The $20 Million Porsche That May Not Be A Porsche

A car built for the Nazi Party in 1939 has become the most polarizing vehicle to go to auction in years.

- Hannah Elliott

In mid-August during Pebble Beach, the world’s most prestigious car show, a vehicle that RM Sotheby’s is calling the Porsche Type 64 is expected to sell for about $20 million. It promises to be the most controversial sale of the year.

Price isn’t the issue. The auction estimate from RM Sotheby’s is far shy of the record $48.4 million paid for a 1962 Ferrari 250 GTO. The Type 64’s price would still be rarefied, more like that of the 1963 Aston Martin DP215, which sold for $21.45 million last year.

It isn’t the car’s design, either, that’s prompted public debate on Instagram and in discreet discussions between auto brokers and their clients—though it does look like a UFO.

Even the fact that the Type 64 was commissioned by the Nazis is unsurprising, grim as that may sound. Many well-known vehicles were developed for Nazi purposes, including the Volkswagen Beetle and Mercedes-Benz 770.

The conflict that has wealthy collectors whispering is that the Type 64 may not actually be a Porsche. “It’s not,” says Andy Prill, a mechanical engineer and owner of Prill Porsche Classics in England. “This is one thing I’ve been at pains to point out to people.” Prill conducted the presale inspection for RM Sotheby’s, compiling a 53-page dossier on the car. His take: While the Type 64 is a direct ancestor of the Porsches that came later, its mixing-bowl heritage disqualifies it from the same distinction.