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Amazed: Swiss businessman Claudio Cisullo poses with one of his Sauber F1 cars at Zürich Airport |
SWITZERLAND. The first-ever auction of Formula One racing cars at an airport is raising a lot of interest among passengers, and is on course to raise millions of Euros.
In an innovative and exclusive exhibition organised by the Airport Retailing department at Zürich Airport’s Airside Center, four original Sauber F1 cars are currently on display for the amusement of passengers, along with memorabilia such as driving gloves and helmets worn by drivers including Jean Alesi and Kimi Räikkonen.
The exhibition runs for six weeks starting 19 February and the concurrent car auction is being held in collaboration with CC Trust Group AG (Zug), owned by Swiss businessman Claudio Cisullo.
Talking to The Moodie Report about how he got involved in the project, Cisullo explained: “I always go the Formula One races and I met Peter Sauber for lunch one day. He’d sold his team to BMW, so I asked him what he was going to do with the old cars. He said some would be sold, but about six months later I contacted him again and he said: ‘Why don’t we auction them at Zürich Airport?’.
“I liked this idea and thought, why not? I hold the sole sales and marketing rights for Sauber memorabilia and I’d already worked with Zürich Airport on developing some new boxIN sales dispensers for the Airside Center [last-minute vending machines operated by The Nuance Group at the departure gates – Ed].
“As you can see, this is a very professional presentation of cars, and it’s amazing.”
Asked about how much money he hoped to raise from the auction, Cisullo added: “I don’t have any expectations but I hope all costs are covered. I only feel a little bit of sadness [about selling the cars].”
Expect millions to be raised, judging by the initial amounts received on the second day of bidding: €200,900 and €201,000 respectively for two of the 11 Sauber cars available. All bidders are anonymous.
Patrick Graf, Head of Marketing Retail at Unique (Flughafen Zürich AG), proudly showed off the F1 exhibition areas scattered around the terminal to a group of newspaper and TV journalists, including The Moodie Report, on 20 February.
Graf and his team are striving to make the passengers’ dwell time at Zürich as interesting as possible, harnessing as many theatrical tools as he can muster.
“This is the first time F1 racing cars will be up for sale at Zürich Airport,” he said, as he showed journalists round the specially developed F1 Sound Station – a ‘sound box’ containing headphones that allow passengers to hear the discussions between the F1 drivers and the pit lane team and the noise of engines and tyre changes.
“People have a number of options for placing bids – on the Internet, directly at the auction desk in the Airside Center and by calling an 0800 telephone number. All the bids are approved by the bank before being displayed, so we are very careful to check out the bidders,” said Graf.
While acknowledging that the airport authority would receive some of the proceeds from the sale of the cars, Graf was at pains to point out the reason for holding the auction was not all commercial.
“We want to offer passengers an exciting exhibition and increase their dwell time,” he enthused. “We’ve held [car-related] promotions in the last two years, such as a TAG-Heuer McLaren watch event and a Chopard S500 promotion. We had three people bidding more than €2.5 million for cars we’ve shown here in the past – and they were not for sale. We thought we must do a promotion where we actually sell the cars.”
The auction will end on 25 March. You can see the latest bids live at www.saubercars.ch. At time of writing, the highest bid is €205,000 for the 1998 car driven by Jean Alesi.
About Sauber
Peter Sauber was actively involved in Formula One racing with his own team from 1993 to 2005, when leading drivers such as Jean Alesi, Kimi Räikkonen and Felipe Massa sat behind the wheel of his racing cars.
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