Hello bargain-hunting friends. I, like you, enjoy a good deal. But at the same time, I, like you, refuse to settle for anything less than the best. If I’m sleepy, I recline on a pile of the finest used mattresses. If I’m hungry, I eat an entire dumpster of caviar. Weeks-old caviar, though, to keep it within budget (might explain why it’s in a dumpster). And if I need a steering wheel, I’m grabbing this thing right out of a Sauber Formula One car.
An F1 steering wheel, when new, will set you back around $60,000. While you might not see the inherent value in purchasing a steering wheel for the price of a Toyota Supra, thankfully this one offered up for sale by RaceCarsDirect.com will only set you back €10,000, or $11,295. That’s the price of just a slightly dinged and dented Honda Civic:
Okay, I’ll admit, for $11,295 you’re not exactly getting the top-of-the-line F1 steering wheel. Beggars can’t be choosers after all, and this one isn’t off of, say, a championship-winning Mercedes driven by Lewis Hamilton. It technically isn’t even off of a car that ever raced in F1, nor was it used by a driver who ever raced in F1.
But that doesn’t mean it’s not part of F1 history.
This particular wheel was used by one of the (sadly) few women ever to get behind the wheel of an F1 car, Simona de Silvestro, during her test for Sauber back in 2014:
De Silvestro never got her shot in the big time because this is Formula One and Sergio Perez had more money, but the wheel would still look neat shadowboxed on a wall or serving as a tiller on your 1997 Honda Civic.
And if you’re worried about smashing one button while you want to be twisting a knob, we’ve got you covered there.