Auction news - Hitler’s car for sale! - 2009

OK, we're being a bit sensationalist with that headline. This isn't Hitler's car, exactly. Not least because, presumably, he'd have been a shoddy with the repayments after April 1945. But it's the car that supported the disarmingly Nazi buttocks of no one's favourite Fuhrer on several occasions. And it's up for auction.

It is, to be precise, the 1939 Fiat 2800 used by the king of Italy to transport such pleasant dignitaries as Hitler, Benito Mussolini and General Franco during the early 1940s.

The Torpedo is being put up for auction by Coys, and is expected to fetch more than £250,000. That hefty price tag is partly because of the Hitler Effect (a frankly awful name for a thrash metal band, incidentally), but also the Fiat's rarity: just 12 Torpedos were ever built in the convertible ‘drophead' style, of which no more than half are believed to survive today.

The Fiat 2800 was introduced in 1938 and targeted at the, er, European elite of the period. Just 624 cars were built before production ceased in 1943 (some sort of big war, apparently?), all of which were powered by a 2.9-litre V6 putting out a heady 85bhp.

If this is the centrepiece that your shiny collection of deeply disturbing Nazi memorabilia needs, head on over to Monaco on May 18.