MERCEDES-BENZ

300SL Gullwing

The Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing (chassis code W198) was born directly from competition. Its ancestor, the W194 racer of 1952, had won Le Mans and the Carrera Panamericana, and it was American importer Max Hoffman who convinced Stuttgart to turn that racing car into a road model. Launched at the New York Motor Sports Show in February 1954, the 300SL Gullwing used a complex lightweight tubular spaceframe so deep at the sills that conventional doors were impossible, hence the dramatic upward-opening "gullwing" doors that gave the car its name. Under the bonnet sat a 3.0-litre overhead-cam straight-six, canted over at 50 degrees and fed by Bosch mechanical direct fuel injection, a world first for a production car, giving around 215 horsepower and a top speed close to 160 mph, making the 300SL Gullwing the fastest production car of its day. The coupe was built from 1954 to 1957 with 1,400 examples, 29 of them with ultra-rare lightweight aluminium bodies, after which the 300SL Roadster (1,858 built to 1963) took over with conventional doors and a folding roof, for a W198 total of 3,258 cars. Today the Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing is a blue-chip icon, the alloy-bodied versions ranking among the most valuable Mercedes ever sold.