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T he Three-Pointed Star of Mercedes-Benz has graced the bodies of many impressive, even iconic vehicles in the near-century since Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler joined forces as one company in 1926. Even among the ranks of that legion, however, the 300 SL coupe – affectionately known as the “Gullwing” – stands apart. In fact, it arguably stands among the annals of the best-known cars ever made, period.
“Close your eyes and think of 10 cars, and I’m pretty sure the 300 SL will be among them,” says Marcus Görig, Car Specialist and Director of Sales, Germany, at RM Sotheby’s.
The 300 SL Gullwing’s beauty is the sort of automotive artwork that only comes along once in a blue moon. From its fluid, teardrop tail to the creases and vents of its sides and the power bulges of its endless hood — mounted so low, the car’s engine had to lean 50º over to port to fit underneath it — the sinuous curves and perfect sports car proportions of the 300 SL Gullwing are alluring enough to make even the auto-agnostic stop and stare.
“If you look at the lines, it’s really a piece of art,” says Görig. “It’s a unique car — no other car from Mercedes or any other brand could match [it].”
Beneath that slippery skin, the 300 SL boasted an assortment of innovations for its time. “There were so many things that were completely new. You have this tubular spaceframe, you had [what were] at the time exciting brakes — the drums were at the size that no other manufacturer had,” says Görig.
The real showstopper, though, are the doors that give the Gullwing its name. Unlike the Mercedes coupes that came before it — indeed, unlike any automobile that had come before — the 300 SL hardtop’s twin doors opened vertically, hinged near the top of the roof instead of at the base of the A-pillars and, when opened, give the car a look somewhat like that of a seagull. “It’s just an outstanding car because of the gullwings,” Görig says. “It’s a [change to a] part of the car that no one ever did before.” The curb appeal was just a side effect; the real rationale for the unusual doors was that the combination of the low-slung roof and the exceedingly high door sills necessitated by the car’s tubular frame chassis would have made conventional opening unusable to anyone but contortionists. Meanwhile owing to a modified frame, the convertible version that would follow in 1957 had more conventional portals.
The 300 SL needed all the clever ideas it could pack, because it had big shoes to fill. Back in the 1930s, Mercedes had a spell of dominance in motorsports, with their Silver Arrow race cars racking up win after win on the Grand Prix circuit for six years straight. World War II, unsurprisingly, put a halt to Mercedes-Benz’s racing efforts, as the company was forced to concentrate on building military machinery over automobiles — racing or otherwise. After the war, parent company Daimler-Benz was forced to rebuild, both from the extensive damage brought by fighting and the loss of its international network of partners and offshoots as it saw its foreign assets impounded and sold off to help pay reparations as part of the Potsdam Agreement.
By the time the calendar had flipped into the 1950s, however, the carmaker had decided it needed a win — in more than one sense of the word — and set about building a race car under the capable hands of former Mercedes-Benz race car development boss Rudolph Uhlenhaut. Internally designated W194, the new car was quickly developed around its revolutionary tubular space frame concept
The Three-Pointed Star brought their new speed machine to bear against rivals in competition in 1952, and the Gullwing quickly proved itself to be everything its makers hoped. “In 1952, only seven years after the war, Mercedes went back to racing with the prototype,” says Görig. “And they won everything! They won everything with the 300 SL.”
The names of the races and tracks where the 300 SL racked up victories and glories in its inaugural year are among the most famous in the motoring world: the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the Carrera Panamericana, the Nurburgring Nordschleife, the Mille Miglia. While its 3.0-liter inline-six’s output of 175 horsepower and 153 lb-ft is paltry by modern standards, the one-and-a-quarter-ton weight and slippery aerodynamics made the race-spec car remarkably quick; the competition version of the 300 SL could hit around 160 miles an hour, given the space.
While the race car’s origins may lie in Germany, it was a man in America who was largely responsible for the 300 SL eventually reaching dealerships. Max Hoffman was a Viennese-born importer of European vehicles to the United States, and his broad network of dealers meant he had an ear to the ground when it came to finding out what customers wanted — as well as a clear line to the executives at the automakers who depended on him for access to the American market. In September 1953, Hoffman won over the Daimler-Benz board with pleas to build a street-legal version of the race car that had so quickly risen to dominance, and by the following February, Mercedes pulled the cover off the production version at the New York Auto Show.
The 300 SL road car differed from its competition-minded sibling in several ways. “It was the first production car with a fuel injection petrol engine,” as Görig points out — a capability that helped its inline-six churn out 212 horsepower, nearly a quarter more ponies than the race car’s motor produced. Opt for the tallest available final drive ratio, and the 300 SL could hit at least 155 miles per hour, making it the fastest production car of its day. Its body looked more muscular, and adorned with chrome accents and other accoutrements not suited for a stripped-down competition machine.
And, of course, a street-legal sports car meant for the wealthy in New York or Beverly Hills would require a much more comfortable interior than a bare-bones racer’s cabin. Fabric seats in one of three elegant plaid patterns were standard, while leather seats were available for extra money; either way, however, the dashboard and much of the rest of the cabin came coated in cowskin where the race car used carpet or metal. And while the gullwing doors and broad sill still made entry and exit a challenge, the street-legal car made it a dash easier with the help of a steering wheel that could pivot to horizontal at the release of a catch.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the car’s gorgeous looks, solid racing pedigree and impressive performance, it quickly became popular among the glitterati of its era. Actor Clark Gable, socialite Zsa Zsa Gabor and shipping magnate Stavros Niarchos were among the rich and famous who snapped up 300 SLs. And, comparatively, they snapped them up for a song: if you’d rolled into a Mercedes-Benz dealership back when the 300 SL was fresh off the boat, you could have bought one for $6,820 — the equivalent of just over $80,000 today. For comparison, the 300 SL’s latest spiritual successor, the Mercedes-AMG GT Coupe, starts at $134,900.
Seven decades after the car’s arrival on the streets, prices have soared well beyond the expectations of inflation. But unlike many legendary speed machines from history, the Gullwing isn’t unobtanium. With only 10 examples of the race car — internally known as W194— ever made, the odds of ever parking one in your garage are absolutely miniscule; finding a street-legal Gullwing – referred to as W198 – though, is quite a bit easier.
“The overall production number is 1,408 cars between 1954 and 1957. So they’re not particularly rare, if you compare it to Ferraris from the 1950s,” says Görig. “They are quite available at any time, to be honest.”
As Görig describes it, the 300 SL Gullwing market can be broken into three pieces, more or less. The most commonly available type, he says, are the cars which use steel body panels and the regular wheels. Most cars were silver — a tradition pioneered by the unpainted aluminum Silver Arrow race cars of the 1930s — as that was the standard-issue paint. Some buyers, however, opted for other shades; Niarchos, for example, ordered a one-off shade of blue.
“The color picked for most of the cars was silver, so, boring. If you had a green car or blue car, wow — that makes you different,” says Görig. As such, a 300 SL in an atypical color can potentially hammer for more than the average Gullwing, which Görig says buyers can expect to pay around €1.3 million for. A black-over-red-leather 1956 300 SL Gullwing, for example, sold for $1,572,500 at RM Sotheby’s Monterey 2023 auction.
The second tier of 300 SL Gullwings on the market today, Görig says, are the ones with the so-called Rudge wheels — better known today as centerlock wheels. These rims use a large, single nut in the center to hold them to the hub, rather than the several nuts spaced around the wheel found on most cars; the design is preferred by racers for their comparative ease in removal and reattachment, which can save valuable seconds during a pit stop. “A Rudge wheel car is, I would say, a hundred thousand extra,” he says.
“The third, final level are the so-called alloy cars,” Görig says. “Mercedes Benz produced only 29 cars with an alloy body, and those cars are on a different level.” The alloy in question is one of aluminum — an idea born from the mind of Dr. Fritz Nallinger, Mercedes-Benz head of engineering, in 1954, as a way to cut mass from the car. Known as the Leichtmetallausführung (Light Metal Version), the alloy cars swapped steel body panels for aluminum and replaced their side and rear window glass with Plexiglas, knocking a claimed 209 pounds off the Gullwing’s weight. Görig suggests anywhere in the realm of €5–7 million is to be expected for an aluminum-bodied example these days; a 1955 example sold at RM Sotheby’s Arizona 2022 auction for $6,825,000.
Still, buyers seeking to park a vintage ride in their garage as an investment may be better served looking elsewhere. “You will not lose money, but most likely, you will not make a lot of money if you buy a 300 SL. The market [for the 300 SL] is stable. It moves sideways. I don’t expect any huge drop, and I don’t expect great increases,” says Görig. The hot spot of the vintage car market, he suggests, has passed the era that the Gullwing hails from. “The regular buyer is 35 to 60 years old. It’s mainly male, and a car enthusiast is interested in the car that he knows from his childhood or school. And tell me, how many people [in that group] went to school in 1954?”
Instead, the Gullwing is better suited for enthusiasts who plan on driving and enjoying their rolling works of art. As Autoweek put it in 2022: “The 300 SL is, in almost all parameters, a modern car to drive” One that’s easy to shift, packs ample power by modern standards (at least for its weight) and delivers it in flexible, easy fashion. And of course, anyone driving a Gullwing today can count on being the center of attention, no matter what everyone else around them is driving … or wearing … or doing.
But if there’s one group for whom the 300 SL holds a special appeal, Görig says, it’s Teutonic car lovers. “For German enthusiasts, it’s a bit more,” he says. “It was just eight years after the war, the country was in ruins — and some guys at Mercedes decided to build a hypercar. Nowadays, you would say it was completely politically inappropriate.”
