In the latest installation of Virgil Abloh's collaborative Project Geländewagen with Mercedes-Benz, a one-of-one replica of the car was sold as part of Sotheby’s Contemporary Curated auction. The 1:3 model raised $160,000, which will be donated to a charitable cause.
The Project Geländewagen maquette was created for auction, exclusively for Sotheby’s, and is a 1:3 scale model of the collaborative G-Wagon. It measures 74.8" by 37.4" by 31.1". The piece is one of a kind and rendered in synthetic resin, laminate, carbon fiber, glass fiber, wood, metal, and textile, exactly replicating all the details of the car.
At the launch of the collaboration last month, Mercedes-Benz and Virgil Abloh committed to donating the full proceeds of this sale to Abloh's “Post-Modern” Scholarship Fund. The designer commented that he felt “compelled to help support the arts and the international creative community at a critical time.” The fund was launched earlier this year and provides support to fashion students of academic promise of Black, African American, or African descent.
For Abloh, the very reimagination of Mercedes-Benz's iconic G-Class was intended to push the boundaries of luxury design and inspire up-and-coming talent, using the collaboration as a chassis to support future designers.
"My ultimate goal in this project with Mercedes-Benz is inspiring young artists, engineers, designers to question the status quo, in addition to experimenting with my own design abilities," Abloh explained. "Mercedes-Benz is a brand that stands for luxury and exceptional performance. Truly a perfect chassis to interject modern artists’ ideas of what the future can be stylistically."
