-bodied 300SL Gullwings, and the crown jewel, a one-of-one 1935 Mercedes-Benz 500K, built for Grand Prix racing legend and Silver Arrows driver Rudolf Caracciola. After Caracciola's ownership, Italian dictator Benito Mussolini bought the car for his son-in-law, whom Mussolini had shot after an attempted coup. The car was hidden in Ethiopia and then shipped to California after WWII where Klein purchased it in the mid-'70s. The entire collection will be auctioned via RM Sotheby's in Los Angeles on October 26th.
