” The famous three-pointed star. It’s everywhere in Stuttgart except for one secret location off-limits to the public. Inside these doors, are the hidden garages of Mercedes Benz.”
” This car is one of the most important models in the history of DaimlerChrysler, and it’s an absolutely icon.”
” The car is the Mercedes 300SL; 300 because it’s powered by a 3-liter engine, S for short, and L for light; but to the world, the car is the Gullwing because of its very unusual doors.”
” The body was basically designed as an example to be streamlined, and that’s the reason they created that unusual bodywork. Finally, with the Gullwing”
” The Gullwing goes into production in 1955. The first Mercedes using a tubular space-frame to support the entire drivetrain. Remarkably, the frame itself only weighs 110 pounds.”
” If you look at the doors, the famous gull-wing doors, the gull-wing doors were a compromise because the car had a design problem, construction-wise, because due to the tubular frame. To make the car rigid, they were not able to put normal doors on it, and that’s why they made the doors open to the top.”
” In it’s day, the 300SL coupe was the fastest production car in the world. Top speed is 155 miles an hour. Only 1,400 of the coupes are built; 1,000 of them are still on the road.”
” It’s a pure driving machine. It is the first production car with a gasoline direct-injected engine which was also revolution at that time, allowing much higher power output compared to the normal aspirated engines. Form follows function. The base of the car came out of the racing. The engine, which is a 6-liter engine. It’s a straight engine, but it is mounted inclined, not upwards. That allows a low-line of the car.”
” They used 300SL, the product-standard car, their production car also for some sport events, and they won the European Rally Championship with the 300SL.”
” The standard 300SL is a great race car, but the 300 SLR is even better. Instead of a 6, now there is an 8-cylinder engine, kicking out 310 horsepower.”
” The 300 SLR is a different car to the 300SL. This is a production-oriented car with a racing history. The 300 SLR were special cars built up on the basic of the Formula One car in those years and to compete in touring car races. ”
” One of the most famous on the SLR victories occurs at the Mille Miglia, a brutal 1000-mile all-out road race across Italy. A total of 533 cars entered, but it’s a Mercedes 300 SLR that wins in a record time of 10 hours 7 minutes and 4 seconds. That record still stands.”
” Stirling Moss with his codriver Denis Jenkinson won that Mille Miglia race in the year 1955, and that’s the famous 722. The 722 was the starting the number of that car for Moss and Jenkinson. That’s the time in the morning 7 hours 22 minutes when the car started the race.”
” Rudolph Uhlenhaut is the head engineer and designer of all the 300 SL’s. In 1957, he creates a convertible version. 7000 are built. Uhlenhaut works on another idea, a cross between a racing 300 SLR and the original gull-wing coupe.”
” That’s the car we call “Uhlenhaut coupe” and only 2 cars were built in 1955, and we still keep both of these cars often in the garage there, and it’s definitely one of the most spectacular cars ever built in car history.”
” The Uhlenhaut coupe is a street-legal racing car, top speed 180 miles an hour. During the 1950’s it’s the car Rudolf Uhlenhaut uses to drive back and forth to work. Today, its home is inside the hidden garages near other examples of a most amazing sports car, the Mercedes Benz 300SL.”
” One the first super sports car in the world who shaped the image of the brand, and as I said, that car became the icon and the car of the 20th century.”