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Study: Ralph Lauren is the most important classic car collector worldwide

Vaduz, May 11, 2023 – Classic cars now have their own presence in Metaland for the first time: Under roarington.com, “The Classic Car Trust” (TCCT) has created a unique digital platform with which what is and was possible in the real world can now be replicated in virtual space. Roarington’s aim is to make the great automobiles of the last century more accessible to a new generation. In doing so, the icons of automotive history will be re-experienced and at the same time immortalized with the help of digital twins.

TCCT’s “The Key” magazine also published its annual list of the Top 100 Classic Car Collectors Worldwide, naming American entrepreneur Ralph Lauren as the Top 1 of 2022.

“We are committed to promoting heritage and preservation of classic cars in a rapidly and fundamentally changing world,” explains TCCT founder Fritz Kaiser. “With Roarington, we want to make our contribution to the sustainable future of classic cars in the new digital age and promote these great vehicles to a younger generation. Roarington sees itself as a bridge builder between real and virtual life around Classic Cars. It wants to inspire young and old, anytime and anywhere. And with digital twins, these great cars become virtually immortal.”

 

Real Classic Cars and Digital Twins

Roarington was conceived as a virtual ecosystem for classic automobiles and in the first version now online, several areas are already operational. In the Exhibition Center of the “Exhibition District” 3 exhibition rooms are active, where currently the Italian designer companies Pininfarina and Zagato and the Private Kaiser Collection are showing digital twins for free using “Unreal Engine Pixel Streaming Technology” in a new 3D experience. The exhibition exhibits are as follows: Aston Martin DB4GT Zagato, Pininfarina’s Cisitalia 202, Pininfarina’s “Modulo” concept car, BMW 507 Roadster and Lamborghini Miura from the movie “The Italian Job.”

The “Media House” offers in one single box stop in the media and
News Center News and background information from the world of Classic Cars. The new TCCT Top 100 Classic Car collector list is also currently presented in this section.

In the “eRacing Experience” District, professionals, collectors and aficionados of classic cars meet simulators from Italian design stars Pininfarina and Zagato for a sporting competition with digital twins of classic cars.

The marketplace on Roarington is in the making and will be connected to Roarington Avenue – the boulevard of Classic Car Metaland. In the future, real luxury goods and digital assets related to classic cars will be traded here. As NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) or as real goods.

In “Roarington House”, the central administration unit of Metaland, the digital property on Roarington is registered or the digital car pass for eRacing championships is issued. The Roarington experience and the range of services on offer are now being continuously expanded.

 

The Top 100 Classic Car Collectors

“We are now publishing this list of the largest and most important collectors of classic cars worldwide for the fifth time,” states TCCT founder Fritz Kaiser. “The Top 100 has now become a standard in the industry.” The list brings together the most important collectors and their collections: the current list includes a total of 3831 Classic Cars with a total value of around 10.5 billion dollars.

This year’s Top Collector owns one of the most valuable collections of icons of engineering and design from the 20th century, comprising some seventy automobiles. Ralph Lauren’s passion for classic cars once began with a 1971 Mercedes 280SE 4.5 Cabriolet, a 1979 Porsche 930, or a 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing Coupe, and today his collection also includes the rare 1938 Bugatti 57SC Atlantic Coupe.

 

Ralph Lauren follows illustrious predecessors

As number one among the top collectors on the current list, Ralph Lauren joins illustrious predecessors. There is, for example, the American Miles Collier (Top 1: 2018; Top 4: 2022), who describes himself as an “automotive archaeologist” and not only houses his important collection “Miles Collier Collections” in his Revs Institute in Naples/Florida, but also conducts documentation and research on automotive history. Or the recently deceased Fred Simeone (Top 1: 2019; Top 5: 2022), who made his significant collection of Classic Cars available to the public at the Simeone Foundation Automotive Museum in Philadelphia, USA. And the Dutchman Evert Louwman (Top 1: 2020; Top 2: 2022), who in his “Evert Louwman Museum” will present great icons of the automotive history united. Finally, the industrialist Arturo Keller with Swiss-Mexican roots (Top 1: 2021; Top 3: 2022), who has now naturalized in the U.S., has shown a soft spot for Mercedes models since the beginning of his collecting activities and always keeps his classic cars “fueled and ready to go,” as he recorded years ago in one of his rare conversations with a journalist.

 

This is how the list of the top 100 was created

An important criterion for ranking a collection is its financial value: For this purpose, around 200,000 data from over a thousand Classic Car auctions over the past thirty years were analyzed. In addition to the purely pecuniary focus, every Classic Car and every collection also has a historical value, which is also included in the Top 100. There are cars that once belonged to celebrities, won races, or collected design awards. Sources for this information include digital channels, but most importantly, comprehensive historical documentation of automobiles and collections, often provided directly by collectors. One in five of the vehicles included in the Top 100 ranking represents outstanding historical value in the world of classic cars: for example, the GT40 that won Le Mans in 1966.

Every collection has a reputation among collectors that is nourished by the precious items that have been collected. This phenomenon, which is difficult and impossible to assess scientifically, was also made fruitful for the Top 100. The twenty most important rallies, races and events for classic cars served as a reference: for example, the Concorso d’Eleganza Villa d’Este, the Mille Miglia, the Goodwood events, the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance or the Le Mans Classic and others – all available information was evaluated and was also included in the Top 100. From all these evaluations, including a subjective coolness factor, a score was determined that ultimately decided the collector’s place within the Top 100.