Mark said in an interview for Guitarist magazine in 1986: "I only wanted a red electric guitar for as long as I can remember and I had to wait years and years. Actually, when I was very small, I just used to play on tennis racquets, my Dad’s T Squares and things, and I just pestered him so much that in the end for my 15th birthday he got me a Höfner. It was red, had two pickups and a wobbly tremolo arm." Knopfler recalls the story of that first guitar and five others that shaped his career in the 2012 Sky Arts documentary Guitar Stories, telling his old bandmate John Illsley: "It was as close as he could get to a real Fender Stratocaster… I absolutely loved this thing, even though it wasn’t the real object of desire… Just because it was nowhere near a Strat doesn’t alter the fact that you loved it. I remember not wanting to let go of it the day I got it, so it’s possible that I slept with it."


Later, when Mark aquired other guitars, he gave this guitar away to his brother David in the early years and eventually got it back in 2007. See also some reports about an auction for this guitar here and here.


Mark was still using this first Höfner when he formed the pre-Dire Straits band Café Racers in 1975, and the guitar remains in his possession to this day.