16th August

Mercedes-Benz 300SL at 70

The Mercedes-Benz 300SL Gullwing is 70-years old this year and its origins lie in 1952. Don’t panic, we’ve not forgotten how to count, it’s all a matter of Mercedes’ W number codes. The W194 300SL of 1952 was a pure race car created to go racing and nothing else. This is why its innovative spaceframe chassis’ structural integrity was placed higher on the list of priorities than easily functioning doors. The solution for Mercedes was to use a top-hinged door that gave the SL its famous ‘Gullwing’ style and name.

While the doors became the calling card for this W194 race car and the 1954 W198 model that followed, it was really that multi-tube chassis that was the star. It weighed just 50kg compared to the far greater heft of most rivals with their separate ladder frame chassis, such as the Jaguar XK120. Along with the sleekly aerodynamic body and power from a 175bhp 3.0-litre straight-six motor, this first 300SL took an impressive second place in the 1952 Mille Miglia, its first competitive outing.

A good deal more success followed in 1953 and it led to plans for a roadgoing version, and this is what became the W198 300SL of 1954, the car so many of us know simply as the Gullwing. To put in perspective just what a radical plan this was for Mercedes, it is similar to a modern day race team taking a current Le Maans-winning car and building road legal copies. Little wonder the 300SL caused such a splash when it was unveiled at the New York International Auto Show in February 1954. And that reveal in New York was no accident as the US Mercedes importer, Max Hoffman, had been instrumental in lobbying the company’s bosses in Germany to build just such a car. The clincher was Hoffman guaranteed to order 1,000 300SL Gullwings, and he knew he could sell them to eager buyers in the US with the money to afford such an exotic and exciting European sports car.

It had taken Mercedes’ engineers only five months to turn the pure-race 300SL into a road car, and they did this without piling on the pounds. As a consequence, the W198 SL still deserved its Super Light title. It also retained the chassis of the race car with its high side sills that dictated the use of the Gullwing doors. While some might have worried this would put off well-heeled buyers, Hoffman saw it as a marketing tool that directly linked the road car to its racing sibling.



This was no idle boast as the new 300SL came with a 3.0-litre straight-six with 215bhp, which was a lot of power for the time. Mercedes used fuel injection to help reach this power, and this was another advanced piece of engineering that few race cars had experimented with, never mind a road car. To cap it all, the Gullwing had a top speed of 155mph which was just mind-bendingly fast when the average family car in the early 1950s would struggle to wheeze up to 80mph. It also made the 300SL the fastest production road car in the world at its launch.

All of this made the 300SL an instant hit and desired by anyone with a drop of petrol in their veins. Yet Mercedes came up with versions of the 300SL that were rarer still and blessed it with yet more performance. If you had the wherewithal, you could order the 300SL with an all-aluminium body in place of the steel of the standard car. This shed 80kg from the kerb weight to improve performance, though most of these cars were ordered by those with competition use in mind. This explains why only 29 aluminium 300SLs were built and why they now command a substantial premium over the already considerable prices paid for a ‘normal’ version.

Despite all of this pace and high end materials, the 300SL was not an all-round technical tour de force. For starters, it used drum brakes when Jaguar had already been fitting disc brakes to its top end sports cars for three years. More of an issue for the Mercedes, however, was its rear swing axle, which could be prone to large changes in rear wheel camber under hard cornering. This earned the car a reputation for being difficult on the limit, though in some ways this only added to the mystique and myth of the 300SL.

The issue with the rear axle was solved for the 300SL Roadster that arrived in 1957. However, rather than selling alongside the Gullwing, Mercedes ended production of the coupe with 1,400 built in total. The Roadster would go on to sell 1,858 cars in a longer six-year life span and it was an altogether more civilised car in many respects than its iconic predecessor. As well as the changes to the rear suspension, the Roadster came with a revised chassis that allowed for normal doors that hinge from the front and made it much easier to step over the still wide sill. It also means the Roadster did not need the flip-up steering wheel of the Gullwing to let the driver’s knees slide under the column.

These changes, plus the convertible roof mechanism added 125kg to the overall weight of the Roadster compared to the Gullwing coupe. However, this was mitigated by the Roadster’s engine being uprated to 240bhp as standard, so performance was much the same. The Roadster also gained disc brakes for all four wheels in 1961, which made it an easier car to live with on a daily basis, even if the Gullwing remains the one that most people remember. Either way, this pair started a line of SLs that has run unbroken ever since all the way to now and it’s hard to imagine Mercedes’ range doing without an SL.