300SL Gullwing Celebrates 50th Anniversery

[GermanStar]

Legendary Gullwing Sports Car Made Global Debut at 1954 New York Auto Show

Fifty years ago (6th - 14th February 1954) Mercedes-Benz held the international unveiling of its now-legendary 300SL Gullwing coupe at the New York Auto Show. An unusual event for an auto company that still unveils most new cars at European shows, the New York debut was proposed by entrepreneur and Mercedes-Benz distributor Max Hoffmann, who recognized the unique appeal of the 300SL in the U.S. market. At that time, the International Motor Sports Show was held in the New York Coliseum at Columbus Circle, where the brand-new Time Warner complex is now located.

The 300SL "Gullwing" Coupe - The First SL Sports Car

A 300SL racing sports car had caused a stir in the motorsports world as early as 1952, winning both the famed Le Mans 24-hour race and the Carrerra Panamericana endurance rally in its debut season. Then, to the surprise of many, the company entered the car into series production. After its debut in New York City, the SL started an enduring legacy of exciting sports cars from Mercedes-Benz.

The 1954 debut of the 300SL coupe and a prototype of the 190SL roadster marked a flashy kickoff for the SL model line, which has played a key role ever since in making Mercedes-Benz the world's premiere automotive company. The first of five generations of Mercedes sports cars, the 300SL coupe is best known for its eye-catching gullwing doors, which open skyward like a bird's wings. The 300SL featured then-innovative technology such as the world's first four-stroke gasoline engine with direct mechanical fuel injection, as well as a race-bred tubular space frame and independent suspension.

The 190SL - Ancestor of the SLK

In March 1955 the final version of the 190SL -- a small convertible that actually represents the spiritual genesis of the modern SLK line -- was presented at the Geneva Motor Show. While the 190SL resembled its larger 300SL sibling, it was built with different chassis architecture, was less expensive and, as such, helped spread the word about Mercedes' fun-to-drive, high-quality sports cars.

Two years later, Mercedes-Benz introduced a convertible version of the 300SL, which continued through 1963. Production of the 300SL roadster and Gullwing coupe totaled only 3,258 cars for the first-generation SL line, code-named W198 inside the company. By 1957, a total of 1,400 units were produced. Today, the 300SL is highly prized by car collectors, and in particular, the rare and charismatic 300 SL Gullwing commands sale prices well over $300,000.

The "Pagoda" SL

Mercedes-Benz launched the second-generation SL coupe/roadster in 1963 with a larger, more powerful version of its in-line six-cylinder, fuel- injected engine. The new 230SL was to replace two models of the former sales programme at once, the 190SL and the 300SL.

Affectionately known as the "Pagoda" SL because of its hardtop's distinctive profile, the SL of the 1960s was the first in a long series of soft-top convertibles with a split personality -- a wind-in-your-hair, top-down roadster or, with its removable hardtop in place, a quiet, luxurious coupe. Totaling 48,912 cars over an eight-year production run from 1963 to 1971, the Pagoda SL line carried a W113 internal designation and included the 230, 250 and 280SL models. The sports car of choice for Hollywood celebrities, this SL further anchored Mercedes-Benz as the "car of aspiration."

The Third-Generation SL Line

In 1971, an all-new SL began an astonishing 18-year reign as the highly coveted Mercedes-Benz "boulevard cruiser." The SL of the 1970s and '80s (known internally as the R107) encompassed such memorable models as the 350, 380, 450 and 560SL. Production of the third-generation SL totaled a record 237,287 cars through 1989.

The SL Sports Car of the 1990s

With the launch of the fourth-generation SL in 1989, Mercedes-Benz locked up the SL's claim as the world safest convertible by debuting an integral roll bar that popped up in 1/3 of a second if the car ever sensed an impending rollover. In this same spirit, the new SL came with unusual seats that integrated the shoulder anchor for the seat belts directly into a magnesium- frame seat back.

The first SL with a fully automatic convertible top, the 1990-model 500SL also marked the debut of Mercedes' four-valve-per-cylinder, dual-overhead V8 powerplants with variable valve timing -- engine architecture later featured in many Mercedes-Benz cars of the '90s. A six-cylinder 300SL was also available, and a formidable six-liter V12-powered 600 SL was added in 1993. About 200,000 SL sports cars carrying the R129 engineering designation were sold through 2002.

The "Now" SL

The current SL500, which made its debut in 2002, is the first SL with a automatic retractable hardtop -- technology that transforms the car from a luxury hardtop coupe to a top-down convertible in 16 seconds at the push of a button. The 2003-model year SL500 was also the first-ever car with electronic braking, which works together with ESP stability control and ABC active suspension to provide unparalleled handling and safety.

Since its launch, a SL55 AMG with a supercharged V8 and the V12-powered SL600 -- both boasting nearly 500 horsepower -- have been added to the current SL line. The latest edition the SL lineup is the new SL65 AMG powered by a 6.0 liter V12 engine producing 604 horsepower and 738 lb-ft of torque.

Considered by some to be a limited-production vehicle, the SL has nonetheless amassed sales of more than a half million cars over the past 50 years. With demand outstripping supply for many years, the Mercedes-Benz SL is considered to be one of the most successful car lines ever produced, not to mention one of the longest running model lines in continuous production.

Interesting....

and to think there's a gullwing a mere 20 miles from me in Brooklyn, WI.

At Brooklyn Motoren Werke owned by Albrecht Stachel.

I have to visit his shop sometime...

[300SDog]

First production car in '56 with disc brakes and fuel injection, isnt it? Also with independent rear suspension I think this car set MB standards for the next 20 yrs.

It seems like MB recovered from the war in the early '50s with the 170SD model and finally got back on track again with development of excellent Ponton sedans.

300SL rival of that era was probably the Austin Healey 100/4 (all alluminum body) and the later AH 100/6.... also the XK-120 and later XK-150 Jaguars - all of which the 300SL blew away in competition.

Can remember reading that MB swept all events with the 300SL in '56.... then withdrew from racing and focussed on building the finest sedans.

Does anybody know if vintage race circuits sustain 300SL's today??

[Mark DiSilvestro]

Actually, Mercedes was very conservative when it came to brakes and even the 300SL didn't get discs until 1961.

Happy Motoring, Mark

[GermanStar]

Originally posted by w126
Interesting....

and to think there's a gullwing a mere 20 miles from me in Brooklyn, WI.

At Brooklyn Motoren Werke owned by Albrecht Stachel.

I have to visit his shop sometime...

Yes, I know them well. If you stop in, say "Hi!" to Allison for me.

[GermanStar]

After being a dominant force in Grand Prix racing before World War II, the engineers at Mercedes-Benz must have found the late Forties to be a humiliating time. Their country was a shambles, devastated by the collapse of the Nazi regime with which their cars had been so closely associated, fairly or unfairly, and, as other countries clawed their way out of the abyss, back toward normalcy, they were being left behind. Other, lesser marques were occupying winner's circles that Mercedes-Benz engineers figured they owned.

But the draught in Mercedes-Benz motorsport fortunes would end soon after the Fifties began. Mercedes' crack engineering corps finally got the approval to go racing, and, under the direction of Rudolph Uhlenhaut, who had been through the good times and the bad times with the company, they dove into the project with a vengeance.

The post-war Mercedes-Benz, no longer the darling of Der Fuehrer, had vastly fewer forces to bring to bear on its racing program than it had in its Thirties heyday. Instead of designing an engine from scratch, Uhlenhaut's task was to prepare the M-B luxury car engine for racing applications. On the face of it, the task was daunting.

There was nothing especially bad about the in-line six cylinder, but there wasn't much especially good about it either. Its valves were operated by a single overhead cam, not the dual overhead cams of the rival Jaguar XK engine. Though it displaced just 2996 cubic centimeters (183 cubic inches), it was lengthy, tall and heavy - in other words just fine for Mercedes-Benz limousines and sedans, but marginal, at best, for sports car racing.

Dealt this mediocre hand, Uhlenhaut and his crew went to work on the engine and almost immediately were able to wring 175 horsepower from it - certainly not top-of-the-charts but at least encouraging. Still, Uhlenhaut knew that he and his band had been be ingenious of there new racer was going nowhere, both literally and figuratively.

With a boat anchor for an engine, Mercedes engineers knew the chassis and body structure had to be extremely light for their car to even have a chance of being competitive, so they put together a skeleton so light it might have come from a dirigible had it been made of aluminum rather than steel. Instead of thick-section frame rails, the 300SL's space frame was constructed of narrow-diameter steel tubing. To provide the torsional rigidity necessary for racing with this construction method, Uhlenhaut's engineers specified a wide, girder-like assembly across what, in a conventional car, would have been the lower half of the doors.

This structure necessitated the use of the top-hinged, upwardly swinging "gull-wing" doors and resulted in a sill width that was challenging to all but the most agile. Since Uhlenhaut was going racing and had no plans to offer the 300SL as a production car that was fine by him.

imilarly, the Mercedes-Benz staff dealt with the extended height of the 3-liter engine by canting it at a 45-degree angle. Doing so allowed the hoodline to be kept aerodynamically low.

Uhlenhaut's engineering ace in the hole was an independent rear suspension. By 1952, many racing cars and not a few passenger cars were fitted with an independent front suspension. Since that end of the car didn't involve the transmission of power from engine to wheels, the shift from a beam axle to an independent set-up could be made fairly easily. But designing a workable independent rear suspension that could accommodate power delivery while handling all the forces that were applied to racing wheel/tire combinations was a conundrum. Most of the successful road racers of the era used a live axle or DeDion set-up.

Not Mercedes-Benz.The rear suspension the Mercedes-Benz engineers designed wasn't particularly sophisticated in modern terms. In fact, it was in some ways similar to the suspension that got the Chevrolet Corvair in so much trouble with Ralph Nader in the 1960's. It used swing axles, located by trailing arms, with coils as the springing medium. But this was in 1952, not 1964, and these were racing cars, so the rear suspension proved to be a handling boon.

Wearing simple nomenclature and simple aluminum bodies, a team of 300SLs was prepared for the 1952 sports racing season. (300 stood for the model from which it was derived and SL connoted Sport Leicht.) Right out of the box the car took a second at the Mille Miglia, falling to a Ferrari on that marque's home turf. It was an auspicious beginning, but it didn't begin to tell the tale.

In rapid succession 300SL ripped off victories in the Swiss Grand Prix, the German Grand Prix, the 24 Hours of Le Mans, and the Carrera Panamericana. It was an unprecedented series of victories and gave notice to all the world that Mercedes-Benz was again a force to contend with.

But not on the race track.

It's point made in that fabled 1952-53 season, Mercedes decided to drop out of "factory" racing. And that might well have been the end of the 300SL had it not been for New York-based entrepreneur Max Hoffman.

A one-time foreigner himself, Hoffman never met a foreign car he didn't like or at least wanted to sell. He took one look at the 300SL gleaming on its stand at the New York Auto Show, and he guaranteed Mercedes-Benz executives he would buy 1,000 units if they would build a production version.

Thus challenged, Mercedes-Benz could hardly say no. Uhlenhaut was sent back to the drawing board to "productionize" his brainchild, while Karl Wilfert and Walter Hacker were given the task of turning its aluminum racer body into something the factory could build in volume.

Sensing the production car would have considerably more weight, Uhlenhaut redesigned the cylinder head and specified Bosch mechanical fuel injection, which upped horsepower considerably. In stock trim the engine delivered about 240 horsepower at 4,800 rpm.

The new body-style, complete with chrome bumpers and a mammoth three-pointed star in the grille, was both handsome and aerodynamic enough to allow a 140-mile per hour top speed. It was unquestionably the fastest production car of its day.

In comparison, its handling was not up to modern standards, but one has to remember it was shod with extremely narrow, bias-ply tires. Equipped with a set of modern tires, tuned to its stiff chassis, it might well surprise doubters with its prowess.

It certainly surprised and delighted all doubters during its 1954-57 production run. A total of 1,400 300SLs were produced, a sadly small number for one of the greatest sports racing production cars the world has ever known.

[300SDog]

>>>>Mercedes was very conservative when it came to brakes and even the 300SL didn't get discs until 1961."

If the 300SL didnt get discs until '61 I'm still wondering if it was the first production car equipped with them. For that matter was MB the first auto maker to also produce hydraulic brakes at an earlier time, possibly with the 170SD?

[Mark DiSilvestro]

Hydraulic brakes were on some cars by the 1920s. I know the American air-cooled Franklins had them in 1929 and Plymouth had them in the 1930s. Disc brakes were first used on aircraft. A friend who works on small planes, recently showed me a disc brake from a 1949 Piper Cub. Chrysler even offered a very unusual and complicated disc brake on early '50s Imperials. It was the British who pioneered automotive disc brakes as we know them, in the mid '50s, I believe on Jaguars. Those were more effective than drums but suffered from short pad life. The British Rootes Group, makers of Hillman and Sunbeam, experimented with discs on the prototype for their 1960 Sumbeam Alpine sportscar and came up with the splash shield to keep water and road grime from prematurely wearing the disc pads.
The W111 220SE coupe was the first production Mercedes to be fitted with British Girling disc brakes, in late 1960.

Happy Motoring, Mark
.

[wbain5280]

Early W111's had drums all around. 1963 was a big turning point for the Fintains, discs, dual circuit brakes among other things.

[theboogers]

they did upgrade the size of the drum brakes in the 300sl somewhere around 1959. does anyone know for sure wher they were made large? thanks

Originally posted by GermanStar
Yes, I know them well. If you stop in, say "Hi!" to Allison for me.

Do you know if they mind "visitors". I'd call them before dropping by, but was wondering if the owners are annoyed by car nuts.

[GermanStar]

Typically, they enjoy folks that share their disease. I'm sure they wouldn't mind.

Originally posted by GermanStar
Typically, they enjoy folks that share their disease. I'm sure they wouldn't mind.

Thanks Ron. I'll try and get down there sometime this summer. I'd love to take some pics as well and post 'em here.