Even the super-rich can’t just buy a limited edition Ferrari model

A “fun car” for a quarter of a million francs, a limited edition Ferrari 812 Competizione or a museum for 140 vintage cars: extremely wealthy car lovers face different questions than owners of normal cars. Beat Imwinkelried has set up a family office for owners of classic and luxury cars.

A quarter of a million francs. That’s how much the new owner paid for the dark gray Aston Martin DBS Coupé from 2019. At the time of the interview, the car was on the first floor of the showroom next to a spacious dining table. “The buyer will pick up the car tomorrow. As always, we are celebrating this deal with a special meal that our chef creates for the buyers and their families,” explains Beat Imwinkelried from B. I. Collection to “NZZ am Sonntag”.

He invited us to his newest car dealership in Niederwil, St. Gallen. It has little in common with the usual sales areas of car dealers. The modern flat-roofed building, which Imwinkelried took over from Aston Martin St. Gallen at the beginning of 2022, is reminiscent of a museum. The interior, which is open to the public, is dominated by stone, wood and glass and could be a boutique hotel.

Just ten, maybe twelve cars are presented on the large area. Each one is placed like a work of art in a gallery, with lots of light coming through the large windows and the glass roof. Appenzell’s local mountain, Säntis, is clearly visible in the distance.

Imwinkelried focuses on brands in the top luxury segment. In addition to new cars, he also deals in used cars, including Aston Martin, Bugatti, Maserati and Mercedes-Benz, as well as lesser-known classics such as De Tomaso and Zagato.

Close orientation towards the art market

The most unusual car in the showroom is currently a two-door Koenigsegg coupé. Twenty years ago, the new price was around 600,000 francs; the current owner wants 2.5 million francs. Imwinkelried explains the high price with the very complex production of the carbon outer skin, which is purple in the model on display. Only 49 vehicles of this CCX version were built between 2006 and 2010.

Rare and sought-after cars can see massive increases in value over the years, as can investments in art, explains Imwinkelried. The 57-year-old Valais native is an art lover and keeps a close eye on the art market because “it is way ahead of the car market.” Art collectors were also an inspiration for his latest project. In January, he founded the Car Collector’s Family Office, a family office for classic and luxury cars.

Very wealthy families often pool their wealth in a family office. From here, all assets are managed, including real estate, art collections, fleets including aircraft and ships, and of course the cash and securities of all family members.

The family office founded by Imwinkelried is intended to offer a comprehensive service for the specific needs of wealthy collectors of luxury cars. There is no such office in this country and probably not in Europe either, he says. The service includes support and advice for collectors on everything to do with finding, keeping and passing on cars to the next generation. Typical examples include repairs, maintenance and moving the vehicles by his mechanics; around eighty employees work for him.

The big step to becoming a car lover

“The initial idea for the family office came from years of observing my customers,” recalls Imwinkelried. The least demanding is the lifestyle customer. They buy an expensive car as a “fun car,” for personal enjoyment. Such a customer might want a Porsche 911 Targa, a classic lifestyle car, for a maximum price of 240,000 francs. “We look for the car and conclude the process with the sale,” explains Imwinkelried.

The aficionado is much more demanding. Car lovers are usually part of a community with other aficionados, many of whom have driven or are racing cars. And they are very well informed, “often even better than my employees,” says Imwinkelried. “A lover always wants the newest and best car on the market, he is not interested in copycats, which makes this type of customer very demanding, but of course also extremely grateful to us,” says Imwinkelried.

Enthusiasts are more demanding than lifestyle customers. They always want the latest and best car on the market.

The step from lifestyle customer to aficionado is a big one. The coveted limited special models cannot simply be bought just because a prospective buyer is very wealthy, explains Imwinkelried. He refers to the system of luxury brands such as Hermès. Here, too, the average millionaire often needs years just to get on the waiting list for one of the coveted cult bags such as the Kelly or Birkin bag.

It’s similar at Ferrari. “Ferrari has a very sophisticated global ranking system,” explains Imwinkelried. Only someone who already has a history with Ferrari, i.e. who has already bought six or seven models of the brand, gets the chance to buy a limited special model like the Ferrari 812 Competizione. The Italian luxury car manufacturer with the emblem of the Cavallino Rampante, the rearing horse, feeds a database that registers all purchases and sales of Ferraris worldwide.

The most expensive category by far is the collectors. “Every collector started with a few cars. Often these were real collectors’ cars that someone knew inside and out,” says Imwinkelried. When the collections start to grow, from a few to dozens or even several hundred cars, most buyers approach it more and more professionally.

«I stand for emotions and a feeling of luxury»

Imwinkelried has been dealing exclusively with such collectors for the past two years. “Every day I deal with very interesting people from all over the world,” he says, describing the main attraction of his job. But his own career is also interesting. “Sales have always been one of my strengths, but I was bad as an engineer,” he says. He studied mechanical engineering at ETH, then went on to do a full-time MBA in Lausanne. For the next ten years he sold gas turbine power plants all over the world for ABB. “It was the time of liberalization in the energy sector. And my customers were like me. They were less interested in the technical details than in how the projects could be financed,” Imwinkelried remembers. That is still the case today; he stands for the experience, the feeling of luxury, the emotions. He does not know the inner workings of a Porsche; that is what his mechanics are there for.

He got into the car business by a coincidence that, in retrospect, seems almost absurd. Imwinkelried’s father was the finance director at the long-established Opel garage Grosspeter AG in the Basel region. “One day the owner turned to my father and told him that he urgently needed a successor, and if he knew one, he would sell the garage to him.” The owner’s three daughters were not interested in cars and did not even have a driver’s license, he explains. So Imwinkelried became the owner of a car garage at the age of 36.

In the years that followed, he learned a lot and tried out a lot of things. But the trend was clearly in one direction: away from low-priced cars from the mass segment such as Opel, Honda, Citroën and Volkswagen, and towards the exclusive Ferrari, Bugatti, Mercedes, Porsche and Aston Martin. Today, he is an official partner of Porsche, Bugatti, Aston Martin and Ferrari, among others. With his B.-I. Collection group, he has locations in Basel, Zurich and Gstaad and also has two duty-free warehouses in which collectors can temporarily store their cars without paying customs before they are transported to their holiday home in the South of France or to the next auction in London.

Children don’t want old cars anymore

Customers come to him every day with new requests. A client from Kazakhstan recently wanted to set up a museum for his collection of 140 Russian vintage cars. “I advised him against it. Museums are very expensive and there is probably too little public interest in such cars,” says Imwinkelried.

Shortly before speaking to this newspaper, he visited an auction in Monaco. There he saw once again that the younger generation has completely different tastes. The heirs of his collector clients are no longer interested in pre-war cars such as Rolls-Royce, Bentley or Mercedes from the 1930s. Demand for cars from the 1960s and 1970s has also decreased. In contrast, sports cars from Porsche, Ferrari and Mercedes from the 1980s and 1990s are increasingly in demand.

B. I. Collection serves several thousand customers, a good 150 of whom are collectors. They own between 5 and 200 cars, 90 percent of his customers are men. Well over half are over 70, some over 80 years old. Most of these mature collectors are concerned about what will happen to their car collection. Will the cars still be driven by the next generation, or does a collection need to be broken up?

The real treasures are then hermetically sealed deeper down, in the dark basements.

What is certain is that these cars “are not dead capital, but have value,” explains Imwinkelried. He therefore also offers to evaluate collectors’ cars, for example for the purpose of taking out a bank loan. “We work with the CIC bank, for which we evaluate collections that can serve as the basis for a loan.”

The most legendary car on site

The real treasures of the B. I. Collection are not in the showroom, but deeper down in the basement. The so-called Car-Safe in Niederwil is hermetically sealed and can only be accessed through a door. Up to 89 luxury cars belonging to collectors are kept here. Accompanied, the “NZZ am Sonntag” is allowed to enter the Car-Safe briefly. After entering the room, the first thing you notice is the arrangement of the cars; they are arranged vertically and in rows on rails, like in the car theater in the Lucerne Museum of Transport.

Secondly, breathing immediately becomes difficult. The oxygen content in the car safe is still 13.8 percent, which corresponds to an altitude of around 3,800 meters above sea level. Fire cannot develop in this air composition, matches and vehicles do not work. As an additional protection against fire, the air in the parking garage is dehumidified.

Touching them is strictly prohibited, but as an exception, and after consultation with the owner, the most legendary cars may be photographed on site. They immediately catch the eye, the two Formula 1 cars from Benetton. The front one has a legible engine cover, with “Schumacher” emblazoned on it. Michael Schumacher won his first Formula 1 race in this car at the Belgian Grand Prix on August 30, 1992.

The owner of the Formula 1 cars is Patrick Harmuth, who owns three of the Benetton Formula 1 cars with which Schumacher won his first races in the premier class. Harmuth is a passionate racing driver himself and drives pretty much anything that is fast. In the senior class, he drives championships with Gokart KZ, as well as Formula 1 and Formula 3 races. In 2022 and 2023, he won the Maxx Formula in the Advance GP2 category with 610 hp and 640 kg.

In 2016, Harmuth began collecting cars out of passion, as he wrote when asked: “I love cars and racing.” The three Benetton cars are all drivable, he continues, and he has already driven one himself. Schumacher’s Benetton cars are recognized by fans all over the world. The third is currently in the Schlumpf Museum in Mulhouse, the Cité de l’automobile. The other two have been in Niederwil since January 2024 because Harmuth moved to Switzerland. He already has interesting offers for both cars, says Harmuth.

At the end, Imwinkelried invites everyone to sushi and salad, a commitment to passion and profession. Afterwards, he drives to his next appointment in his Aston Martin DB12.