During the Concorso d'Eleganza Villa d'Este I have filmed this 1954 Mercedes 300SL Gullwing.
Like so many European sports cars produced in the early 1950s, the 300 SL might never have existed without the guiding hand of Max Hoffman, a New York importer of European sports cars. Austrian-born Hoffman had a magical antenna for what the American luxury motoring clientele were looking for.
He urged Mercedes to build a road car along the lines of the successful W194 racing coupé, which had won Le Mans and the Carrera Panamericana in Mexico in 1952. However, this post-war era was characterised by fraught economic conditions and Mercedes was by no means certain that the 300 SL would generate successful sales. At a meeting with the Board of Management of Daimler-Benz, Max Hoffman convinced the board to develop the 300 SL by spontaneously offering to purchase 1,000 vehicles for the US market. The new ‘300 SL’ Gullwing stands for 3 litre displacement, and SL represents ‘Sport Light’ to reflect the innovative steel body. The new Gullwing spaceframe supercar was unveiled at the International Motor Sports Show in New York in February 1954, less than six months after the board reached its momentous decision. Series production began in August 1954 and most of the 1,400 Gullwing models were sold in the USA – amounting to around 1,100 units. The car shown here is one of the few cars that was not sold new to the US and this was the second 300 SL delivered new to England. The sports car was produced in 1954 with the exterior colour code DB353 – ‘Hellblau Metallic’ (Light Blue Metallic). It was one of 67 cars built in this colour with matching blue cloth interior, and the car was delivered on 5th January 1955 to its prominent first owner, the industrialist David Brown, owner of Aston Martin. After two more owners, the car was purchased in 1971 by Rob Walker, famous team owner of the Rob Walker Racing Team and heir of the Scotch whisky dynasty Johnnie Walker. The Gullwing was registered as ‘ROB2’ alongside his 300 SL Roadster ROB1. In 1986, the car was featured in an extensive article published in a Mercedes special in ‘MOTOR Magazine’. In recent years, this car received a body-off restoration in Germany to return it to the original colour combination.
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